Beer in the new era

Similarly what is must-try in MN beyond Surly?

heading into ny for the day. any ny-beerlxors want to grab a drink at some point? i'll probably spend the day between 34th + 82nd

Shit I missed the mn beer question. Is it too late? If not, big fan of indeed brewing, particularly the day tripper ipa and the midnight Ryder black ipa. Some people throw down for Fulton but I am not crazy about their stuff. Wrt Wisconsin, Lake Louie is surprisingly good given that their labels look like they were designed by 4 year olds

Oh also (Mn) flat earth angry planet, lift bridge hop dish, anything from bad weather, pour decisions, and steel toe is worth a shot as well.

drankin lately -
cigar city jai alai ipa
founders backwoods bastard (this is great, strong-but-v drinkable bourbon barrel aged scotch ale.)
singlecut dean on tap at work
sierra celebration, sierra harvest

Einstok Dopplebock quite good. Bonus points for Viking/Rudolph hilariousness on case.

had a capitol brewing eternal flame dopplebock and it was terrible awful fucking garbage. i think i have dumped maybe three beers in my entire craft brew life and this was one of them.

jjj thanks for your suggestions but I had already gone to the beer store (South Lyndale liquors fwiw, good shop imo) before seeing it. I got a Boom Island Thoprock Wet Hop IPA and an Olvalde Rise of the Burghers and the Fall of the Feudal Lords, the latter of which may be the longest, nerdiest beer name I've ever heard. I'm saving your suggestions for the next time I go visit the in-laws. I actually saw the Lift Bridge on draft but didn't try it, regretting that now.

Also picked up New Glarus Imperial Weizen and Berlinner Weiss in WI on the way back to Chicago.

i drank this and got a pretty cool glass w/ it last night:
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_9Gsu_hMGnVk/STfvfUydf5I/AAAAAAAAEos/JqNAJ92yTWk/s400/ci+lager+pint+glass.jpg

i like the glass, not a big fan of that brewery though

ovalde is about as micro as micro gets, so thats def one to grab although in truth, none of that dudes stuff has done it for me so far. havent tried that one yet.

i used to not like them, but they've been impressing me recently. the lager wasn't bad, and i've had some really good brews from them: R.I.P.A. is good, Reunion '12 w/ Terrapin was good and I'm excited to try the new one, Jewbelation Sweet 16 was pretty tremendous and i'm aging a bottle now. stuff i thought wasn't bad: hop manna ipa. stuff i have but haven't tried yet: st. lennys

some info here: http://olvalde.com/home.html

story i hear is that the whole thing started as a tiny honey farm, like farmers market style, and then they started brewing super small quantities of beer. super funky off flavors and weird styles, a little ren festy in a way. like when he says juniper tips are in the beer, you are going to taste a crapton of juniper tips, he is not big on subtlety.

huh i thought the jewbelation was from he'brew

shmaltz = he'brew

and from what i can tell it is, as is the st. lennys. are he'brew and coney island different brandings for the same brewery?

xp heh, "a little ren festy" is right up my BiL's alley (he suggested the stuff to me)

With beer and wine I feel like the more a brand relies on novelty, the less likely the product is to be great. HeBrew seems to fit that category for me, what I've had has been just ok.

i think so xxp

Last night I drank an old-fashioned and then followed it with a Sixpoint Righteous Rye. I hadn't had it in a while and it tasted perfect. I really love that brewery.

i had a sixpoint sweet action yesterday :)

yeah hurting i think i agree with the novelty factor, although ive had some pretty good he'brew stuff

my prime offender for gimmick beer offerings that i hate (besides fucking rogue) would be http://www.magichat.net/

who else sucks and rides hard on the gimmick train in peeps opinions

their branding is flashy but when i think of novelty beers i think of bacon donut stouts and beard beers. most of the shmaltz stuff is pretty normal stylistically - the celebration sweet 16 is the only really out there beer they make (16% APV, 16 malts, 16 hops), but i actually like it!

i will say that much to my surprise the new belgium lips of faith series has about a 50% success rate. but the failures are HORRENDOUS

i feel like Evil Twin is trying hard to be gimmicky + cultivate some kind of rareness / limited editionness that the quality of their brews doesn't quite match

leinie's is a prime gimmick offender imho, though I will still rep hard for their original lager

also I have not had any (because of gimmick concerns) but it seems to me like chicago-area outfit 5 Rabbit is quite gimmicky

the only evil twin beers I've had have been really good, so I can't say I find their gimmickiness/quality ratio to be that high.

Dogfish kind of jumped the shark a long time ago with gimmicky beers. A few of their brews are still outstanding, but a lot are horrendous.

stone is p. gimmicky

oh yeah, dogfish is a good example of a gimmicky brewery

And yeah, Magic Hat. Costco has had these "Halloween" variety packs for a while that seem to not be moving -- I can't remember the beer names but it's stupid shit along the lines "Spooky Stout" and "Zombie IPA" or whatever. Tempted to try just because it's cheap, but just no.

also, tommyknocker brewery

http://www.thebarleyblog.com/images/tommyknocker-butt-head-bock.jpg

for years i would make the mistake of grabbing the magic hat variety packs after the guys at boozemart basically begged me too for super discounts, and every year it was basically all garbage

I don't know as much about wine as I do about beer, but when I'm picking blindly I'll always take the old french estate classy/boring label over the label with a gazelle on it or whatever, and that's never served me badly.

i feel like stone pushes the cranky label text thing too hard, but i haven't had many things they make that i didn't like tbh

their enjoy bys are always great

21st amendment is another one that swings hard and surprises me a lot of the time but wow when they miss they really miss. #watermelonbeer

this might be one of the corniest breweries as far as labels/names go. I'm forever seeing and not buying their beers in convenience stores:

http://flyingdogales.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/3199790770_2993dd5305.jpg

enjoy by is good, but gimmicky. the wil wheaton beer was gimicky. the coconut ipa was gimmicky.

oh god yes xpost

who just did the graffiti inspired beers? i refuse to buy those

Although I never realized until just now looking it up that Flying Dog has an actual Hunter S. Thompson connection and isn't just brazenly appropriating the style.

I also mix up Flying Dog with River Horse.

oh yeah blue moon! "tongue-thaied" and "pine in the neck". one has basil and lemongrass, one has juniper berries, both have the ugliest labels ever

horrible

I don't get why Stone is gimmicky. And their beer is fantastic. They have one of the best year-round lineups, not a single one I don't like. Add in the special releases which are also consistently good and they are just solid all around.

flying dog seems to have v good distribution, it's quite commonly found in london and i've seen it in dublin too. same shitty vibes as brewdog.

http://www.theonion.com/articles/microbrewer-trying-to-work-dog-into-name-of-new-se,27457/

the coconut ipa was surprisingly good actually

like, if you have a reason to tweak a beer and do something with it, and you balance it out with hops and grain that works, fucking go for it. but then there are all the pumpkin spice beers that came out this year that didnt even bother to do a pumpkin beer at all, just dumped a bunch of allspice in a fucking shitty stout and called it a day. or people putting beet juice in stuff to make it red w/o thinking about the fact that beet juice tastes like something.

Ben-and-Jerry's breweries, basically