BREWniversity: The Bottle Share

I got invited to my first official bottle share. Now the Barons and I have often shared bottles with each other, but the closest thing we've ever done to a true bottle share was our Vertical Epic party. So that begs the question, what is a bottle share?

We all learned that sharing is caring in preschool, but this is a little bit more specific than that. A bottle share is when you get a few people together and everyone brings bottle of beer that they want to drink and you pass them around so everyone gets a taste. Normally it's something that's hard to find, so you are letting other people have the opportunity to try something they normally wouldn't be able to have. There really isn't a better opportunity to get to try this many unique beers other than a festival.

It's not necessary, but it's cool if you work up a theme to the party. Having all the Stone Vertical Epic beers gets people interested. This bottle share was for a Dark Lord vertical doing 6 years of the insanely good RIS.  Parker, a big time beer collector, trader and connoisseur, on the southside was hosting.

Since this was my first bottle share,  I was nervous about what to bring. When someone is as generous as Parker was, you want to make sure that you bring something that others will be excited about.

Here are some pro tips when trying to figure out what beers to bring:

1. The harder it is to find the beer the more people will get excited about it
2. Look at the age on the beer, the older it gets the harder it is to find, see rule one
3. People get jacked up about beers from other markets, see rule one
4. Variants are everyone's favorites! Go for something that has an awesome or crazy twist
5. Look for anything that has been in a barrel, barrels are good!

General tips:

1. Bring tasting glasses, or make sure they are provided because it'd be weird if we were all just swigging it straight out of the bottle.
2. Bring bottled water to cleanse your pallet and keep you hydrated
3. Plan for a DD, you are probably going to be ripped
4. Have a spot to showcase your graveyard, because everyone wants pics
5. Have fun. My favorite moment was when someone passed around the "Grand Cru" which was a bit of everything we drank for the night

I had a great time and am pumped to do another one.