Paris Olympics Edition

The Paris Olympics are here. With so much pageantry and competition on television, we decided to use that energy and celebrate good food, drink and activities. From disc golf and International Beer Day to Rennaissance Faires and National Mead Day, we highlight a fun weekend and give out gold, silver and bronze medals for this weekend's beers and meads. Featuring Mortalis Brewing, Wandering Gypsy Brewing, and Lilly Belle Meads. 

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Transcript

We've heard this enough already. I love it. It's Olympic.

It only comes around every two years. Right. They alternate summer, winter, summer, winter.

Yeah. Thank God. Could you imagine waiting four years for everything combined? Would you remember when they didn't really, when the summer and the winters were the same year? Right.

Right. That's what I'm saying. That's why they started alternating them.

Can't imagine it being like that anymore. Right. Sucks.

But, yeah, it is Olympic time. I think, what, it goes until the 8th? The 11th. The 11th.

And, yeah, we started off Friday with the opening ceremonies. What did you like about the opening ceremonies most? Oh, they were so weird. Okay.

Like, listen, I watched it, then I watched, like, the, what is that, Keenan and, and who's ... Kevin Hart. Kevin Hart. They kind of did their own little, like, commentary thing.

You know, I watched that thing to see what, you know, jokes they would make, but, I mean, I guess to each their own, right? So it's all about the hosting country, and maybe a lot of, like, what we saw was normal and great to them and whatever, but I couldn't, I couldn't quite understand it. Like, why are we following these three people, like, flirting with each other, running through things to end up going home clearly having a menage a trois when they shut a door? Oh, I know what part you're talking about. Right? And then we watch a guy forever jumping over buildings, running through things.

Assassin's Creed guy. Yeah. Yeah.

Just to, like, ride a horse forever across the lake to, like ... A mechanical horse, then a real horse. Right. What was the point of all of that? Yeah, I don't know.

I think there's, I don't know, there's something to be said for when it's all outdoors like that. Like, okay, you're on the River Thames, you got the Eiffel Tower, you've got the Louvre. It was cool that they came, like, they had all the teams on the boats.

That was cool. That was awesome. You know, they're partying up in the rain.

That was fun. Yeah. I mean, I didn't think that was a bad idea.

That was pretty neat. I thought that when they did, like, the little fashion show portion of it, I thought that was pretty cool because that's very, very, like, Paris, right? Right. I mean, fashion week in Paris, that's huge, right? So, I mean, there were things that I totally, you know, understood and, but then that other stuff I was like, what is happening? I thought, like, their performances kind of lacked, you know, it was almost like, I don't know, it just seemed a little thrown together.

Those poor French dancers were not in any, like, I don't, they were like, oh, wait, am I supposed to be stepping here? Oh, we're kicking now. Now is the kick. Okay.

Okay. Yeah. Okay.

I got it. You know. Right.

So, I thought that was a little weird. The Gaga performance. Did you not practice enough? Right.

Yeah. The Gaga performance where she went a little old school. It was still, seemed a little off, but I liked it.

It was artsy. But only, you know, I'm sure, you know, knowing her, research and. Celine Dion just, you know.

Oh, surprise. Hi. Stole the show.

Hello, everybody. I know. I'm just going to.

She's just incredible. Act like I've never missed a beat. Right.

Well, she's amazing like that. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. I mean, seriously. So, yeah.

And then we were like, where's the balloon going? Is it just floating into the sky and then bursting? We had to get up on top of the TV to see that there was a tether on it. Oh, good. It's not going to go anywhere.

I know. So, we were like, we were having a laugh thinking like, it's just going to float through the city and run into a building. The Eiffel Tower is going down.

I was like, oh, it's a homage to a hydrogen powered balloon. Oh, great. The Hindenburg.

Because that because that went well. Right. Right.

Well, can we start with what we're drinking? Sure. As we get in. So, the idea of this episode is we're going to give away some gold, silver and bronze medals to some beers that we had because we've been all over the place this past weekend.

It was pretty fun weekend. Yeah. We made the best of it.

Yeah, we did. A lot of rain. This is Minotaur and it's from Mortalis Brewing.

So, I like to be able to pull it. What I like about their website is they actually have their beer descriptions up. So, Minotaur called Planner's Punch.

It's a smoothie sour, comes in at 6.0 ABV. Cocktail that is inspired with sour blends of pineapple, key lime, passion fruit, orange and golden rums, soaked raisins that creates a maze of depth that they suggest you not let them catch you. All right.

Minotaurs are not great negotiators, I've heard. Is that from your D&D days? It's probably. Yeah.

From my nerdy D&D days. All right. Well, for me, it's strong on the orange.

Yes. Yep. I got strong orange.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then there's like a little bit of tartness.

Taste that? So, picking up the passion fruit, but definitely the pineapple that's in there. So, you know, like pineapple orange juice when you get that, like the dole stuff. Yeah.

Then you taste that little, like, almost like a pucker of a tartness at the end. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, yeah, and then they said golden rum-soaked raisins.

I don't really feel like I'm getting that. I don't know. Like, I think of raisins in beer and I think of like a trail mix, almost like a trail beer, something that's like coats and hearty.

Yes. Like, the beer we had during the fall, that was like a trail mix beer. Yeah.

Can't remember what that was. But anyways. Yeah, it's good.

Yeah. Not disappointed. We got, yeah, so opening ceremonies on, and then we ended up doing some quesadilla.

So, we were going to do all kinds of French stuff and we decided to go. We didn't even do quesadillas. I ended up rolling them and making those taquitos.

Oh, you made it like a taquito. That's right. Yeah, that was fun though.

Mm-hmm. And then we just kind of, what did we do? Just some beer from the fridge? I think we just- I don't think we did anything special. No, we didn't.

We talked about doing like French cocktails and we're like, eh, nothing looked appealing. And here's the hard thing too, is at the end of the week, it's a Friday and I'm exhausted. You know, it's a lot of brain drain and we're just so busy doing a million things that I feel like we start at the beginning of the week going, let's do all this cool stuff and then by the closer and closer and closer it got to the end of the week, we're like, all right, how can we make this even simpler? Right.

So. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So then, yeah, the Olympics, we got together on Saturday. Saturday, the weather was not expected to be that great for Saturday.

The big thing that we had on the plate was the Lancaster Renaissance Street Fair. We had fun with it though, as far as we didn't spend a whole lot of time down there because the skies decided to open up and just cause all kinds of hell. It was my first time dressing up.

Yeah. Yeah. And you look great.

Yeah. So that was fun. Yeah.

I liked being able to put on a costume. Yeah. I mean, you know, in 20 years of live action role playing and medieval reenactments and I was like, let me see what I have in the basement.

And I had to order something off Amazon. Right. Right.

Because I did not have anything in the basement. But yeah, it came out great. We went down.

It happened to be National Mead Day, right? Yep. It was National Mead. So yeah, it would be interesting because we had like three things in a row.

Thursday was National IPA Day. Friday was International Beer Day. And then Saturday was National Mead Day.

So yeah, we tried to enjoy some fun. It was cool to be like International Beer Day. And I feel like we, I think we played around with a couple of internationals, right? We did.

I tried something I didn't like. Yep. I remember.

Oh, yeah. That was the first one we opened. It was like a Belgium.

What was that? Well, it was a Trappist Whitbeer. So different. It's a little different than like an American made Belgian Whitbeer.

So this was from a trapezoid in Belgium. So it was definitely different. I'm open to try everything, but I was not a fan.

That did not resonate. But yeah, we hit a little international stuff on Friday. Yeah, Saturday, get to get down to the Renaissance Street Fair.

The weather just was not going to cooperate. We can definitely give some flowers out to a couple of places. I mean, obviously Lily Bell, which is right there on the main drag.

We had some great meads. Actually, I'm going to pull up the flavors because I can't. I can remember the names.

Yeah, the hops and honey. There was a Hawaiian themed one. I cannot remember the name of that to save my life right now because it was.

That's because you're not even going to be able to say it. No, because yeah, I was even having trouble saying it when we first got it. Because she corrected you, I remember.

Yeah, and the funniest thing while you're looking that up there, the funniest thing was that the battle for the pickle jar because they were doing Nashville hot chicken. Oh my gosh, that was hilarious. And they couldn't open the big pickle jar.

So it was almost turning into a like everybody there who could open the pickle jar. Yeah, everyone was coming over and trying. And it was the chick behind the bar that ended up doing it.

Yeah, and then everybody was like, oh, we loosened it for you. We had Red Wedding. That was the other one we had.

Oh, Red Wedding. Yeah, the House of Dragon themed one. Or no, it was Game of Thrones.

Game of Thrones. Yeah, but all three of those were great choices. I had no complaints about any of them.

You're looking for that Hawaiian one still? Yeah, it's not on here. Well, it was something like... The Red Wedding is in here. It says, light spring whey honey with red raspberries, rose hips, hibiscus, dry, crisp, refreshing.

Okay. Honey and hops. Western York wildflower honey and citra hops make this crisp, citrusy, and refreshing mead our original flagship.

Okay. And then... I don't see... Maybe it was something that was newer and they just haven't updated it. Because it's definitely not listed here.

I remember it was a Hawaiian word and it started with an M and I couldn't pronounce it to save my life. But yeah, all three were fantastic. Yeah, it was good.

I was really happy. I was like, ooh, we picked three really, really good ones. Barrel and Brine was there and they were serving pickle on a stick.

Or no, they called them Pickle Swords? Is that what they were calling them? I don't know. All I know is when I was a kid it was the last time that I went to a big renaissance fair and I told Jay there was this big bucket like a barrel like an actual wooden barrel which they probably had an insert in but I just remember it being a big, huge barrel taller than me because I was a kid and this guy would take out these giant pickles and the pickle would be bigger than my hand and I would just be happy like a child with a popsicle eating this pickle while I walked around. And then you had a pickle on a big old skewer and that was the owner of Barrel and Brine who was doing that so you had a lot of fun doing that.

Yeah, there was a funny picture that Jay took of me that he posted online. I'll post it in the group because I still needed to do a post on this. It's so funny because when I feel like a kid I feel like that's when Jay grabs pictures of me somehow looking like a child a 46-year-old child excited to eat a giant pickle in a fun costume.

All kinds of fun things and the joy on your face that comes with some of the things you get to do. Right, because when they remind you of being a kid you feel like young again. I don't know.

The simple things are what make us all the happiest, right? We found a vegan dessert place. So we passed this bakery and it literally says plant-based. We walked past it. 

I thought that's what it said and I looked at Jay and I said I think that said plant-based. Turn around go in most certainly was. So we walk in and there's all this stuff in the whatever the case the cooler case in the front or whatever. 

Cakes and cookies and all sorts of stuff and she was like they have gluten-free and whatever so she was like what can I help you look for and I said well I have to have dairy-free and she was like you can have anything that you want and I was like what? There is never a place. So I'm the person who goes to the ice cream shop and hopes that they have some sort of lactose free vegan non-dairy option which is not always a thing or you're like it's not the flavor you really want but you only have the one or two options you know if they even have such a thing like you know we were just at an ice cream place two weeks ago in Williamsville we did the whatever was that the craft show that they had and like the garden walk and whatever and we were down there with our friends it was a hot hot Saturday long weekend bake shop that's what it was called. Oh okay.

Yeah so we stopped for ice cream and that was the thing is there was two flavors that were vegan and I just happened to not like either of the two flavors so you know sometimes it's like it's a bummer so when you walk into a place and she's like anything you would like it's all non-dairy I felt like I was in heaven I was in bakery heaven The skies open up So I got a cake it was like an earl grey earl grey tea and blueberry Oh my gosh it was so good we got a stuffed cookie oreo so it was an oreo in the center with like this chocolate chip cookie kind of cake thing dipped in sprinkles and then a strawberry cheesecake yes and then two kitchen sink cookies which were literally just a whole bunch of stuff just put all this crap in there pretzels, peanuts marshmallows, chocolate chips and it's a chocolate cookie in a dark chocolate cookie and it was just crazy all of it was very very good so which is also the thing when you have to have non-dairy or vegan is sometimes it takes away from the flavor and it no longer tastes like cheesecake it no longer tastes like cake it no longer tastes like a good moist delicious cookie so yeah props to them it was awesome and if you bring your own containers she gives you a discount yeah that's good to know it was called Long Weekend Bake Shop it's right there in the main part of Lancaster yeah just great little shop definitely go back oh for sure with my container get that discount great yeah yeah we finished up there I mean we didn't again we didn't spend a whole lot of time down there we did talk to the stilts guy there for a few minutes got a picture with him we walked very quickly to see all the booths yeah cause I mean when that rain came in that was it it was shocking it was sprinkling then the rain came down real hard thunder lightning we went in to have some mead that's when we stepped into Lily Bell and then it cleared up just a little bit we finished kind of walking around and then it was it just was pouring so yeah it was unfortunate I mean then we you know the good thing is when we plan things we tend to have the ability to plan on the fly so it's like oh yeah I don't feel like being in the rain in a medieval outfit all day so we go home change and go drink beer right cause what else should you do on a rainy day so yeah we changed and we reconvened and then we drove out to Mortalis on Niagara Street so we which Niagara Street you know took their whooping today people who are listening to this we had an EF1 tornado that touched down in the city of Buffalo that was not fun no not fun where can you live where you don't get a tornado anymore nowhere? Alaska? I don't know that was just crazy when they had said that and they were talking about the damage and I'm like oh you know some trees got knocked over nope whole roofs taken off of buildings cars flipped over crushed there's a lot of car damage from just trees and debris and whatever Buffalo is like the new tornado alley we've had three tornadoes in the last month including one that just today touched down in the city so where can I move to I don't want natural disasters not fun but yeah so yeah Mortalis we went out there yeah and then I was going to bring up the list of goodies that we had there cause again I love the fact that that Mortalis has their beer list with their full descriptions on the website and I would say like my winner for the weekend came from there ok well we're going to be giving out some medals in a minute so you got a sneak peak of the fact that I think the gold medal is going to come out of Mortalis Brewing here then where is my beer list here it is and on the draft menu so we ended up having the Apollo Pale Ale so it's American Pale Ale that is Citrus, Melon, Passion Fruit Grapefruit and that was hopped with Citra, Mosaic and Galaxy and we found out how much we enjoy Citra hopped beers yes because on our sit around the house watching the Olympics beer drinking that's when we had what was that Cone yes from Zero Gravity Brewing and it was just Citra and it was awesome and it reminded me of Double Dan Citra from War Horse which I really like so I'm hoping they're going to do that again sometime down the road here so we ended up having that which was good we also had the Athena Peach oh that was real good that was a double IPA Chinook hops then it was a Westie so it was a little dank I just loved all that peach flavor let's see here that was the thing was they do their strictly on peach puree and you can tell because it is peachy and delicious it is peachy delicious peachy unquote it was really good though the Yakima Blend IPA it's an imperial so it was a little more bitey that one was about 8.5 oh is that what you had that was the double IPA Yakima Chief hops that had Citra, Simcoe Mosaic then they dry hopped it and then you get more tropical and berry which I really liked it was different something that you just don't get anywhere and then the one that we had earlier today recording it's Monday's Wool Monday so we sat on the porch while the rain was finishing up here now it's finally not raining until later tonight and then we ended up having the Tears of the Goddess Carrot Cake well that was mostly because when we were looking in the cooler I was like oh this looks really good but then you just never know and then Jay says that could be too sweet and then we saw it on the menu which somehow I missed it the first time around on the menu but I think because I saw peach the great thing about going to Mortella's is if you want to taste something he said let me pour you some I tasted it and I was like well you may as well put that on the bill cause I'll also take that four pack home thank goodness they hadn't run the card yet Sour IPA Tears of the Goddess series of beers, a blend of tart fruit flavor, milk sugar hops and then this version is partnered with Cheesy Eddie's and they use one of the most iconic carrot cakes in the area referring to the Finger Lakes of course and then you've got cream cheese frosting, mountains of cake carrot puree and spices that blend together for a classic dessert and it tastes like carrot cake like legit you can taste you're eating carrot cake and you can even taste the cream cheese frosting that was the big thing for me the cream cheese frosting flavor it's crazy but it's not overly sweet which is great because carrot cake is not a sweet cake right cause you got like the all spice you got like kind of like that spices with the shredded carrots and the raisins you know whatever so you have like kind of a more savory cake with the like cream cheese frosting which isn't overly like sweet frosting for me at least I feel like it's not right cause your sweets are like your butter creams and stuff like that for me are like the sweeter stuff but yeah I don't know home run nice it was awesome that's great yeah we finished up at Mortalis we were watching a little the Olympics the live stuff that they had going on we ended up having another beer just because of that I was like you know what I think I'm just gonna get one more which is I think we shared the Apollo yeah so what was one of the swim cause we wanted to watch the medley one the men's and women's mixed yes they had that on and oh we watched the runs I don't know we were just sitting there watching whatever was coming on instead of watching it on the prime time later the stuff was obviously then live which you never get the chance to watch because you're usually working right and then by the time prime time comes around they've got it all edited and chopped up so that's why I was like oh we're just watching they have like all the big screens in there too so that was cool yeah we finished up at Mortalis we went down the hill to sad boys now I should say the reason I'm doing this because there's a couple of places I had to jump to because anybody who knows the New York state beer app where you can earn points with check ins there's over 500 breweries in the state of New York and you can check in and get points and those points you could you know there's a big old fancy leader board there but there's also the opportunity to earn like merchandise that you just can't get on a website so it's just unique stuff well because New York state has ended the funding for the empire state trail or how should I say empire state beer trail portion of the app then that means that that's going to sunset on at the end of the year and I have 8 points that I need to get well I had I needed 10 now I need 8 and so I gotta get so between this weekend this past weekend and next weekend I should be able to like pretty much finish it up yeah with the plans that are in place so yeah so once they sunset that then the main app is going to stay but just the empire beer portion of it is going to go away which we will have to still talk about on our trip to Syracuse but we actually walked the empire state trail and hit tons of breweries up through that trail which was really neat to do that was very exciting so yeah we go down to sad boys because that was one of the ones we had to check off of the empire which is surprising because we've been there so many times this is what was I was laughing about is all these places it's not our first visit for you to check off this list right so is you just forgetting to do your like check-in button right that's all you gotta do is just press a button there you hit the stamp button and then confirm it and then yeah for whatever reason I just never done it but you know I mean two-time you know two-time friends of the podcast sad boys brewing so we had a conversation with them and that was good to catch up a little too while we had a beer and it was funny because I also had a peach beer there yes you did it's peach season for sure yeah and I had their Mexican light which was which you know like oh no it was a margarita sour not a Mexican light yeah which that was good because they brewed that special for um what was he talking about they did a fundraiser yeah event oh my gosh and I forgot right I just blanked for whatever yeah I blanked on it but anyways it was brewed for a fundraiser yeah and it's really good you know a hint of salt yeah I liked that perfect mix of lime and it was really good it had and you could almost get like the tequila flavor off of it the way they put it together it was really good yeah we had a lot of we had a lot of fun with that and you know always good conversation going down there where did we go after well then I was starving and I wanted a burger which shocked you because I never ever ever say you know what I feel like a burger so as soon as Jay heard that he was like oh we're going for a burger write this down because I never hear you say mark this day I want a burger so um yeah so we ended up going to Mr. Sizzles yep that's both of our first times going to Mr. Sizzles yeah so interesting that this little corner place you walk in you just order it kind of it reminded me a little bit of like a little bit of fudruckers do you remember that from back in the day fudruckers yeah because you ordered your food nobody waitressed like your food for you you just ordered it right and then you went and got it when it was ready and then there was a bar yeah they gave it a little disc that buzzed yeah to come pick up your food and then they have a full bar there so you could either sit at the bar or you could sit at like one of the tables in the you want to call it like family friendly area of the other side of the restaurant right right so yeah yep but it was good it was really really good what did you end up having um I had the one that was like a barbecue and mayo like a spicy barbecue mixed with mayo and it had that was like the um was like a cowboy yeah I don't remember what it was called but yeah like it was cowboy sauce I don't know what the thing was called and then I had like sauteed onions and the burger patty and uh something else oh