Life has been crazy this past month (thanksgiving, finals, surgery etc….), and I failed to complete our DC/DE trip update… I’m sorry! I’ll pick up where I left off; Delaware!

I think this picture pretty well sums up what a great trip we’re having at this point :

I was definitely a little wary dragging my parents out to Delaware with us, especially seeing my mother doesn’t drink beer at ALL! But my fears were seemingly for nothing – she had a blast at the Dogfish Head Craft Brewery! She said that she finally has a better understanding of the process we go through at home, after the tour guide showed us Sam’s original rig that he used to brew on

The tour was kind of short because we were there the day they were installing 4 new brite tanks! Bummer for our tour length, but yay for increased production from about 70,000 bbl per year to about 100,000! Woot!!

We didn’t taste anything we hadn’t tried before, but we did get a brief  glimpse of Mr. Calagione We let him know how we feel about him too!

The next day we had a much more hands-on brewery experience when we went to visit our friend Joe at Evolution Craft brewing Co. in Delmar, DE. Joe competed in (and won) Brent’s round of Iron Brewer, so we were excited to meet up with him and exchange some homebrews, as well as take a look at the brewery.

We tasted a bunch of great beer, my favourite was the small beer they had made in order to offset the cost of their Imperial Stout that takes so long to age and get into the bottle – Yum!! Although the Jacques Au Lantern came in a close second – it topped the list of my fave fall seasonals this year, along with Southern Tier’s Pumking; great stuff!

The best thing about the day at Evolution was Joe indulging my inner beek geek! He was brewing up a batch of their delicious #3 IPA as we arrived, and the gracious host that he is, Joe let me do one of the hop additions!

My Mum was such a trooper, hours and hours of us three babbling on about beer, and she patiently sipped on her coke The things mothers will put up with enduring when they haven’t seen their kids for a year! Love you Mum!

Unfortunately this ends the Smith portion of the trip, as Mum & Dad had to make their way back west to Los Angeles to head back home to Oz. It was a fabulous trip and I was so glad to have them here for a month! Once a year is definitely not enough…