The
strange object appeared to have fallen from space, hurtling through the air
before thrusting its staff into the earth like a Gold Rush speculator. It had
chains and a basket and a silver pole, and someone had affixed a bunch of
Captain Lawrence stickers to it.
Was it
space junk? The flag of a conquering Viking splinter group? Soviet spy gear,
perhaps?
“I don’t
know what it is,” says Andrew Hansen
from Bedford Hills, as he sipped the Grapefruit Pail, an American pale ale
brewed with grapefruits and dry hopped with peels. “I feel like I should.”
His pal,
Andrew Cascudo of West Hartford,
Connecticut, is pretty confident he can identify the foreign contraption. “Is
it for Frisbee golf?”
Indeed,
it is.
Cemented
into the beer patio’s lawn, the Frisbee golf target was given to the brewery by
the team it sponsors—“Team Captain Lawrence” competes in Frisbee golf tournaments
(instead of whacking a golf ball toward the hole, Frisbee golfers fling a disc at
a target) up and down the coast from October through April.
“It’s a
practice basket for putting,” says Bill
Newman of Yorktown, the team manager and, in his words, “keg rustler.”
“It’s a thank you gift to the brewery.”
Newman
says he may provide “loaner discs”—Frisbees you can borrow at the bar—so people
can practice their Frisbee golf stroke, and have a few laughs while doing so.
The practice
basket is the latest addition designed to make the Captain Lawrence tasting
room, and adjacent
Beer-friendly
diversions aside, some prefer simply dropping a blanket on the lawn somewhere
in the shade and hanging out, such as the growing crowd gathered to celebrate
the birthday of Ali Pierce of
Harrison. “I’ve got lots of friends and family coming,” says the birthday girl
happily.
The
group got together at the brewery for friend Henry Fanelli of Stamford’s birthday a few weeks ago, and had so
much fun they decided to come again. “It’s nice weather, so we figured we’d sit
and have a couple beers and a hot dog,” says Henry, who prefers the small batch
selections, which these days include the malty Baltic Porter and a German dunkelweiss
known as Rosa Pfefferkorn. “I try to sample those whenever I can—it’s nice to
see what they can do with beer.”
The
setting is perfect, but the two babies the group has brought—“future husband
and wife”, notes a woman in their party—don’t seem to be playing along. “They’re
both in bad moods,” says Henry.
Moods
are not an issue for the Vlad Gogish
party. Vlad, of White Plains, too is marking his birthday at the brewery—he’s
28, if you’re scoring at home, and celebrating with a lively batch of friends.
He was under the impression that Captain Lawrence still was not charging for
samples—the policy changed several weeks ago—but said he was fine paying a few
bucks to sample his favorite beers, which include the Liquid Gold Belgian-style
ale.
“Quality
beer speaks for itself,” he says.
Meanwhile,
the Andrews continue to eye the Frisbee golf target, as well as the bocce
court.
“I’m
used to playing bocce on a lawn or a gravel road,” says Andrew Cascudo as he
sips the Rosa Pfefferkorn (that sounds like a girl Dwight Schrute would fall in love with, doesn’t it?). “I never
played on a professional court before.”
The
toughest decisions at the brewery used to be deciding which beer to drink.
These days, it’s what game to play along with your beer, and we have Bill
Newman and his Frisbee putting basket, in part, to blame for that.
“It’s
another thing for people to do,” says Bill, “while having a beer sample.”
