Beer in the new era

had an aged deschutes/hair of the dog collab named conflence #1 last night - smelled like an amazing sour, tasted like garbage

My local Whole Foods is having a sour beer tasting the 23rd, will try to go. Whatever you say about WF, the one near my work has a beer/wine bar upstairs and most Thursdays they have a beer tasting at a fairly low price. This is where I tried the Parabola. How common are bars in WFs elsewhere?

none in mn

The taproom at the WF in Santa Rosa, CA (Sonoma County) is world class:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=517858771615191&set=a.208033072597764.51713.204629756271429&type=1
https://fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash4/p480x480/380855_517858771615191_1635534195_n.jpg

The WF deathstar in Lincoln Park, Chicago has an extensive beer bar. Craft bottles are $2.50 across the board there, or at least they used to be.

It's a great happy hour bar. If you can stand the people who have happy hour at WF.

Yeah, and you can buy prepared food and bring it to the bar area. Fish and chips with Cuvee de Jacobins sour!

xpost there should be a best relatively unobscure IPA poll, that just includes fairly well known ones like dogfish head 90 min, sierra nevada hoptimum, Stone IPA, goose island maybe idk what the other really well known ones are

bell's two hearted for sure

surly, summit

btw speaking of cuvee, i have some pretty good inside info that says that it is going out of stock for 5 months some time soon, and then going on much stricter allocation, so stock up maybe

haha Surly cannot be considered well-known if you live outside of MN! i wish.

there are a ton that are ubiquitous in WI (ale asylum hopalicious for ex.) but don't distribute out of the state.

I just had the Ale Asylum Bedlam Belgian IPA last weekend. That's worth driving to Hudson for imo.

Smuttynose

All those terrapins have hop names; hopzilla, hopsecutioner...

cambridge brewing co. makes "the audacity of hops"

at the fairly small liquor store near my dad's place in RI, I was pleased to find this, which i cannot remember seeing in NY

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/28980/81049

nice mild IPA, not inna super hoppy style. more in line with something like the bklyn IPA or the firestone pale... nice brew.

Hoptimum is a wonderful beer. Had two this eve and am feeling no pain.

lol

https://fbcdn-sphotos-h-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-ash3/599339_10152849275145556_829716466_n.jpg

oberon + founders - could be worse!

FKNL I could kill a keg of Oberon right now.

"the audacity of hops"

hahaha, that's awesome!

i really like Anchor Steam Beer. i had two with lunch today. the beer advocate posters make no mention of the hoppiness of it but i think it is nicely hopped, tastefully even.

I haven't had Anchor Steam in ages. Their Liberty Ale is one of my alltime favorites for being hoppy yet well-balanced.

ooh, i never had that. i've only had the normal anchor steam because they have it at the diner i go to multiple times a week. need to check it out.

mini oberon keg is awes

that'll get you through a lot of lawn games

picked up a bottle of stone's russian imperial stout espresso. my store limited it to one a person so i was worried it would be really pricey but it only ended up costing $10!

idg why they're limiting that beer (it was limited at stores here too), i didn't hear about anyone kicking down doors for it

I was going to say, I've seen it in plenty of places and haven't ever really been specifically seeking it out. I did grab one though.

so limited apparently they weren't letting employees buy them

mini oberon keg is awes

Bell's market a few different beers in the 5 liter keg, I've seen (bought) Oberon, Two Hearted, and Best Brown.

Maybemidwest only idk

bought a growler of "Live", and american pale ale from the southern tier brewing company. it's really good... very flavorful yet light, crisp and floral, i could drink buckets of this stuff

*an

I almost bought a 6 of the live today, sounds like I will be going back and giving it a shot

Drank too much over the last three days. I'll have t review he data to remember what I liked.

Kind of neat: http://beerlabelsinmotion.tumblr.com/

So I'm drinking my first Israeli microbrew at the moment -- I have been told that the microbrew movement is pretty much nascent here, but there's a brewery called Alexander, and I decided to try their "green" which is an IPA very much in the American style. Solid but not excellent and not something that would be worth importing to the states, but great for people here who want a fresh local beer that hasn't been screwed up by long distance travel I guess. Beer here is otherwise pretty shitty -- the most popular imports for some reason seem to be Tuborg and Carlsberg, which I find horrendous. Also there's the sort of national beer, Gold Star, a reasonably drinkable dark lager. You can get decent German beers pretty easily like Weihenstephan, but I haven't seen a lot of other good stuff around, although I'm sure Tel Aviv has a few beer connoisseur bars that I haven't checked out. The climate probably doesn't lend itself to heavy, high-alcohol brews. Makes me thankful for having real winters.

Hit up some local breweries in New Mexico recently: Marble (Albuquerque), Second Street (Santa Fe), Santa Fe Brewing Co., and Taos Mesa. Unfortunately, none seemed particularly interesting, beer-wise; they all had decent examples of various basic styles, but little stood out as creative or adventurous or unusual. I'd say Marble's offerings were probably best.

Taos Mesa had, by far, the best atmosphere, though. It's basically in the middle of nowhere and looks like this:
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/02/fb/35/92/taos-mesa-brewing.jpg

From inside, looking out at the mountains:
http://media-cdn.tripadvisor.com/media/photo-s/03/de/cf/9e/taos-mesa-brewing.jpg

ugh Gold Star. worst beer ever. do let me know if you find anything worth importing tho, my local beer shop wants to bring in some Israeli beers and i told them to stay far away from the gold star. xp

xp Also, 15 minutes after we got there, a scraggly bearded dude with a guitar sat down. I was like "oh no" and then he played these awesome Fahey-like mellow instrumental pieces.

Some of the best stuff I had during Chicago Craft Beer Week:

Central Waters 14th and 15th Anniversary
A couple of lambics from Destihl
Greenbush Barrel Aged Dystopia
Abbaye de Saint Bon-Chien (2006)
Haymarket Acrimonious Barrel Aged Imperial Stout
Rolling Meadow Vampire Hunter Blood Orange Hefeweizen
A lot of other good beers from downstate Illinois that I've never had.

Unfortunately, none seemed particularly interesting, beer-wise;

Actually, let me revise this slightly. Second Street had a hefeweizen made with Citra hops that I was into. But I only had a sample of it right before I left.

Oh I also drank some Bourbon County Bramble Rye and Cherry Rye, even though I've had them before.

What the hell, I was at Binny's today and there was some end cap saying to talk to an employee if you're interested in some $200 bottle of Sam Adams? Don't get this trend of pumping up beer ABV until it's something no longer beer.

ah, utopias

Utopias barely taste like beer. Not that great.

ugh Gold Star. worst beer ever. do let me know if you find anything worth importing tho, my local beer shop wants to bring in some Israeli beers and i told them to stay far away from the gold star. xp

― Mordy , Friday, May 24, 2013 4:22 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I mean, Alexander is good enough to import in the sense that if you specifically want Israeli beer for the sake of Israeli beer, it's a hell of a lot better than Gold Star. I just thought it tasted like a lot of other middle-of-the-pack IPAs. I was hoping to get something with some sort of local character and I didn't think it had much. But there's certainly a market of people who will drink Israeli beers just because. Then again, I always thought it was funny that people order "thai beer" in thai restaurants that's just like ordinary lager.

what would be local character beer? brewed w/ olives maybe. or figs? speaking of, i got a bottle of pomegranate beer today - this one i think which now looking at the reviews i am not particularly enthusiastic about

I guess I just like it when brewing in a region reaches a stage that goes beyond just imitating a style from somewhere else and into experimenting and creating. I think the Alexander brewery at least is just not quite at that stage, so I wouldn't really be that interested in drinking their beers anywhere other than here when I could just drink any number of similar brews by American brewers.