Crawfish
at Second Street May 2003
It's 5:20 PM on a summer's Saturday afternoon - the perfect plan
for
Crawfish Boil 2003 is coming together. A dozen of us are gathering
at
Second Street Brewery. My wife is taking our minister's wife in her
little
Miata, I'm bringing my younger son [today's birthday boy], the older
son is
working at Don Taylor's [high school graduation day] and is coming
later
with his driving buddy, the buddy's parents and the minister are coming
separately, and Felicia's sister is already there with her husband.
Of
course, the sky is grey and the rain is coming down on Ray Tell &
company.
This seems to have cut the crowd.
As the door opens to 2nd Street, I'm greeted by a table that includes
Atom
Mashers Ilse Biel, Reiner Friedel and Brent Newman and a half dozen
of
their buddies. We have a wonderful and intense conversation. I learn
about a good beer bar in Dallas [Pulsed Power conference in June],
mention
the first annual Vancouver International Beer Event [VIBE], that I
plan to
attend and generally pump each other up on recent beers brewed, equipment
acquired, social events past and planned - the usual brewing palaver.
Somewhere in all the arrivals, we put together a [second] collection
of
chairs and tables for the even dozen of us and get orders in for pitchers
of Munich Lager, stout and ESB. The table was pretty well opposed
to the
hearty lager, leaving a lot for me to finish off. Their loss. I couldn't
put my palate on a single lager feature of this brew - It tasted a
lot like
a good, solid, robust ale - but, heck, I welcome this big lager to
the
magnificent half dozen beers on tap yesterday. I saw Jordy [misspelled?],
Rod's assistant brewer and asked her about recent brews. Apparently,
the
Schwarzbier was her most recent. We had that in April at our Brewers'
Dinner. [Rod - use this woman's talents or you'll lose her. Crying
in
your beer later ain't a-gonna bring her back.]
I got a chance to see Ray Tell on his way out. He's off to some dinner,
leaving the boiling of the mud bugs to other [capable, I trust] hands.
My
younger son is in heaven. He's claiming there's a different aquatic
critter that's found its way into the bag of crawdads. He thinks this
is
hilarious. We're looking for somebody with a bruise to heal. I'm putting
in a special request. Breaded is best, I think.
Most of my crowd opted for the non-mud-bug entries. Cowards. They
were
ordering other, Regular Menu delights. My Tennessee transplant friend
was
not forthcoming with the secret lore, so I had to figure out how to
eat the
little lobsters, by myself. Those claws are awfully hard to get meat
out
of. I'm thinking microscope and dissection kit next year. My transplanted
South Carolina buddies are having more success. I finally got my technique
down and plowed through a generous portion of the critters. I thought
this
year's batch was particularly good. The commemorative tee shirts were
a
welcome touch. Nice design [crawdads and 2nd Street logo], reasonable
price [$12], unique color [red with an orange tinge - crawdad color].
I
put one over my regular shirt and let her rip. Mine's on EBay as of
this
morning for big bucks.
I had a very good time this year. It was an afternoon of good company,
good food and good beer = great ingredients for a satisfying supper.
I'm
looking forward to next year. Kudos to Ray Tell and Second Street
for
making this happen six years running.
Evan Rose
roseandorth@earthlink.net
