Guest Post - Great Taste of the Midwest 2010

This just in from Dop, our roving heartland correspondent:

Great Taste of the Midwest 2010

Flashback to May 2nd, it's 3:30am on a Sunday morning in Madison, WI. It's cold, dark, and rainy, but our love of beer has brought us out to a grass lawn beside Steve's Liquor. However, we're not here to drink. In eight and a half hours, a limited number of tickets will go on sale for The Great Taste of the Midwest, an event that doesn't takeplace until August 14th.

Put on by the Madison Homebrewers and Tasters Guild, the Great Taste of the Midwest is a massive beer tasting event held every year at Olin Park. The list of participating brewers is so long that even if they only brought one style there'd be way too many to try in one afternoon. Take a look at this year's program (available online)... I dare you.

I'll admit I'm not the best beer reporter when it comes to an event this size. I always start out with good intentions, keeping track of the brews I've tried and my thoughts on them. In the end though, it's about the love of beer of all kinds and keeping track just seems like too much work.
There are a few that stand out in my mind though:

New Glarus: Unplugged, ABT
New Holland: Imperial Hatter IPA
Three Floyds: Longhaul

I also had an amazingly smooth and easy to drink lager, but let's face the facts, it's hard to remember when you're getting drunker by the minute and you've thrown away your program because it was too big to fit in your pocket.