Hopefully he is there already.

I am staying on a few more days, visiting accounts with reps on Monday and Tuesday, then doing a tasting at Acre on Tuesday evening.

The time Geoff and I spent together was productive ( as well as goofy and fun), working two events that included a festival of many amazements and much drunkenness held at Durty Nellies in Palatine, getting impossibly lost in the Mayhem Mobile while heading to Stoller for a meeting with an assembled sales staff of sixty, going to a Cubs game that the home team won accompanied by a crew from Stoller Wholesale and Binny’s, and…

While at the game we discussed making a collaborative beer between Three Heads Brewing and Clown Shoes Beer, to be released during the heat of this year’s presidential campaign: Third Party Candidate.

Because we feel America needs a better option, Geoff also agreed to run for President.

Yes, Geoff Dale should be President of The United States of America.

This would make me sleep better, and I find it hilarious, so please, write in Geoff Dale on the 2012 Ballot!

What should our party be called? We were thinking of the D-Bag Party, meant in a self-deprecating way, but it is probably not a good idea.

For the beer, we discussed a Marzen made with freeze dried pumpkin and pumpkin spice, but are open to suggestions.

We welcome ideas for the above questions and for our Campaign in the comments section.

Here’s a photo of the The Man, The Minister, The Mayham Master, our future President:

100 cases of volume from that batch will be blended with the beer from two Knob Creek barrels that we have filled with Blaecorn Unidragon.

This concoction will be called Angry Beast.

The label will have a Blaecorn Unidragon looking particularly irate, breathing fire, carrying a dead vampire in its claws through an idyllic blue sky.

Check out the finished label for Flight of The Pimp, which will be Pimp blended with the other two barrels we have of Knob Creek Blaecorn:

We will be giving scholarships to college seniors (over 21) and are working with the Animal Rescue League of Boston to help place dogs, starting with an adorable puppy named Tom Hanks. Take him home, and Clown Shoes will pay the adoption fee.

Ben Fullelove came in for a whirlwind visit this past weekend. Ben owns Petrol Station in Houston and is working with me to start his beer brand, Brash Brewing, at Mercury. We tasted a test batch of his 12% IPA, The Bollocks, which was intensely hoppy and scary in terms of how easy it drank. Ben had four glasses, which made our visit to Lone Star and Deep Ellum later on pretty tame. He nursed a Smuttynose IPA for three hours and ate one third of a taco. Ha!

We also tried tests batches of the two brown ales that will comprise Pimp, the collaboration between Clown Shoes and Brash that we are making next month. Ben’s 10% Belgian Brown was toasty, balanced by layers of deep cocoa sweetness, which he wants to tone down by adding some priming sugar when we start the beer. There was also too much banana in Ben’s opinion, which we will negate by lowering the brew temp. The upsize of Brown Angel needed more hops, we think, but was dense and delicious. The blend of the two, however, was… PIMP!

Four Knob Creek Bourbon barrels were recently filled with Blaecorn Unidragon. Two of these will be blended with Pimp, one part Bourbon Blaecorn to two parts Pimp. This will make about 150 cases of our first limited release beer: The Flight of The Pimp. The Richard Bailey label will have a Pimp riding a Blaecorn Unidragon.

Here’s Richard’s artwork for The Bollocks:

The road trip only made it as far as Ledyard, CT. With two thousand dollars in my pocket, I told myself if I lost half of it I would keep driving south. Maybe down to Florida.

Well, Poker Gods smiled on me as I worked away at the low and mid limit no limit hold ‘em tables, located in the basement of Foxwoods. The poker room manager got me a poker room rate ($90 a night, first at the MGM and then at the Great Cedar Hotel) so I spent five days attempting to be observant, patient, and brutally aggressive in spurts.

Overall, I was pleased with my play. I made two unusual calls over the 40 hours at the tables, having a pretty good read on the players and the situations.

In one spot I thought the guy was chasing a draw a huge percentage of the time, so I called him on the flop and turn for small bets, and then for $150 on the river.  I had a pair of 5s and called into a board with four higher cards on it (2 6 7 9 K).

The second spot was wild, in a mid limit game. I raised with QJ of diamonds in late position. An aggressive player who had been playing very loose and in my mind bluffing a fair amount called. The board came with a queen and two small diamonds. I bet, he called. The turn was a black ace, which I didn’t love, but I also didn’t feel like he had one. He bet $100 and I called into a pot that had about $350 in it. The final card came and it was a black deuce, which eliminated the possibility of a flush or a straight. He checked, I bet $150, and he went into thinking mode, actually mouthing math quietly to himself before declaring his stack all in. He had roughly $550 left, which made it $400 to call into a pot that had $1150 in it. This guy would have missed a draw or would be bluffing way more than a third of the time, so I called pretty quickly and was happy to see he had only a pair of sevens. After playing tight and conservative for days, it was difficult putting so much of the money I had won on the line to make that call, especially as light as my hand was. But this guy and the way he played the hand reeked like a tomato shit.

Stacking $1500 of red chips is fun. You can build a fortress with them.

As glorious as this all sounds, about four days in I started getting very tired. While there are a great number of decent and interesting people, there are also a great number of lonely people and degenerates that play poker at Foxwoods. Sitting with these folks, vying to take cash from one another, eventually beats me down. Even if I am winning.

I decided I’d move upstairs to the tournaments, play one or two and head home.

That evening I flamed out of an $80 buy in No Limit Hold ‘Em tournament. I brought a Foxwoods cup filled with Vampire Slayer and sat there sneakily sipping on it. I think my opponents could smell the beer on the other side of the table, so I am not sure how sneaky that really was.

The next morning I played a $140 buy in No Limit Hold ‘Em tournament. Seated next to me was a salty, wrinkled old man with thick white hair and two gold teeth, who took to calling me Tommy. He would say stuff to me like, “Hey, Tommy, what shit you got over there?” Everyone at the table started calling me Tommy. Which was cool, because I kept building one of the biggest stacks in the tournament, eventually making a deal with the final five players to split the prize pool. Each of us received $943, but I got a nickname too.

Just call me Tommy.

Now I am back at work.

Miracle is getting bottled late next week.

Ben Fullelove is coming in from Texas to taste the first test batches of Brash Brewing Company beers.

Clown Shoes is working on the recipes for Let My People Go (pale ale with cucumber) and Rosebud (wit with rose).

It should be a good Spring!

Gregg B.

has been settling in.

Clown Shoes isn’t the problem. Clown Shoes has been a saving grace.

Therefore, after two and a half years with no break, I am going to shut myself down to go on a road trip.

The first stop will be Foxwoods or Mohegan Sun, where I will grind a few tournaments and low limit no limit poker games. The Main Event of The World Series of Poker is a few months away. I expect to play there wearing custom clown shoes and a silk suit with a clown shoes logo embroidered on the jacket.

Right now, I am out of practice and a little sad, so feel free to say a prayer to the poker gods for me. If I lose my roll fast, the road trip moves on to… points unknown!

Ok. After those maudlin bits above I’ll leave you now with more uplifting news.

Miracle, a 5.5% IPA that should retail around $3.99 for a bomber, will be released at the end of this month. We will use a percentage of the profits to help people.

Miracle Mike, on the label, is modeled after Mike Pettengill, one of our delivery drivers. Mike is, well, he is a miracle of a human being. He has agreed to have a costume hand designed, in which he will lead festivities at events, doing stuff like front flips off of a stage. When I asked Mike how he was going to explain to people why is on the label he said, “What do you mean? I’ll tell them because I‘m fucking awesome.”

Brash Brewing Company, the brain child of Petrol Station’s Ben Fullelove, will start working with me and the guys at Mercury as soon as April. The first beer will be a collaboration. Ben will make a double batch of a rich Belgian brown and we will make a double batch of a ten percent version of Brown Angel. The two beers will be blended to make Pimp, a double, double brown ale.

Later this year a full line up of Brash Brewing beers will be released, here and in Texas, as well as in other select markets.

Peace,

Gregg B.

Includes entry to this session, all beer tastings, fest guide and PLA bio-compostable cup!

Session A, June 1, 2012 6-9:30 pm
Session B, June 2, 2012 1-4L30 pm
Session C, June 2, 2012 6-9:30 pm