Beer in the new era

Around here three Floyd's and pipeworks do the worst labels. Everyone is pretty much used to it though.

We ended up taking this to a BYOB restaurant, it was pretty great:
http://distilleryimage1.ak.instagram.com/fafcffa65e2311e3b9670ed18cdf8007_8.jpg

nice sierra nevada growler

Interesting. What type of barrels?

"Torpedo double IPA aged 2 years in bourbon barrels."

TBQH I wasn't huge fan on first taste but it's definitely more enjoyable now that I've had it a few times. We took it to a Pakistanian restaurant which made a good pairing!

2 years? wow. any hops left?

55 IBU = pretty smooth.

central waters brewhouse coffee stout

Correct. If I recall, my comment was it tasted just like Peruvian morning, without the barrel.

I've been eying the Founders Boltcutter in my closet. I never had it fresh, it was so divisive when it came out, I just sort of pushed it to the back. Anyone had it recently?

i'm in the same boat. i think my plan is to let it age for 3 years or so.

got a growler of brooklyn's smoked porter tonight/ mmmm. toasty.

how does o'so not make a beer called "krispie" anyway

(note: questions like this are probably why i'd be a bad choice to run your brewery)

this should be a i'm drunk post, but really i am but i wanted to share the good tidings that i drank delicious pints of pliny elder, blind pig, allagash broken elevator and Brouwerij 3 Fonteinen oude geueze at monk's cafe tnite which is really such a nice place to get loaded

I remember fondly all the times I've been drunk at monks.

Me too! It's a great place, although I could say that about most of the Philly bars I've been to. Not that shitbag fake old west one across from eastern state that I got stuck at. But most of the other ones.

Very odd, could have sworn last year Binny's in the South Loop had literally piles of (standard) BCBS left over, even on sale for a few dollars off. Wonder if they over-ordered last year, or if Goose Island going bigger ate away at some of the local allocation. Oh well. I did notice the return of Three Floyds' Gumballhead, which was MIA for a bit.

For those near Pasadena, CA, I just saw that Firestone-Walker is bringing some Parabola to the Whole Foods (Arroyo Parkway) bar tomorrow.

got a growler of brooklyn's smoked porter tonight

I read this too quickly as smoked salmon porter (which I guess, given Taco Hands and Beard Beer, is not impossible, but...)

on that note I have most of a fifth of this at home if anyone is feeling thirsty

http://media3.s-nbcnews.com/j/ap/salmon%20vodka-1640097240_v2.grid-4x2.jpg

That had been a running joke between friends and I. You could serve it with this for maximum baaaaaarf:

https://beamglobal.s3.amazonaws.com/sites/505757e5851916549a000002/content_entry5059fc39851916762400029f/5241cb888519162844000575/files/KC_maple.jpg

And of course:

http://www.chicagobeergeeks.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/porterhouse-oyster-stout.jpg

The Oyster Stout I had - Flying Dog? - was pretty good! I want to say the shell imparts a lot of calcium, not fishy flavor, so it ends up close to a milk stout.

AGGGGGHHH that salmon vodka almost killed us all at former ilxor FB's bachelor party

it srsly gives me ptsd gag reflex just looking at it.

DJP was to blame, fyi

hm that must've been about the same time he came sniffin' around the chicago thread asking about malort

I got my precious precious bottle as a gag gift a couple christmases ago from a friend who lives in anchorage, I've made a couple bloody marys with it.

(but only a couple)

Smoked salmon vodka could work really well in a caesar.

Or not.

oyster stout is a fairly traditional style, and it usually tastes way less crazy than you might imagine. it dates back to victorian times apparently, since stouts were often paired with oysters at pubs

i like the upright one, out of the few i've tried

http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4064/4408495104_0b0ca66e02_z.jpg

stout and seafood is one of my favorite pairings

yep

there's an oyster stout on tap at one of my local bars.. maybe this is the time for me to try it. mostly just not interested in a briny taste.

Not briny! imo. Imparts calcium.

Got a Bikini Beer at the weird little arcade basement bar in my neighborhood, it turned out to be a 2.7 ABV IPA from Denmark. It wasn't very good!

Oyster stouts are pretty awesome, my fave is the 21st amendment marooned on hog island

I was gifted a bomber of Ommegang Rare Vos in the office secret Santa exchange, it's sitting here on my desk whispering "open me... open me... they'll never know... open me..."

was able to score the bourbon county coffee, barleywine, and backyard today--treating myself to a barelywine rn and it is very good, though i think next time i'm just gonna start it at room temp.

I want to taste it side by side with Central Waters BW.

the bcbw is not as good an example of the style as the cw because it grabs a decent amount of the stout from the barrel, but as its own thing it's excellent.

i kept wanting to bump this thread over the last couple days to talk about our beer tour but it was never on site new answers and i only had zing

anyway, we ended up hitting stoudts, troegs, al's of hampden, spring house taproom in lancaster, and lancaster brewery the last couple days. it doesn't sound like a lot but it turns out that if you're driving around you really need to budget a lot of time to sober up, not to mention by the end my body needed a break from the beer -- it's possible to drink too much! esp if you're trying everything everywhere.

stoudts was very nice - family friendly diner style w/ a huge antique show behind it that we wandered about after lunch. they had some good stuff unique to the location including a hazelnut bitter that we thought was tremendous, whiny dog (their fat dog aged in wine barrels), and some brewers reserve IPAs that were good.

spring house tap room is a cute little spot in the middle of downtown lancaster; the eggnog + chocolate chip mint stouts were shticky (paging mr. broccoli) but they had a very high ABV saison (Dean Saison) that was great, and the Curses IPA was pretty great too. Oh, though I've had it before, off draft at the taproom the Monster Mango IPA was great. All of those drinks were made better bc we got to watch the Cowboys lose while drinking. lancaster brewery was kinda like a diner, but with the back windows looking out into the brewery. their stuff is always consistently good - the only thing i had never tried before was the double chocolate milk stout on draft which was actually pretty exceptional (which surprised me a little bc i've never loved their milk stout).

on monday we drove up to troegs in hershey which was probably the coolest place we visited. they do a really nice tour of the facilities (huge facilities and they're still ramping up - i guess they have ambitious plans for distribution). they also have some great beers on tap that you can't find elsewhere - including a cranberry porter scratch (125 iirc) that we liked. we also got a bottle of their Splinter Brown which is an in-house only sour (which Troegs doesn't generally do). apparently they made a brew a few years ago that wasn't satisfactory, so they aged it in barrels for the last 3 years and added wild yeasts and finally got this really delicious, dark, dank sour. but the carbonation got all fucked up so when you open the wire around the cork, the cork goes flying @ high velocity. so they won't sell you any to take home - only to open at the brewery.

monday night we grabbed dinner at al's of hampden (pizza boy brewery). the beers we tried were good, but the service was very unfriendly + uninviting, and they don't let you do samples or flights so you drink what you can i guess and we grabbed a growler of their blueberry sour to try tnite. idk that we'd go back, esp since it was kinda out of the way (another hour to get into Harrisburg area) but it was cool to check out the once and try some of their stuff - particularly liked the 60 Day Sour (which they weren't doing growler fills of, too bad).

anyway, besides the caution about trying to do too much, and the risks to your liver, i thought the trip was really great. we relaxed a bunch (we stayed at an affordable but really nice bed + breakfast in Ephrata outside Lancaster) and i highly recommend the area for brewing tours. there were places we didn't even make it to - particularly St. Boniface which wasn't open on Sunday or Monday (and opened too late today for us to go), and Battlefield Brew Works in Gettysburg which looked interesting to me but was just too far out of the way for such a short trip in the area. doing this brewery tour did inspire us to do more - so i think we'll be planning something in the boston area hopefully soon (maybe around February time). boston ilx beer fap???

lagunitas sucks is as always excellent this year. also grabbed a bottle of the hairy eyeball which they havent done for a while, and its a solid strong ale if you are into that sort of thing, slightly sweet but totally drinkable. and fuck it, its a $5 bomber

so i think we'll be planning something in the boston area hopefully soon (maybe around February time). boston ilx beer fap???

― Mordy , Tuesday, December 17, 2013 2:34 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah! come on up.

lagunitas sucks...

YAY, it's back! Didn't see it at my local last time I went, will search.

oh dudes my wife is gonna apply for a job in teh new lagunitas office in chicago, all fingers and toes crossed over here

Just showed up at mine yesterday

I happened to find some bombers of Firestone-Walker Double DBA at half price at a supermarket yesterday, Bought all 5 at $7 ea. I need to try one of the two I have in my basement, they're coming up on two years old now.

had some Evil Twin Molotov Cocktail at home last night, it was pretty serious, though i don't know if i would have guessed it was 13% just from the taste.

had the evil twin 'falco' IPA and found it solid but not particularly remarkable. maine beer co 'lunch' IPA very very delicious.
tonight going to try captain lawrence's imperial stout, 'frost monster.'