Beers & Games
After feasting on the remains of my still-delicious Sabu for lunch, I visited John and Julie in Hollywood for an afternoon/evening of beer and boardgames. We tried Eagle Rock Brewery's Populist IPA (a delicious beer which I also had at the brewery yesterday) and Stone Brewing's Green Tea IPA over three games of Dominion.
Photo by John
Next up was Sam Adams' 48 Latitude IPA Deconstructed, a set of six beers; five with using a single variety of hops from various places near the 48th parallel, and one a blend of those five hop varieties. We started with the five hop blend while we began a game of Goa. Goa is an interesting blend of resource selection and auctioning and resource management. It's relatively straightforward to learn, but seemed to take longer than the advertised 90 minutes to play a 3 player game. Fun though, with a good turn frequency and never seeming like it's dragging. We also tried the Zeus (Washington State) and Hallertau Mittelfrueh (Germany) hop IPAs while we played.
While we took a break for sausage grilling, we tasted the East Kent Goldings (UK) variety, then a palate cleansing Sam Adams Light before feasting on the delicious wares of the grill (hat tip to John!). Then it was back to the table for Ra, a tricky auction and set collection game accompanied by the Ahtanum (Yakima Valley, WA) IPA. We finished the evening with another game of Dominion and the Simcoe IPA, again from the Yakima Valley.
All-in-all, and excellent summers afternoon of great games, great beer and great company, the likes of which I am keen to repeat during the rest of summer here, and when I return to NZ for my next summer.
* I would have linked directly to the brewery website, but their age verification is even worse than usual.
Photo by John
Next up was Sam Adams' 48 Latitude IPA Deconstructed, a set of six beers; five with using a single variety of hops from various places near the 48th parallel, and one a blend of those five hop varieties. We started with the five hop blend while we began a game of Goa. Goa is an interesting blend of resource selection and auctioning and resource management. It's relatively straightforward to learn, but seemed to take longer than the advertised 90 minutes to play a 3 player game. Fun though, with a good turn frequency and never seeming like it's dragging. We also tried the Zeus (Washington State) and Hallertau Mittelfrueh (Germany) hop IPAs while we played.
While we took a break for sausage grilling, we tasted the East Kent Goldings (UK) variety, then a palate cleansing Sam Adams Light before feasting on the delicious wares of the grill (hat tip to John!). Then it was back to the table for Ra, a tricky auction and set collection game accompanied by the Ahtanum (Yakima Valley, WA) IPA. We finished the evening with another game of Dominion and the Simcoe IPA, again from the Yakima Valley.
All-in-all, and excellent summers afternoon of great games, great beer and great company, the likes of which I am keen to repeat during the rest of summer here, and when I return to NZ for my next summer.
* I would have linked directly to the brewery website, but their age verification is even worse than usual.