Beer in the new era

god, thanks but no thanks!

from that list i'd drink some sculpin, fresh jever, or those innis & gunn brews

I actually would not pay that much for a beer in a bar. If I bought a beer like that it would have to be in a store and I could then stash it away for awhile.

from that list, Founders Centennial would be my shit

Trader Joe's by me had variety 12-packs of Butternuts beers recently (makers of unfortunately named/marketed beers such as Pork Slap Pale Ale). It has the pale ale, the stout, the ipa and the weissebier, all of which were surprisingly good. They brew on the milder side with the PA and IPA, which I prefer, and even the IPA had a pretty clean, non-bitter aftertaste.

seeeeee, i like the founders, but it's something i can get at the deli around the corner so i'm not inna $6/pint zone for it. I haven't had any of CAD's recommendations, Jever aside, so maybe I will try the Sculpin & the Innis & Gunn brews.

I hate Utopias last year at a barrel aged beer fest. It's hardly a beer.

― Jeff, Monday, August 20, 2012 12:59 PM (32 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

It's more like a "brau".

I dig the 21st amendment live free or die ipa from that list, and it would be cool to get it on draft instead of in a can.

IJ: Speakeasy Double Daddy... special double-hopped edition of the famed brew named after the proprietor of my local.

innis & gunn is very tasty, tho i'd only have one at a time.

i will be taking all of these thoughts into consideration, thank you.

i blame jesus

oh sorry, wrong thread, i guess

uh

max do you have something you want to tell us

uh, so the beer menu that was on their website was out of date.
and it was mostly different stuff.

i had the founders scotch ale which was fine and the southhampton keller pils which i hav enjoyed out of a bottle before and continued to enjoy on draft. also i had chicken fingers (delicious crispy battered garlicky ones) and good fries. kind of a weird scene in there. there's a huge outdoor garden area but we sat inside and watched sports bloopers on ESPN.

Of the Oskar Blue's stuff, I ended up drinking

Ten Fidy (Bourbon Barrel Aged)
Old Chub
Gubna Imperial IPA
Devient Dale's

Ten Fidy was the best.

ten fidy is nice. i just love imperial stouts tbh

Me too. Especially if you put them in a barrel. In my top two favorite styles of beer.

was just at oskar blues' last night -- had a pretty tasty black IPA. ten fidy is pretty killer, but i barely ever drink stouts in the summertime.

I'll drink stouts and porters all year round. They can be really refreshing so I never got the whole drink certain styles in certain seasons.

I'm pretty sure people in Ireland drink Guinness year round.

yeah but it rarely gets hot in Ireland.

I often drink based on the season/weather, especially if I'm not in the air conditioning. The idea of drinking a porter/stout outside on a hot day is not attractive to me at all.

You're supposed to be drinking it inside a cool, dimly lit pub on a hot day. But seriously, I think some stouts can be quite refreshing.

yeah they probably can, they just don't occur to me this time of year. actually, the black ipa was almost a stout anyway.

The thought of drinking any beer outside on a hot day is not attractive to me. I like drinking only inside climate controlled buildings.

Four in Hand IPA, budget Whole Foods buy with dust on the bottles. $7 for 6, all over it.

It was pushing 100 for most of the last two weeks and I drank way more pales / pilsners / hefeweizens / wits than I normally do, as I tend to drink my beers in my non-climate-controlled living room.

The last new-to-me beer I've had was Deschutes Chainbreaker White IPA. With the prevalence of hopped up Belgians, Black IPAs and other iconoclastic styles I'm surprised I didn't see this one coming, a hoppy Witbeer. Pretty good, but this is one that could actually be improved by drinking outside on a hot day.

harpoon recently made one of those. it was super dry and clean, very much a summer beer.

I'm pretty sure people in Ireland drink Guinness year round.

just saw this, it does get hot in ireland sometimes, and some people drink guinness all year round, but a lot of people (me included) would only drink it in winter or on a cold day or something. it can be sort of refreshing but i dunno, it's definitely way better in the height of winter.

Personally only drink Guinness from bonfire night, 5th November. Can't drink it earlier.

i didn't know about this thread before!

my beer profile: we're not exactly super sophisticated beer drinkers, but we love drinking beer and we like to try a bunch of different stuff. bc we live in PA w/ archaic blue laws getting beer can be kinda complicated. these days we pick it up by the case from a local beer depot distributer. when we were down at the shore in NJ we got a ton of individual bottles of stuff we hadn't heard of before to try. we'll drink pretty much anything - and since we both like fruity beers we drink those a lot even tho they aren't ya know - the classe of the classe of beers. anyway, here's some of the stuff we've had lately w/ some vague + terse (if not non-existent) tasting notes:

in NJ we got bottles of:
Samuel Smith fruit ale stuff - Strawberry, Apple Cider, Apricot (that one was NASTY): all very sweet and enjoyable
Flying Dog Dogtoberfest - seasonal caramel taste iirc that was pretty good - we drank like 4-6 bottles of this
Angry Orchard Apple Ginger - more for char than me
Wild Blue - a bunch of this, blackberry + blueberry super fruity lager and boozy enough (at 8%) that it was a pleasure to drink
Tommyknocker Maple Nut Brown Ale - brewed with PURE MAPLE SYRUP: not actually that great
Rogue - I liked the Soviet imagery obv (it turns out i try a lot of beers bc i like the design, sometimes this isn't a great heuristic for tastiness) - i got a few but i don't remember the names, i still have a Yellow Snow IPA left that I haven't tried yet
Young's Double Chocolate Stout - stuff w/ chocolate in the name is never as good as i hope but this wasn't terrible. just, ya know, not super duper chocolatey.

we got some other stuff too but i can't remember what it was bc i already drank it. oh, a bunch of Magic Hat 9 which is generally my goto beer (RIP LUCKY KAT)

at the depot this afternoon i picked up a case of Hell or High Watermelon which was recommended and a seasonal autumn sampler of Leinenkugel's - neither of which i've ever tried before. over the summer we drank a ton of the Blue Moon summer seasonal sampler and a ton of the lemon shocktop. I should probably become a more savvy beer drinker and actually like idk research the stuff i drink + buy. maybe this thread will help improve my quality of beer drinking to new, unheard of beer levels. plz feel free to mock my crappy taste in beer.

i love saranac's white ipa - easily the best thing of theirs i've ever had, super clean citra/lemon peel flavor

buying beer in pa sounds so terrible

do you guys get brewdog beers in america? they often have collabs with us breweries.

yeah i see them around, my general sense is that they might not be fresh but i've never checked for a bottling date

Yes, they are avail in Chicago. I even see a sink the Bismarck on a menu every now and then. Xpost

buying beer in pa is pretty terrible

Mordy, www.ratebeer.com is an excellent go-to if you're curious about a beer you haven't tried. I'm not generally a fruit beer fan, but if you feel like exploring more hoppy realms the Chainbreaker I mentioned is like Blue Moon + bitterness.

In my college off campus house I had a few beer-afficionado/brewing housemates (I think they were slightly ahead of the curve in this way for circa 1999). I remember that one of them liked Brooklyn beers a lot, and in particular he was very fond of the seasonal Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout, which is a very strong (10% ABV) and very chocolatey stout that was, at the time, the only thing I knew of its kind. He used to talk about it in these exaggerated, almost hype-man-like tones -- "Dude, it's the time of year for BROOKLYN BLACK CHOCOLATE STOUT! BROOKLYN...BLACK...CHOCOLATE...STOUT!" He would make this big event out of us drinking it in the house, and I still have nice fuzzy memories of the beer as a result.

the best fruit beer i've had recently is bramble rye but it's not around v. often

i can't compare perfectly as i don't know what the best us beers are, though i've had a lot of the bigger hitters, but some of brewdog's beers are incredible imo, despite the annoying marketing.

the new lighter session one "dead pony club" is really really good and serves a good purpose for when you're not keen to get wasted.

xposts oh yeah some of the really strong experimental brewdogs are fun too, the "tokyo dark star" one is about 18 per cent, really nice to give pals a small glass after dinner or something.

also if you see dogma, a stout of theirs, it was mindblowingly good when i had it on tap at least.

Which reminds me, the weather is finally starting to cool off, and that means it's almost time for BROOKLYN...BLACK...CHOCOLATE...STOUT!

xp i'll keep an eye out for those, their marketing is v. uncool

I didn't like the one Brewdog I had; maybe a freshness issue, maybe just not my thing, but it was foul-smelling in my pint glass, and monstrously hoppy but in an unpleasant way. Would retry one, I guess, but there are so many great beers made closer to home.

i would love to try brewdog but it doesn't look like they have samplers and i'm risk adverse to buying a whole case of one of flavor generally...

i also like beer that's really boozy cause i like getting drunk

must try that brooklyn chocolate stout. i'm quite impressed by the level to which brooklyn lager still is nice despite its near ubiquity around where i am in london, it's never a disappointment.

xpost woeful, i am ashamed when i drink punk ipa (which i love) in case someone imagines me buying it and thinking "what a punk i am". i rip the labels off (that's how fucking punk i am.)

and yeah i can imagine it doesn't make as much sense, same here with some US beers v UK ones with price obv a factor too.

more xposts i fucking love high alcohol content booze but there are times when it's dangerous!

ok, this watermelon beer is... not amazing. not terrible, but i guess i was hoping it would be fruitier? and it's kinda dry.