Brewery Birthdays

So, I’m an idiot. As it turns out. This is news to no one really, but I thought I’d point it out.

As I mentioned awhile ago my birthday was last week. I did not mention that another five of my group of high school friends also have birthdays around the same time. Because you don’t care about them. But they are relevant to this story, so we’ll pretend to care about them for at least the duration of this blog. Then we can go back to concentrating solely on me, which is really more comfortable for everyone.

Instead of having 6 parties in January we’ve recently decided that it would be a better use of our time and money and waistlines to just have one big birthday dinner and call it another year. This year I was in charge of making the reservations. I sent out an e-mail telling everyone to let me know if they could make it to a local chinese restaurant at 7:30 on Friday. Once I got the responses I called the restaurant to make the reservation. Because we had a party of 17 the chinese food place couldn’t give us a reservation until after 10. Which is a GREAT time to gorge yourself on chow mein, really. So then I had to move to Plan B. Since there wasn’t actually a Plan B I had to instead call some people and get opinions on where we should eat. We were trying to think of a place that could accommodate our size and general rowdiness. We agreed that a brewery might be the best fit for our needs. So I called up Sac Brewing Company and made a reservation for 17. Then I sent an e-mail out again letting everyone know that we were meeting at the Sac Brewing Company, which was in the Downtown Plaza. Great, wonderful, happy birthday to everyone.

Then I get to the brewery on Friday night and a friend walks up and says, “You know that we don’t actually have reservations here, right?” To which I replied, “What?” To which he replied, “We are at the River City Brewing Company, not the Sac Brewing Company.” To which I smacked him. Cause obviously I didn’t know that I had made reservation at the wrong brewing company, or I probably would have done something to change the fact that we were going to be sitting at one brewing company while a huge empty table waited for us at the other brewing company. But none of the other 16 people thought to send me an e-mail back pointing out the fact that I’m an idiot. Isn’t that nice of them?

Then another friend hung up her cell phone and said, “They wanted to know what time we were all meeting at the chinese restaurant.” At least I’ve found my herd.

And really, how many brewing companies does one town need? Is it a normal occurrence for a town to have 10 brewing companies, or is Sacramento just full of lushes who are impressed by large metal things full of beer? I just don’t know, but there seems to be a ridiculous number of breweries in this town. Are we too good for Budweiser and Keystone Light? (Ahhhh do you remember the days of Keystone Light? When we were actually PROUD to buy 12 beers for only $3? I think Keystone is the official sponsor of Underage Drinking, or maybe they co-sponsor with Natural Ice (or “Natty Ice” as we called it).)

I guess I just don’t see the point of breweries, why don’t they just ship the beer into their restaurant? Why do they have to make it on-site? All it does is make the restaurant smell like ass while I’m trying to enjoy a nice artichoke dip. And then there are the places that actually allow you the honor of making your own beer right there, so you can take it home and drink it later. Wow, that’s exciting stuff. I’m thinking this is a guy thing, the whole excited by the prospect of cooking beer thing. Perhaps this is finally a recipe they can get behind. But this does not intrigue me in the least. Especially when I’m out at a restaurant. Next thing you know they are going to be offering me the unique opportunity to cook my own food there as well. I can hardly wait.

But don’t let me detour you from visiting our lovely town and drinking your way through all of our local breweries. I’m sure they are all quite a treat, once you get used the ass smell, that is. I’d hit Sac Brewing Company first though, cause we know they have at least 17 seats waiting to be filled...