About a month ago, the 15th of October to be exact, the BarBEERians had the first Great Growler fill. The entire premise of the event was to fill Steffen and my growler collection. One of the first things we started doing when we turned 21 was collecting growlers, because they really are the best way to get beer. There are a few reasons for this. First off, growlers have character and also serve as a sort of catalog of places you have been (although some of the growlers were brought to us as gifts). Growlers are also a great way to recycle. Here in Helena, glass is not the easiest thing to recycle, but if you save your growlers and just take them down to the brewery, voila! no more glass garbage! The only downside is, when then number of growlers you own gets up there, space does become an issue. Also, growlers do not keep well once opened, but this isn’t generally a problem because four pints of beer really isn’t that much for a couple of people to go through in an evening.

Anyway, I digress. Back to the Great Growler Fill! We took our growlers down the Blackfoot River Brewery, who generously opened their doors a little early for the event, and started getting them filled. It took slightly over two hours, during which time we drank our constitutional three pints; but when all was said and done, we left the brewery with 106 growlers totally over fifty gallons in beer. We had (and still have) a daunting task ahead of us: drinking them. For anyone out there who claims a growler will not last more than a week or two, I must politely disagree. If the growlers are full and well sealed (read: tightly capped) they will easily last a month. The beer may not taste quite the same since it ages a bit, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Just last night I opened a month old growler of the Single Malt IPA, and while it wasn’t as fresh as from the tap, it was still delicious. Some of the sediment had started to settle on the bottom of the growler, but that really doesn’t bother me to much.

All in all, the Great Growler Fill was a huge success, and an event I hope to continue in the future. We also used it as an opportunity to catalog all of our growlers, so look for a new page on the site with a list of our growlers and pictures of them coming in the next couple of weeks. For more pictures from our good friend Andrew Franks-Ongoy, visit here and here and use the password barbeerians!