Fremont Oktoberfest

After the fun times we had working the Kirkland Uncorked wine festival, signing up to work Oktoberfest in Seattle's Fremont neighborhood was a no-brainer.

The company that manages these events seems to be much more organized than festivals we've been involved with in St. Louis.

Festivals around here seem to be pretty strict about some dumb state law that says we can't drink while serving. It is especially stupid because guests will ask us our opinions on the different beers and we have to say we have no idea what the beers taste like. Someone please inform Washington's state government that prohibition is over and the squares lost.

The thing about a festival full of drunkards is that they aren't great about keeping track of their beer punch cards. We helped out with the litter. Keep Seattle beautiful! The deal with volunteering is you work a shift then you can come back the next day an revel.

O'Fallon Pumpkin Beer Virtual Tasting

It's usually pretty sad to watch organizations try to get you to sign up for virtual versions of covid canceled in-person events. Especially like virtual fundraiser galas. Bad news guys, I was mostly going for the booze. I'm not going to dress up and then sit in front of my computer while I write you a check, sorry. But when I heard that Randall's was doing a virtual beer testing, I thought this might just be crazy enough to work.

The tasting featured several pumpkin beers from O'Fallon, and then we logged onto a webex where an O'Fallon employee was waxing poetic about all of the subtle notes I should be detecting.

Our tasting room this evening was Zoe's back... side yard?

As the sun set the sky really put on a show for us.

Peter Peter Pumpkin Drinker

As I drove home from work in Lake St. Louis, through the lovely fall foliage, my mind turned to all of the pumpkins I would soon be drinking...

...at the Rev. John T. Milito Annual Pumpkin Beer Taste Test Showdown! We collect pumpkin beers we find at like every alcohol store in town, and then sip them like dandies while we give them fairly meaningless ratings.

I gave myself a tattoo so I would never forget these friends.

It was then time for some games.

Now I don't know if it was the alcohol or if drinking 14 pumpkins triggers some sort of testosterone boost, but at this point in the night everyone competed in various feats of strength.

Bellefontaine Cemetery Beer Barons Tour

We've done a lot of the Anheuser-Busch sites: Busch Stadium, Grant's Farm, Warm Springs Ranch, Bevo Mill... hell even working at A-B Headquarters. Well I have three remaining Buschy attractions that I'm aware of: the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas, TX, Busch Gardens (I think I've been but I was little), and the mausoleum of Adolphus Busch.

I had had my eye on the Bellefontaine Cemetery Beer Barons Tour but I didn't want to pay the $40-65 dollar entrance fee. What to do, what to do... I signed us up to work it instead. We got shirts AND hoodies to start off with. Then proceeded to taste all the tasty beers.

One of the memorable beers we sipped was Earthbound's Mahlab ESB, an "extra special bitter brewed with the pits of St. Lucie cherries which are often used in Turkish baked goods. The beer has a sweet spice-bread aroma but a crisp bitter finish. We did our own volunteering pouring people samples of Urban Chestnut brews. Speaking of Urban Chestnut, we learned on a tour of the cemetery that in Germany people used to dig holes in the ground and then put beer barrels in them to keep it cold. They would then plant chestnut trees around in order to further shade and cool the beer.

Well the light was not cooperating so all of my pictures were bad. But I was able to go and visit Adolphus. I thought it was interesting that he actually died while in Germany on vacation. Despite the fact he was German born they shipped his body back to St. Louis for burial.

Wikipedia seems to think that:

"Lilly Anheuser's parents had built a mausoleum at Bellefontaine Cemetery, but she felt that Adolphus needed something grander. She tore down the original structure, and had the other family members reinterred outside. She had Thomas Barnett design a new mausoleum in the Bavarian Gothic style. Constructed of stone quarried in Missouri, and completed in 1921, the new building cost $250,000 (equivalent to $2.8 million today). It features grapevines representing both Adolphus' birthplace in German wine country, and his favorite beverage. Julius Caesar's words, "Veni, Vidi, Vici," or "I came, I saw, I conquered" are inscribed on the lintel."

There were a few less famous local beer barons represented, including Wainwright and Lemp. The Wainwright name pricked up my ears because of the downtown Wainwright Building, which in my understanding is the first skyscraper in the world.

It was a day of good, clean, free fun.