Hows my little GoatFest?

BockFest 2012 has come and gone and it was a giant success by anyone's standards.

This year I was on top of things and spent a good amount of time working on my logo, I'm excited to say that this goat will be the face of BockFest for the conceivable future. I was very flattered when Chaz asked me to put it on a shirt, and then so many people bought shirts!

Little Jayda Mailey the cute rockstar, she is as big as my Stein.

We mixed it up and held the event at Sleepy Creek Vineyards. I think it was a good thing too, I think we had close to 40 people attend. Jon got the event started off with a bang, literally. One of his bottles exploded in the middle of the night before the event and shot beer and glass everywhere.

We kicked it off with a tasting of our NINE beers, that's right nine. I didn't have much to eat the whole day and I was certainly feeling it after all of those small tasting cups. As a whole we had a  great batch of beer, but the Winner was Zack and Michelle Frazier's RyeBock. Hopefully before BockFest 2013 I will have a nice stand with names made for the travelling Stein trophy.

The DoppleWeizen Laura and I made was inky black, boozy, and bitter. I learned a valuable lesson with this beer which was a little bit of dark roasted grain goes a long way. I used a pound and a half of dark roasted wheat, and should have used maybe a half of a pound.

Now seems to be a good time to mention that although I did carry my camera around with me I didn't snap too many pictures of the event.
My favorite part of BockFest is the obstacle course and this year we threw in a new twist. Having it at Sleepy Creek I felt I should embrace the location and we ran the course between two rows of vines. The course started with hatchet throwing and turned to a balancing act where we scrounged up some old railroad timbers over which we balanced, jumped, some fell, and laughed our way through the course. The champions this year were "Beej's & Cream 2" Brian Johnson and Jason Staab, which was shocking because they came in last place the year before.

Stick a hatchet, pour your beer in the cup, miss it and drink!

This is not live action, Jon managed to stick one this way, and yes it counted.

We can't forget the food, oh goodness the food...There was so much! Last year nearly everyone brought dessert, which was great, but by the end of the night no one wanted anything to do with sweets. This year Laura made some great brownies and cookies and everyone else made food that filled. There was Chili, Brats, Cabbage, Pretzel Bites, Rueben dip, different yummy breads, deviled eggs (with a green olive on top!), and more! For whatever strange reason I didn't feel like eating much of anything so I didn't stuff my face but everything I ate I loved!

The Penis stick made a triumphant return for caramelizing the beers at the fire pit and Zack's dopplebock cigars were a big hit.

Abby and Matt can stick hatchets in the dark, without seeing the target.

Everyone had a great time and I am looking forward to next year's BockFest (if the world dosen't end first). I want to thank all of our fantastic brewers for making a beer to essentially give away, all of the cooks of the delightful foods, Sleepy Creek for letting us overrun the place into the night, my friends who drove a long way, and my lovely wife for putting up with me constantly talking about the event and putting up with me in general.