Beer in the new era

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.

from the folks behind fangraphs:
http://www.beergraphs.com/bg/5-welcome-to-beergraphs/

are these guys for real

i mean i'm for whatever might burn beeradvocate to the ground but sometimes it's like, can moderately intelligent white guys just stop it

I picked up a bottle of this today:
http://articles.philly.com/2013-06-02/news/39692982_1_philly-beer-week-next-door-brew-vitational

also exciting news- manayunk brewpub has started canning their stuff. i've only so far seen monk from the yunk canned (which is too sweet imo) but if it leads them to can their biere de garde and some of their other good stuff it'll be great news.

The Beergraphs site lost me with this: "...but let's not poo-poo the rest of the platter."

cool map

http://www.newyorker.com/sandbox/business/beer.html

So a new gourmet store opened by me that happens to have an excellent single bottle beer selection. Tried my first sour tonight, Geuze Mariage Parfait (2009), and it's quite nice -- oak aged lambic ale with a lot of apple and citrus flavors but little sweetness.

yeah that's a nice mild qeuze.

ha, I guess it is mild. The guy was trying to sell me on another sour first but then when I said I had ever had a sour he was like "Oh, well you should try this, it's more of a starter sour." I guess he was serious.

soon theyre gonna be all you want to drink.

next find some tilquin

he was initially trying to sell me something from The Bruery, but I can't figure out what it was now.

i don't know how many sour beers they do but if it was sour in the rye go back and buy it

what else looks good on this list
http://www.beermenus.com/places/9011-mr-vino-cucina

hmm they do have sour in the rye on the list so maybe that was it

Dogfish Head 90 Minute IPA
Founders Centennial IPA
Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale
Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale
Lagunitas Sucks Holiday Ale
Ommegang Three Philosophers
Rodenbach Grand Cru
Samuel Smith's Organic Chocolate Stout (most chocolate tasting beer i've ever drank)
Troegs Troegenator (best doppelbock)
Sixpoint 3Beans

buy it and save it for when you get a little deeper into sours. it's fantastic imo.

other stuff i dig from that list:

3beans
peeper (check the bottling date)
cpt. lawrence ipa
espresso oak yeti
jever
sucks (although most likely not fresh at this point)
old crafty hen
baby tree

oh and my favorite dfh ipa is 75 min. which is sort of a weird opinion but

i would totes drink non-fresh sucks right now.

other stuff i got this week in addition to the beerweek beverage:

Laughing Panda Green Tea (Two Brothers Brewing)
SideKick Extra Pale Ale (Two Brothers Brewing) [can]
Aloha Series: Wailua Ale Brewed with Passion Fruit (Kona Brewing)
Dogfish Head Sixty-One
Dogfish Head Festina Peche

peeper is good however i find all the maine stuff pricey

yeah mbc pricing is appalling but most of their beers are worth trying once

how did you like the sixty one, mordy?

i haven't drank it yet - just brought it home today

People starting to go sort of bonkers over Solemn Oath here.

prices at this store don't seem outrageous actually -- the singles that are normally sixpack beers seem to mostly be in the $2-$2.50 per bottle range, which is basically what my convenience store charges.

oh yeah the store pricing is fine, it's mbc that sucks

mordy i would dig a report on that green tea thing, i keep almost buying it. sadly, i think the 2 brothers sidekick is a terrible bore.

wrt sours, i stick with the idea that other than seeing how the surly pentagram cellars, my a#1 sour is still the cuvee des jacobins. heavy rumors about it's impending disappearance for 4-6 months followed by controlled distro allocation, so grab them while you can.

yes, the cuvee rouge is also my alltime #1

aw damn, thanks for the tip. i'll have to grab a couple next time i see them.

I still don't really get sours at all; maybe if I don't think of them as beers I could appreciate them but that taste isn't something I want when I want to drink a beer.

i get that, i was baffled by lambics forever for the same reason. i just think that theres not much of anything more refreshing than a good sour. its def an acquired taste though, and the world is littered these days with some pretty mediocre sours for sure.

i had a chance to sample the jacobins mother lambic (the stuff that they add flavors to to get either lambics or sours) and it was the craziest thing ever, just pure sour with almost no other flavor. i loved it, but they technically dont sell it, a bar in town doing a sour night got one 5 gallon keg for the brave by working some distro magic.

Some days they are my favorite beers.

i had a chance to sample the jacobins mother lambic (the stuff that they add flavors to to get either lambics or sours) and it was the craziest thing ever, just pure sour with almost no other flavor. i loved it, but they technically dont sell it, a bar in town doing a sour night got one 5 gallon keg for the brave by working some distro magic.

― O_o-O_O-o_O (jjjusten), Saturday, June 8, 2013 9:12 AM (1 hour ago)

Sounds like Bockor's gueuze to me?

Did a sour tasting night at my local with 2 friends on Thursday:

750ml 2009 Oude Gueuze Tilquin a l'Ancienne
750ml 2007 Gueuze Lambic Cuvee Rene
3 tulips Rodenbach Grand Cru
3 tulips Bockor Cuvee Des Jacobins Rouge
3L of Russian River Supplication (we put about 1/3 dent into this, and put it back on the shelf for keeping)

Came out to $50pp. mostly because of the Supplication that will take another session (+) to work through.