It was going to be over three hours before the celebration beer was to be poured and celebrated, so I sauntered over to an open patch of wall near the back end of the bar area, leaned against it, pulled my belly in so as not to block the folks coming and going from the garden and the khazi, and wondered how I was going to pace myself for the duration.

I was always aware of its existence, and had always planned on going, next year.

But things and stuff and yada yada …

Well, next year finally happened, last year.

And I made the most of it.

You can only eat baked beans and fish finger sandwiches for several days in a row before the urge to get something more substantial becomes overwhelming.

I just worked my way through my checklist in no particular order, just trying to maximize my steps by alternating between “pub” and “bar”, and watching under my feet to make sure that I didn’t trip over the pub dog Chewie …

The beers were almost exclusively old-world styles, German, Czech, British and Belgian, with just a single native American style (a New England IPA) and a barrel-aged Imperial Stout in the mix.

… one of the closest Irish bars to my apartment in Woodside was the legendary Liffey Bar (aka Liffey Tavern) in Jackson Heights, which happened to serve the very best Guinness in NYC; don’t just take my word for it. Long gone unfortunately, swallowed by the bus station …

The homebrewing graduate class of 2013/2014 has shown a real enthusiasm for including more traditional beer styles in their repertoire and a willingness to dispense those beers by the traditional methods.

I also really enjoyed the Noble in Reason from Endless Life once we had established that it was actually a pub ale and not an anemic yet yeasty dark mild named Mildly Existential.

When the beer list came out, I noticed several bottled sours that I wanted to sample, and also noticed a great many Czech-style lagers of varying colors, and thought that may be a way to navigate and filter the extensive list.

I did drop by on occasion, but it was, as I suspect it still is, a popular place for tourists who come by to do all manner of disrespectful things with the statue of the wee doggie right outside the pub.

Mathews Brewing is the only cask ale producer in South Florida but makes up for the lack of other venues; they have always produced English style ales served on cask since they opened six years ago and have four installed handpumps of which at least two are likely to be dispensing on any random visit.

The rest of the taproom was beginning to fill up with the regular weekend punters and their kids and dogs, all intermingling with the cask nuts until it was difficult to see where one group ended and another began … joyful chaos.

And then I looked at the lukrs and the poster on the wall tempting me to go for a nice refreshing glass of foam; another crawl was in danger of being self-sabotaged.

… their extended version of Down by the River had me hunched over and shuffling around like old Neil himself. It was all I could do, not to pull out the air guitar.

Another shame for me as I can roll out of my building, trip over the curb, and stagger right in the front door of the Third Avenue Alehouse …
… or did I get that backwards?

Along with some typical shiny brewing equipment they also have a couple of strange terracotta cauldrons for lack of a better word, with their lids tightly locked down as if the contents would try to escape otherwise.