Here you see the crowd forming the line to get their beers. We arrived there at about 10:30 and waited out the rain before getting on the line. At 12:00, Scott Vaccaro himself emerged and announced that it was time to begin. This was the first time I've been to a release at CL, so it was quite a sight to see person after person emerging from the brewery's doors with the maximum allotted 4 bottles awkwardly carried in their folded arms. No lie, despite being around 80th in line, I still had a nervous feeling that it would all be gone by the time we got to the front.
Once you get inside, you get a sense of how small the brewery still is. Despite its small size, there are tons of barrels stacked to the ceiling labeled with all sorts of delicious future brews. Mouth-watering.
After purchasing our bottles (NOTE to anyone who goes to any future releases, its cash only. Somehow I stupidly didn't realize this), we hung around for a bit to sample some of the beers they had on tap for tasting. We had the new Pumpkin Ale, the Smoked Porter and the Double IPA, all of which were quite good. We also perused the brewhouse and took note of how they did things right. Beer geeks get excited by empty grain bags displayed on the wall.
Above you'll see the aftermath. Click the photo to get a closer look. Some of the empty beers displayed on the wall are among the best in the country. The beer community is so generous, sharing their stashes with all...very cool.
Our next stop was Peekskill Brewery in Peekskill, NY, but i'll save that for Part II.
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