It’s Tuesday and we have to get off our collective asses and figure out where we are going to meet so we can put faces to internet handles/names…. and for you guys to buy me many drinks.

Here is what I see our options are:

Our prospective waitstaff

Tilted Kilt

353 N SHORE DR
PITTSBURGH, PA 15212

 Northshore RiverPros: Women servers almost unclothed (see above); close to Heinz

Cons: Small side area to overflow into – but it is covered in case of rain.

Tilted Kilt Bar

Bettis Bar and Grill

393 N SHORE DR
PITTSBURGH, PA 15212
(412) 224-6287

Pros: Has a big outdoor area that we can all meet in if the main bar is too crowded; short walk to Heinz.

Cons; Gets very crowded

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First off, the semi-official brewery of Pitt Blather is opening a new branch this weekend. Voodoo Brewery is opening another brewpub, Voodoo Homestead.

Voodoo Homestead — not a brewery or brewpub, but an unusual satellite pub selling just Voodoo brews — will open in a big chunk of the first floor of the former Homestead municipal building and fire station on East Ninth Avenue at Amity Street. The more-than-a-century-old, three-story building had been vacant for two decades when the borough approved selling it to Voodoo for $8,500 this past summer.

Since that time, the Voodoo crew has worked non-stop filling containers and containers with refuse, with a lot of that hard, dirty work being performed for free by volunteers, some of whom flew from distant cities to chip in.

Others volunteered to help decorate the decrepit but beautifully-boned building, gracing the vaulted ceiling with fanciful chalk artworks and colorfully painting the interior sides of two massive roll-up doors.

That’s why this weekend’s public opening was proceeded by a party for those volunteers, whose names are written in chalk behind the old-metal-barn-roofing-clad, 24-foot-long concrete-topped bar, right next to the chalked list of the beers that will be available to drink on premises or take home in growlers.

The article also gets into some of the lunacy of Pennsylvania liquor laws with the hoops Voodoo has to jump through for this. I realize every state is insane in their own unique ways with liquor laws, but Pennsylvania is a special kind of crazy.

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Last year, Curt and Voodoo Brewery debuted their HTP beer. That was some really good stuff.

In the last year, Voodoo has had some significant growth. Their beers are showing up in more places (but not in Ohio, dammit).

This Friday kicks off Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week. Voodoo is taking part, and they have reworked HTP to the new version H2P. I’ll let Curt explain:

H2P is a revamped iteration of the HTP IPA. For H2P this year I changed the recipe from the previous batches, along with the hops and hop schedule.

The past two batches featured Zythos and 7 C’s opposite Simcoe. This year and in the future, it will be a single-hop Simcoe IPA.

Technically a different beer, but the soul of it is still the same. We are calling this H2P going forward. As a former Pitt student, I know the Pitt faithful use HTP and H2P interchangeably, so it seemed fitting to change the “T” to a “2” for version 2.0. The H2P was inspired by the IPAs I fell in love with in California and deepened my college experience in South Oakland.

H2P is a 8.0% west coast-style IPA brewed with four kinds of malted barley and a ridiculous amount of Simcoe hops with five kettle additions and two dry hops. The nose of the beer is rich in pine and fruit notes, with hints passion fruit, apricot, along with woodsy and floral undertones. Medium bodied, this beer starts with a mildly bitter taste that gives way to the pine and fruit notes found in the nose on the back end. H2P is a bright and crisp IPA that was designed to be highly drinkable, exceedingly flavorful and aromatic, but without being abrasively bitter. As production allows, we hope to continue to provide this beer to the Pittsburgh market and the Pitt faithful each year for Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week.

Curt has informed me that in addition to being on tap at Voodoo Brewery for about 2 weeks, H2P will be available in Pittsburgh at the following locations during Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week.

Oakland:
Mad Mex
Fuel and Fuddle
The Porch at Schenley

East Liberty:
Kelly’s

New Kensington:
House of 1000 Beers

South Side:
Carson Street Deli

Looks like I’m making a run to Meadville this weekend.

Over the years I’ve made no secret of my love of good beer. Along with bourbon, Scotch, and assorted other spirits. This past summer, after years of whining about wanting to do it, I finally started doing some homebrewing. I’m enjoying it, and now engaging in the predictable lament of not having enough time to do it as often as I would like. Brewing has a fair amount of gap. Time to idly daydream while waiting for the next step. There’s plenty of time to fantasize about doing it fulltime. Trying to make a living at it. Even the crappiest homebrewer has those daydreams.

One of the readers — usd121 — is actually living that dream. He is the head brewer at Voodoo Brewery in Meadville, PA.

Curt is debuting his first beer on Thursday. It is an IPA named HTP.

For those that can’t figure out the acronym, that’s Hail To Pitt.

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If you live in the Philly area and/or are planning to go to the Pitt-Nova game on Saturday, you need to go to the Official Pitt Alumni Game Watch at Kelly’s. Or at least stop by and have a beer.

Normally I don’t go out of my way to promote these, but I have to make an exception when the Nova Blog is treating this as a treasonous act. Apparently the fact that the owner is a Nova alum makes it worse. The bar, also happens to be the closest bar to the campus, so by extension to the Pavilion.

Show up, take over the place, and make the economic impact that can only make it worse for the Nova kids.

Apparently.

A few weeks ago, Penn State was spinning that Joe Paterno had missed significant alumni functions because of a bad reaction to some medicine.

West Virginia has determined that this is the way to go to explain Bob Huggins and 7 broken ribs in Vegas.

West Virginia University basketball Coach Bob Huggins had taken medication on an empty stomach before he was injured in a fall in his hotel room last week, Athletic Director Oliver Luck said Thursday.

“He said he kind of stood up quickly and apparently had a bit of lightheadedness and tripped – and I don’t know if he tripped, per se – but he fell down and hit the edge of a table,” said Luck, who has had frequent contact with Huggins since his coach was hurt one week ago in Las Vegas.

Medicine? Medicine for what?

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Has it really been more than 5 years since Huggins was pulled over and video taped drunk?

So, he’s in Vegas for AAU tournaments/recruiting and people are supposed to believe this?

Drew Payne, vice chair of WVU’s Board of Governors and a friend of Huggins and members of his family, spoke with Larry and said Huggins was injured while he packed and readied to leave for the airport and a flight to another AAU event.

“He’d been to a couple of games Friday and went back to the hotel room and he tripped on something and fell and hit a table going down,” Payne said. “He messed up his ribs and maybe even hit his head a little bit. But it was around 4 o’clock in the afternoon and he had to call his brother for help. He was in pretty bad pain and couldn’t really move.”

In a Vegas hotel room?

Last year it was black eye(s?) from “walking into a door.” In May 2008 he “tripped” getting off of a plane in North Carolina. This year he “tripped on something.”

Uh-huh.

The kicker to me, is that the first concern upon this getting out was to make sure recruits were aware that he didn’t have a hear attack or heart related incident.

I guess it’s better to let the impression remain that the coach is a clumsy drunk rather than one with a heart problem.*

• (*Johnny Majors may or may not concur with this statement.)

I’ve tried to not get into this too much, but I think something needs to be said. By now, I’m sure a lot of you have seen the video from Saturday’s PSU-OSU game in Happy Valley. At a tailgate party, Penn Staters throw beer cans and shout obscenities at Buckeye fans. The video made it’s way to Youtube but has now been taken down, probably by the kid who put it up in order to attempt to stay clear of any charges. It’s too late.

First thought: This is a perfect example to throw back at Penn State’s face. Look at their fans, acting classless and stupid, throwing things at opposing fans.

Second thought: Take a step back and look at it a little bit more. There’s no way this represents their entire fan base. Sure they might all be elitists, but they can’t all be the jerks the video showed them to be. When I want to see something involving Penn State, I always turn to Black Shoe Diaries. In Mike’s post with the original video:

This is Penn State, bitch.

No, son, that is not Penn State.

To the Ohio State fans featured in the video, I’m sorry. On behalf of the 99% of Penn State fans that are nice people capable of showing respect to opposing fans, I’m sorry. This is not the Penn State I know and love.

See, they’re not all bad people.

One point that many people noticed, though, was that the cameraman (who, if you saw the video, was worthy of a sucker punch to the jaw) mentioned his beer-slinging friend was from Pittsburgh. It didn’t necessarily mean he was a Pitt student though.

Today (via Mondesi’s House), I saw a link to an update on the story: the kid you see below is, in fact, a Pitt student.

Oh no! A Pitt student did this! Now there’s someone to blame! Whoa, hold on…

A Pitt fan did this? No, not a Pitt fan, but a Pitt student. If he is a Pitt fan, there’s no way in hell he’s up in Happy Valley helping Penn Staters to throw beer at innocent OSU fans. Also, this does not let the other 100 PSU fans involved get off the hook. A lot of them threw beer (but most completely missed) and all should be charged. Hopefully when this is all over, that Pitt student is no longer a student at our school.

It’s been way too serious here, the last couple of days. That has to stop.

If you aren’t reading Every Day Should Be Saturday, at this point, I don’t know what to tell you. This, though, is the must read as the ladies from Ladies Dot Dot Dot help choose appropriate drinks before watching your favorite team. Orson offered up the Morellitini for Penn State, but here’s the Pitt entry.

Clare – Imp ‘n’ Arn (Pitt)
No Pitt Panther tailgate is complete without three things: 1) Portable beer pong table, 2) ‘DVE blasting from your car speakers, and 3) Imp ‘n’ Arn. The Imp ‘n’ Arn, in its classical form, is a shot of Imperial whiskey chased with a pint of Iron City, but the gameday Imp ‘n’ Arn doesn’t stand on ceremony. It’s a slug of warm rotgut whiskey from the plastic 750 ml bottle your buddy’s been carrying around for three hours in his pants pocket and a red Solo cup of whatever macrobrew you’ve got in the keg. It doesn’t taste good, but it gets you riled up for THE WANNSTACHE.

Friendly: 2
Fiesty: 7
Compliant: 5

Here’s the lead-in for the Hoopies:

OK, Mountaineers fans, let’s clear the carburetor off the kitchen table and start making drinks. We’ll limit the ingredients to things you probably have around the house: grain alcohol, buckshot, a handful of Sudafed, and a block of Velveeta.

Today’s must read.

So the Penguins won in an overtime/shootout thriller last night. Whatta great game. Sorry, that’s honestly the last time I’ll ever mention the Pens on this blog.

On the other hand, the last time Antonio Bryant was mentioned on this blog was after his little reckless/drunken driving ordeal when he was clocking at over 100 on a freeway in his Lamborghini.

Now, he’s been cut by the Niners.

The 49ers hoped they achieved addition by subtraction Thursday with the release of troubled wide receiver Antonio Bryant.

Bryant was waived after a meeting last weekend in Indianapolis with 49ers coach Mike Nolan. Bryant, according to his financial adviser Chuck Sanders, asked for a larger role in the offense next season. Nolan said that because Bryant is in the middle of a four-game suspension and possibly faces jail time stemming from his Nov. 20 arrest on reckless driving and resisting arrest charges, that he couldn’t depend on Bryant.

I guess he still won’t be able to afford a belt.

Alright boys and girls, Chas has sent an SOS. All I know is he is somewhere in a ditch the Ohio wilderness without internet. Let’s hope Maurice Claret hasn’t gotten him.

I’m Keith and I’ll be your substitute blogger today and tomorrow. I am a recent Pitt graduate now living in Maine, writing sports for a few local newspapers.

Unfortunately, I was only planning on piloting this ship tomorrow, so I am a little behind today. I’ll have a media wrap posted soon.

Any tips, updates or complaints, feel free to comment or shoot an e-mail to keith.wehmeyer@gmail.com.

I know everyone loves to take advantage of substitutes, but behave because Chas will be back and ready to lay down the law on Saturday.

Far be it from me to mock another school for having a decrepit football program, but…

Here’s how bad it is for Kentucky? Jim Beam, a personal favorite choice of mine, doesn’t even bother providing a “football” screen saver for the state in which the bourbon lives. Even more insulting, they provide one for Tennessee (no, they don’t have one for Pitt, but then they don’t have any for PSU, ND, and a host of others). Limited choices really — Florida, Texas, Ohio (St.), Michigan, and Georgia.
Just seems sad. Very sad.