Geoff Roast
My most recent poster was a great project. The wife of everyones favorite Fat Heads manager commissioned me to do the invitation for said managers surprise birthday party. She wanted to do a Roast style party and I thought it would be appropriately obnoxious to do a caricature of Geoff. Anyone who knows him knows that he is quite a character so I had a lot to work with.

Iron City Bikes
I also recently decided to finally help out Bob with the bike shops website. With the help of Jacob’s web hosting skills and a little bit of love from Wordpress we were able to get the site up and running in just a few days. There’s still a bit of work to be done with it but they are just happy to have an updated site to help drive business. Take a look here.

Iron City Bikes Racing
I’ve also been hard at work trying to finalize all of the sponsorship contracts and jersey order for the 2010 season. Our latest sponsor deal to be worked out is with Magic Hat Brewery. They’ve come on board as our main beer sponsor/provider. We’ll be getting beer from them throughout the year to use in our fundraising events to help generate revenue.

Snowed In Black and Gold Sprints
Speaking of the race team and fund raising, the team and I are hard at work organizing our first event of the season. We’re going to be throwing another roller racing party at Over The Bar in January. I’m working on finalizing the poster for the event that will be printed by Commonwealth Press next week. There will be more information on the team site soon.  Here’s a little sneak peak of the poster:

I have some other projects brewing in the new year and maybe I’ll try and post updates about them. Keep an eye out for the printing of the Snowed In posters in the next week or two.

I realized Saturday morning that I had a full days worth of stuff to do to get ready for the bike team fundraiser that evening. We held the final Black & Gold Sprints that evening at Over The Bar Cafe in the southside. As a part of our sponsorship deal with Urban Velo, the team helped to organize a three race series to raise money for various expenses. Honestly, it was a lot of work to set-up so it was nice to get the final event finished. We had a less than excellent turn out of 21 racers, but considering the rainy conditions of the evening, I wasn’t particularly surprised.

On Sunday I finished moving the rest of Sarah’s furniture out of her old apartment in Bloomfield. Mark and Gus voluteered to help me out and Mark had even gotten a giant truck from his work. Sarah and I had already taken everything that we could fit in her car to the new house, so all that was left was furniture. There were only about 10 pieces to move, so we finished in about an hour. Of course, we went to Fat Head’s afterward to have a few beers and watch the first game of the Red Wings/Black Hawks series. 

I have a few things to wrap up at work this week before I head down to Maryland for my sister’s college graduation. Sarah and I will be driving down to my mom’s house on Tuesday evening, then we’ll all drive down to Salisbury on Wednesday morning. We’re all heading to a wine festival on Saturday, then heading back on Sunday afternoon. This will be the first time that the ENTIRE family has been together in about 6 years, so I’m sure I’ll have some tales to tell on Monday! In the meantime, check out my new “Schwat I did in ‘08″ set on Flickr.

Beer Camp: On Tour

The long awaited opening of the satellite home for Beer Camp, Fat Heads Brewery Cleveland, had its grand opening on Tuesday, April, 7th. As you might expect, a group of representatives was sent up to make sure that the new location was up to spec.

Sarah and I picked up Garrett bright and early on Tuesday morning. The weather was less than ideal: 30° and snowing… but that wasn’t going to stop us, we had craft beer to drink. We headed out to Cranberry to meet up with Mark (The Czar), who was driving the rest of the way to Cleveland. Once we got on the road towards our angry neighbor to the west the snow was off-and-on but the roads weren’t too icy. We saw a few wrecks along the way, but with Mark at the helm of the Crown Vic we didn’t have any problems. Hula Girl played a decided role in our safe passage.

After a brief layover at Starbucks, we headed over to bang on the door till they let us in. A few other Beer Campers had made the journey as well so we had acquired a small thirsty army. The staff easily caved to our demands.

Once we made it inside, we were greeted by some familiar faces. A few of the Pittsburgh employees were there to help with training and QC. Glenn (the owner) was there to show us around the place. Of course the first order of business was to find ourselves some bar stools at the massive new bar. We settled in front of the main taps with a good view of the beer list. On tap we found a rather impressive list for the opening day, featuring 9 Fat Heads original beers and 21 “guest” beers, even an original root beer.

The brewery is located up front and the smell of beer ingredients wafted through the air. The brewer Matt, who was formerly the brewmaster at Rocky River, showed us around the brewing area. Basically brewing looks like a lot of sacks of ingredients and giant silver containers. Fortunately, those containers create the delicious beverages that we had traveled there to enjoy.

I started with the Head Hunter IPA. Billed as an aggressively hopped west coast IPA, the Head Hunter did not disappoint. At 6.2% ABV and 77 IBUs it had a floral hopped flavor with a mellow, but full-bodied aftertaste.

The Cleveland menu had a few items that we can’t get in Pittsburgh due to the addition of a smoker and a wood fired pizza oven. Most of the menu is similar to the hometown version with a few location-based name changes. I decided that it was only proper for me to try out one of the new menu items since I don’t think I’ll make my way to Cleveland too often. I went for a smoked platter special which consisted of one choice of meat (up to 4 choices if one were so inclined) and was served with three sauces and two sides. I’ll say that it wasn’t bad, but I probably would have enjoyed one of my usual sandwhiches a bit more. Overall, the opening day for the rookie kitchen was not bad at all.

After a few more fantastic original beers (especially the Voodoo Monkey Stout) the crew decided that it was time to head back to the ‘burgh. We gathered our bills, said our goodbyes and hit the road. Fortunately, the weathered had cleared and we were about a half hour behind our “schedule.” About two minutes after we got on the highway, the Crown Vic started steering us towards Strongville. This, of course, is the home of The Brew Kettle. The Brew Kettle is a brew-on-premise pub that is known throughout Cleveland for it’s great beer and bbq. After a quick beer at the Kettle, we were back on the road. The trip back from Cleveland always seems quicker than the trip out.

I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a cold, snowy day in April than at the Fat Heads Brewey & Saloon in Cleveland. I hope that the locals in Cleveland enjoy Fat Heads as much as we do in Pittsburgh. Who knows, we might even have to drive back up there to taste the new creations on tap.

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