On the 9th day of Cleveland Beer Week, my true love gave to meeeeee….

Christmas Ale. For real. Three whole days before the rest of the CLE took tap.

How’s that for a climax on a birthday week? AB, you are welcome.

Before the start of our last event of Cleveland Beer Week on Saturday, the ‘rents stopped over (AB made some yummy apps) with a bottle of Doobie Brothers wine… (yes, inlaws!!)

Yes, seriously – Doobie Brothers wine!

We also opened the Ithaca Brute that we purchased throughout our week of beer tastings, and I may have also been summoned with another Pumpkin Ale from Tasty Dog.

For an inaugural event, BREWzilla was beyond amazing. The event staff quickly fixed a line entrance problem, and we were well on our way to savor all the wonderful brews spread throughout two levels of the beautiful Arcade. We never made it down for the apps (I heard, were provided by Winking Lizard? Meh. Next year, we can work on the food issue, eh?).

A few small craft stand-outs: Hello, Christmas Ale (we used up our first four tickets), I was excited to have Ithaca’s Apricot brew on tap once again (one of my faves from the summer beer fest at Lincoln Park) and some Sonoma Aroma IPA from Fat Head’s Brewery.

I’m sure there were others… but I was on beer overload at this point.

Then we hit the mother load: the Stone Brewing Vertical Epic series, containing seven “vintages” from 03/03/03 through 09/09/09. Yes, we paid for it (charity, right?), and we’ll have to find some amazing event in our (near) future to celebrate. You know, before our livers putter out…

It was certainly an incredible evening. Happily, I was able to catch up a bit with Jose & Kelly again and meet Twitter friend Kyle, and make friends with brewmasters from not only the local breweries, but all over the country.

With some 700+ events just in its first year, I cannot wait to see what is in store for next. (Read: More “Big Chuck”!)

And how easy it will be to plan AB’s birthday again!

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