So my friend raveskdr and I held a tasting of rare Lost Abbey beers yesterday in DC that had been in the works for months. We posted on BA several times looking for people who wanted to contribute to the tasting and got contacted by some random guy named Chris in San Diego, who had just joined BA, who said he was going to be coming to DC for work and would love to join us. We even moved the tasting to a different day to accommodate him since he offered to bring both Veritas 004 and Isabelle Proximus. Honestly we had our doubts about whether this guy actually existed, but figured what the hell, might as well give it a go. Fast-forward a couple of months to yesterday. This guy wearing a Lost Abbey shirt and wielding a fancy camera showed up at our door with Veritas 004 and Isabelle. He introduced himself as Ryan, not Chris, and while I thought something fishy was up, he had the right beers so I was willing to let it slide. We opened up a couple of beers and suddenly there was a loud knock on the door. We all looked around confused - we weren't expecting anyone else for the tasting. Was it the cops? Had Chris/Ryan called some guys over to rob us? Raveskdr opened the door and his jaw literally dropped to the floor - outside were Gwen and Tomme from Lost Abbey! And Tomme was carrying a huge box of beer! As he walked inside we all stared in disbelief. Was this really happening? Could this be real? I'm not even sure any of us said hi as they walked through the living room into the kitchen. Then he asked us if we wanted to drink some Yellow Bus and Veritas 005! Now I knew I had to be dreaming. Tomme, Gwen and Ryan ended up hanging out with us for about 3 hours while drinking beers, chatting and watching some soccer. They brought an insane amount of beer on top of the 15-20 bottles we already had lined up for the tasting. They were super nice and we had an amazing time. So yeah, I'm kind of bragging, but I also just wanted to note what an amazing experience this was. I mean, the Lost Abbey crew literally flew out to DC, a market they don't even distribute to, JUST for this tasting and to hang out. It's one of the coolest things that's ever happened and they deserve a ridiculous amount of praise for this. I know Lost Abbey may have its haters, but they certainly earned some fans for life yesterday.
And then you woke up, and saw you had wet the bed. But seriously, awesome story. I wish random brewmasters would show up to my house with cases of wales.
That's awesome Lost Abbey get so much shit on here yet many of their beers are ridiculously good, hard to reconcile for me
Awesome story. I remember him tweeting that he was crashing a tasting, but didn't really realize that it was yours. Tomme's always been cool to e whenever I've talked to him.
I don't use twitter, but a simple google search revealed that "TheTomme" went beast mode on that tasting. That said, I'd still like to see a pic of the final lineup (and/or Tomme drainpouring v003 into his mouth). /morbidcuriosity
Wow! Thats really awesome. Here's Tomme's twitter feed, looks like there are some fun pictures in there from your event. https://twitter.com/#!/TheTomme
They actually said they're leaving this afternoon. They were going to hang out at DC Brau this morning and then heading to the airport.
So I didn't take a single picture with them there (probably because I was in shock), but I know some people did, and I will post some pics when others send them to me. I hope someone got the final lineup at the end too - it was probably the most preposterous tasting lineup there ever was, or damn close to it. We basically had every Lost Abbey beer you can think of with the exception of Veritas 001 and 002. Edit: Here's a picture of the lineup, though I'm pretty sure Chris was drunk when he took this since a number of the bottles are obscured from view (and I'm pretty sure a few things are missing like Cable Car, DDG, etc.) : https://twitter.com/raveskdr/status/219793950578442240/photo/1/large
His twitter feed was blowing up about a tasting, but I didnt expect it to be this. Wow, what an awesome guy!
There truly wasn't a single bad beer in the entire tasting, but if I was going to empty my cellar to get one beer, it would probably be Veritas 004 or Veritas 005. Those beers were both nearly perfect. Veritas 006, 010 and Yellow Bus were also some of my favorites. On the disappointing side, I'd say Isabelle and Veritas 007 didn't quite live up to my expectations, but they were great beers nonetheless. Oh, and Veritas 008 is totally underrated - completely different from the rest of the Veritas series, but when evaluated on its own merits, it's a damn good beer.
I actually liked that beer too. The tea works well and it isn't overtly sour like some other LA beers.
read Tomme's twitter feed this morning about crashing a tasting in DC & automatically thought of you guys posting several times looking for bottles. So amazing that turn of events cause things like this to happen, glad you guys had a blast!
Pretty awesome! Sounds like a good time... Saw that my friend Ryan was in D.C. with his boss, guess it was perfect timing for all to have a mega tasting. Yellow Bus walking in the door with the creator himself is surreal, looks like he got an 'Almost Famous' moment and partied with "the people"
that's pretty badass right there. Curious, the beginning of your story made it seem like this Ryan/Chris guy had something to do with Tomme showing up then no? That was a totally separate part of the story?
Oh yeah, I guess I didn't explain it properly. Ryan is Lost Abbey's social media/press guy. He contacted us under an alias (Chris) with the intention of having Tomme show up from the very beginning.
