Beer in the new era

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

This is an interesting conversation for me because, looked at from the outside, US craft beer culture feels a bit gimmicky in general. Actually, maybe that's not fair, but in the time I've been aware of it as a culture (maybe a decade?) it does seems to have been quite trend-driven, lots of noise about particular styles from around the world coming into (and to some extent drifing out of) fashion.

The UK's craft beer world has followed suit, to an extent, in the last few years, but before that it seemed like here (and in Belgium and Germany, to name two beer cultures I know a bit about), it feels like breweries, even microbreweries, worked on variations of a small number of key national styles. And I don't remember much, if any, of the kind of extreme/experimental business like extreme hopping. In the UK the gimmickiness of a real ale would generally have been based around a horrible punny name or pump head.

I'm not trying to make any kind of negative moral point, I think that US craft beer culture has (overall) been a great force for good in the wider world of beer, and has surely generated more amazing brews than I can ever hope to taste. Just that, viewed from outside, the culture in general feels quite novelty-driven.

Oh dear, the language of my post feels so loaded. I guess I'm trying to say that the amazing and admirable spirit of experimentation that US craft beer culture has brought to the world can generate a feeling of gimmickiness in its less successful moments.

Worth it IMHO.

I was certainly dying for a hop bomb IPA after spending a couple of weeks in Brussels and London.

Agree it's worth it (but also think the novelty-driven way is not the only way and am looking forward to seeing how things settle down, if I live that long.)

And it's funny but after going to that beer festival in the Netherlands I was on about the other month, full of experimental things, many of which were US-inspired, I was absolutely gagging for a nice balanced pint of Ordinary.

I think when I was talking about gimmicks above I was really more talking about the branding/label than the flavor or style. I'm all for experimentation in flavor, and I guess it's only a "gimmick" if it's not good right?

maybe that's where my comment about stone got ppl confused--i don't really read "good" or "bad" into gimmick, it's just any method of grabbing attention

Yeah, all IPAs are best consumed sooner the better; Stone just made the sell by date the name of the beer. Maybe a bit gimmicky, but damn tasty.

Also mentioned upthread, but new to me (not gimmicky, just good) - Green Flash. Their West Coast IPA is excellent; really well-balanced for a hopbomb.

Try the Green Flash Palate Wrecker too, a DIPA.

if "Enjoy By ..." is a gimmick, well fuck, I'm all for gimmicky beers. That's one of the best beers on the market IMHO.

Stone is perhaps the most IMPORTANT brewery in the history of craft IPAs. What they began doing in the early 90s with their hopping bills/recipes laid the groundwork for all these excellent world class IPAs like Blind Pig, Pliny The Elder, Heady Topper, etc. Had Stone not existed, we might still be drinking Sierra Nevada Pale Ale or worse, Dogfish Head.

Goddamn I get a flash of jealousy every time I even see Pliny the Elder. Imho that is one of those beers absolutely justified wrt the hype, at least this far outside its range. I've only had a taste at Dark Lord Day two years ago and have been pining for another ever since. Still haven't had Heady Topper.

http://www.redeyechicago.com/entertainment/restaurants-bars/ct-red-barrel-aged-beers-20131114,0,3975768.story

Pretty much sums up the current beer culture in Chicago. Lots of brewers doing good stuff, but also lots of crazy beer nerds that make things unpleasant.

This made me IA:

Taste a bourbon barrel-aged beer, said Quinn, and it's not difficult to find the reason for their popularity. "You don't have to sit there and pick out the subtle nuances," he said. "It kind of smacks you in the face with flavor."

that's true with....bad barrel-aged beers

didn't get a chance to check out a ton of beer in Seattle/Portland, but it seems like IPAs are plentiful and i had some solid ones. i bought a bottle of Iron Horse Mocha Death and drank it out of a coffee mug, that was perfect. and i had some homebrewed 'smoky spicy pale ale with pineapple'...and it was pretty good!

i forgot that rogue dead guy is actually a pretty solid beer, if your choices are limited.

just polishing off the annual 6 pack of Anchor Steam OSA

sierra nevada narwal
dark horse one oatmeal stout
cisco whales tale pale ale
schlafly oatmeal stout

I'm happy that Hovels Original is now available at my local beer store. Nicely balanced and crisp with a hint of malty sweetness which is nice as the weather turns colder.

new belgium seems like the worst combination of aggressive marketing/distribution and terrible, gimmicky seasonals - second to blue moon at least. i enjoy a lot of their year-round lineup but i went to the touring fest-thing this year and... ugh. a pluot ale (not actually terrible iirc, but definitely gimmicky), a coconut curry-hefeweizen (actually, really terrible), a pineapple guava trippel (this could have been ok, but no), a sour beer that tasted like bile (i love sours but do not buy la folie this year!), and other disgusting combinations of fruit and belgian styles. i usually have no qualms with experimental or gimmicky beer concepts - in portland most brewers do this "beers made by walking" recurring event where they brew things using foraged local ingredients and the results are usually pretty good - but i think taking what are essentially failed experiments and trying to get $12 a bomber for them is pretty unforgivable

a friend in the biz has been working on the new tanks for coney island/schmaltz, it seems like they are both expanding and upping their quality significantly. i don't remember the brand fondly but i guess it's one of his favorites

i remember when they first opened they were definitely a 1-gimmick brewery ('jewish beer!') but over the last few years they've become really impressive. i had the new jewbulation 17 sat night (17 hops, 17 malts, 17% APV) and it's as potent + drinkable as the sweet 16, only moreso.

Had a Birra Del Borgo sour in Proletariat in NY on Thursday, it was really amazing, really different.

a sour beer that tasted like bile (i love sours but do not buy la folie this year!)

ummm no. lips of faith is great this year, they cut down on the sweetness.

i guess it could have been a bad keg, but it wasn't that it was too bitter/not sweet enough. it was that... it tasted like bile? not sure how else to describe it. there was none of the dry/crisp/tart flavors i associate with a good kriek or other more-sour sours

tho tbf my palette was probably destroyed by that coconut-curry hefeweizen

haha, that indeed sounds atrocious.

i was very pleasantly surprised by hebrew's "death of a contract brewer" black ipa - i've had a lot of bad examples of that style, but i thought it was really well balanced overall

i like that westbrook ipa mentioned upthread a whole lot too, and i'm stoked to see sculpin in cans finally - ian, do you work at e4stern distr1ct by any chance?

There are people on my facebook feed already planning to line up at noon on Thanksgiving for the Black Friday Goose Island BCBS release. I mean, c'mon.

I hope it's really, really cold. I plan on going out that black Friday morning, that's crazy enough.

Unfortunately I'll be traveling that day so I'll just miss out on it this year.

i had my first Speedway Stout last night, that was serious business.

i like that westbrook ipa mentioned upthread a whole lot too, and i'm stoked to see sculpin in cans finally - ian, do you work at e4stern distr1ct by any chance?

― the portentous pepper (govern yourself accordingly), Tuesday, November 19, 2013 8:24 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes i do!

crazy, i live like a block away! i buy beer there pretty regularly; i'll say hi sometime