Club XL Live

By name alone, this name could mean so many things, among them a few highly ambiguous double-entendres but those close to the Harrisburg area would know this to be a rather newish venue offering live music and baller club nightlife. Maybe I don't even need to mention the potentially sexual inferences to which this could refer, but if you're like me, your sense of humor can go dark all too quickly. Perverted minds will be perverted....yet I digress per usual.

If you've come this far, I trust you have come to become accustomed to little side notes and if you don't know me on a more personal level, you may not realize the internal struggle it has become not to type every single aside I have with myself in my little noggin before I hit that orange Publish button. I'm trying to be as concise as I am in my professional life but with more creative flair, I swear. It's a balance.

Where were we? Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Club XL - there we are. Reel it in. Reel.It.In.


Given the name, you'd assume it's going to offer live music, right? You would be correct, m'dear. I'd be meaning to check out this venue for months and with friends performing, I didn't have yet another excuse for being a recluse.

The venue is huge for the Harrisburg region and the beers on draft - while boasting a selection of local breweries, also had a few Oktoberfest brews in bottle which is what my palette had been craving due to marketing gimmicks limiting Oktoberfest and pumpkin brews strictly to September and October. As a consumer, I consider this effing rude; as someone who's studied marketing and business extensively (have the MBA degree to prove it), it's genius. Bastards all the same.

My drink of choice: Oktoberfest Weihenstephan  by Sierra Nevada which earned me three badges on Untappd: Cheers to Independence US Craft Breweries level 3, New Brew Thursday level 2, and Better Together level 2. If you're not familiar with leveling in Untappd, for every five check-ins of a particular "task," a new level of that task is earned. There are a wide variety of badges one can unlock - specific beer styles, venues, brewery original, etc. It's much like Pokemon in that it makes you "wanna catch 'em all" but all at your own volition.

The Oktoberfest season is my favorite beer season, though. While pumpkin beers have gained in popularity, quite possibly as a marketing ploy by markets wanting to cash in on the rise of the pumpkin spice basic girls' tastes, not all spooky season beers have the spices and pumpkin flavorings. Oktoberfest is wheaty and robust and, quite frankly, varies greatly brewery to brewery.

Oktoberfest brews are in a league of their own as much as the fruity brews and summer shandies. For me, it's also nostalgia as it was Sam Adams Oktoberfest which opened up my palatal horizons. As the first craft brew I had tasted and an October baby, I consider this a special time of year.

"Beer, it's the best damn drink in the world." -Jack Nicholson

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