Trixie and I arrived around noon on Thursday. Jim got things going by announcing, "Wait til you guys taste my balls." He set up his tent in the woods. It's the second tent he pitched that day.
There were fewer CRABS members (heh heh, I said "members") this year, as most of the gay ones stayed home, but you wouldn't know it because the twenty or so of us who were there managed to piss off everyone else in the traditional CRABS manner. Yay us. We also supplied lots of beer on CRABS Hill and at Keg Row. Brian had a number of funky beers at his Camp du Saison. Jeff's beers, Irrational Bohemian and Jean Claude Van Damme That's Good Ale, had great artwork on the tap handles. Grover's schwarzbier said, "May the schwarzbier with you." That's pretty clever considering that they had to burn down his school to get him out of the third grade.
By Saturday there were 38 beers and one root beer at Keg Row. A lot of commercial breweries were represented, including Brewers Art, Franklins, Victory, Anchor, Gordon Biersch, Dogfish Head, Vintage 50 (whose brewmaster is BURPer Bill Madden), Front Street, Lagunitas, Clipper City, Yards, Wharf Rat, and Roy Pitz. Duclaw provided Hellrazer and Mysterium, the latter of which tasted heavily of chamomile (I prefer chamoltoe).
Speaking of Mysterium, Bo wore a Mysterium T-shirt, whose slogan he let me change:
By Thursday night the lower part of the field was packed, which is understandable since CRABS occupied the upper part. We can clear a field like a Yoko Ono album.
A guy named Buck, a local who mows the field, provided some wild game dishes on Thursday night, including rabbit with cabbage teriyaki, venison meatloaf, brook trout and rainbow trout. I asked him if he had any crotch cricket stew. He found me about as funny as rectal prolapse.
When it got dark I lost track of the CRABS guys after they disappeared into the woods with a bucket of K-Y, so Trixie and I headed down to the campfire and I sang along as Chuck and his son Charles played music. I don't want to say I was bad but people were looking for my Medic Alert bracelet.
Friday morning was beautiful. Trixie, Marty, Jenny and I went to Rocky Gap Park for a shit, shave and shower. When we returned Trixie treated her hangover with bloody Marys and ibuprofen. After breakfast we went to Camp du Saison to drink some of Brian's funky beers, including his oak-aged Jonge Lambik, which he had in a firkin. Rob and Grover played "baseball": Rob pitched and Grover caught.
Except for a downpour in the afternoon and some rain the day before, each lasting maybe half an hour, the weather was absolutely perfect: 80s, not too humid, with a mixture of clouds and sun. People played croquet, volleyball and Frisbee. One guy flew kites. Jim and Grover sodomized each other. Also there was some Texas Hold 'Em, which I played for the first time. I did about as well as Janet Reno at the Miss America Pageant.
At around 5 PM Jim tapped a firkin of Twisted Kilt. But this was no ordinary Twisted Kilt. It was the first runnings. It had an original gravity over 1.100. Milhouse brewed 13 gallons of this "Way Heavy" at home. He also partook quite heartily from the firkin, as evidenced below.
After that we dug up some food that CRABS had buried in the woods in years past. Several people ate two-year-old pickles. Then came the 4-year-old sausages (insert NAMBLA joke here). Grover ate one first. Then Les put his wiener in Rob's mouth. Rob spit. Trixie didn't.
Then it was time for the quadrathlon, which Joel organized. It was a relay event in which each team carried a carboy full of water, siphoned some into bottles, capped them, uncapped them, poured them into cups, carried them back to the start, and chugged a beer. My team, Deep Throat, went first, and boy you should have seen me suck that hose. I then knew what Jim feels like at MASHOUT every year, except my ass didn't hurt. The carboy carrier from Team Tickler did an inadvertent somersault (that would be a great name for a rock band). Team Reacharound was the winner, with Cross Street Irregular Jay Spies winning the chug-off in a wonderful display of oral capacity. It made Jim pop his third tent.
Buck provided more wild animal fare: catfish stew and groundhog stew (from locally killed groundhogs). Speaking of wild animals, CRABS was in its usual form as we drank for the rest of the evening. I had a number of Belgians and funkies at Camp du Saison, including the Italian brewery Panil's Barriquée, a Flemish red. Included in the beers at CRABS Hill was an infected stout from Duclaw that I loved. Figures. They finally make a beer I like and it's a fucking accident. Joel added ambience by throwing crab shells and spaghetti at everyone. At least he kept his penis in his pants this time.
Saturday morning was gorgeous. Trixie and I went to Rocky Gap Park, then came back to drink all day. Saison Dupont started the day off nicely, then we visited several campsites and Keg Row. While down there, Bo told us the most difficult thing about brewing at Duclaw: telling your parents you're queer.
At lunchtime CRABS did a meatball cookoff, with Jeff, Joel, Milhouse, Jim and Les putting their succulent balls in people's mouths. Jim said he hadn't had a ball in his mouth he didn't like. Of course, he said that the night before. Les won the competition, but really, when you're tasting CRABS members' balls, everyone's a winner. Rob told me he hadn't tasted so many balls since he was a Boy Scout leader.
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After loading ourselves with all that trans-fatty goodness, we had our anal -- asscuse me, annual -- Big Beer Tasting. I probably didn't record them all but the beers I was able to capture were:
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Thanks to Les, Gary, Bo and Mark for helping with the food pairings. After the tasting we conducted ourselves in our usual classy manner. For example, Rob and a woman named Esther did belly shots out of Trixie's navel. It was the second woman I've seen do that to her.
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After the tasting a few of us went to the poker tent situated toward the lower end of the field and had some Green Flash Barleywine, 2003 Victory Old Horizontal, Arcadia Hop Mouth Double IPA, Victory Storm King, and Oskar Blues Old Chub (microbrew in a can). My liver is now suing me for assault and battery.
We then gorged ourselves at the Saturday night feast, which featured pulled pork, corn on the cob, and a million sides, salads and desserts. The winners of the two homebrew contests were announced; congrats to Will and Joel who took 3rd and 2nd in the Tropical Beers contest, Will with his pineapple/papaya/tangerine beer and Joel with his coconut hefeweizen. Also, CRABS won the pub quiz. We then spent the evening telling jokes and expelling noxious gases. Talk about asstrology. Speaking of which, someone brought a telescope and let everyone look through it. I got to see Uranus.
On Sunday we enjoyed the pancake breakfast featuring corn pancakes, blueberry pancakes, chocolate chip pancakes, eggs, juice, scrapple, and coffee. Mike shared saisons with me, Trixie, and a few other straights while the homos packed up and left. Marty, Jenny, Mike, Trixie and I hung out until the afternoon, enjoying the great weather, listening to music around the campfire pit, and visiting Keg Row one more time. Everyone enjoyed Trixie's legs and how they made an ass of themselves.
And so ended another great MASHOUT. A few quotes from the weekend worth mentioning: