Sunday afternoon beer tasting

I went to a friend's house out in Queens on Sunday afternoon for a beer tasting & cookout. He's got some friends who are serious beer connoisseurs, and they picked up about 15 or 16 varieties of microbrews, some European and some from North America. Everyone got a brandy snifter glass and about 3 oz. of each kind of beer as we tried them. Since some of the beers had high alcohol content (a few were 10% alcohol) most of us drank a few glasses of water between rounds. Aside from the fact that I had to be at work this morning and couldn't afford a Monday morning hangover, I wouldn't have been able to tell the differences between some of the brews had I not cleansed my palate each time. I don't remember any of the brands now, but there was a strong IPA that made Sierra Nevada Pale Ale taste like dirt (and I love Sierra Nevada), a British barley wine that tasted more like a fine wine than beer, and a champagne-like beer that we drank to start the day. I had to leave around 7:30, so I only got through nine or ten beers. The food was excellent as well: smoked duck quesadillas, tilapia soft tacos, steak tacos, and several different kinds of salsa and guacamole. We even had homemade sorbet and chocolate souffle for dessert (which I ate from a "go cup" as I was leaving). And I got to watch Sunday's NFL games in HD for the first time and talk football with a roomful of addicts. There were even a few fellow fantasy football managers at the party, and we must have seemed like complete geeks to those who don't follow the real game or the fake kind. All in all, it was a great way to spend a Sunday.