Beer in the new era

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.'

Double DBA is awesome.

Sucks hasn't hit Chicago yet. Waiting eagerly.

No new beers lately, but my early Christmas present is delivered tomorrow. My wonderful and patient wife got me a new fridge for the basement specifically for my beer stash. Very excited.

October through December is probably my least favorite season of seasonals.

Thankfully I got my hands on a spontaneously fermented wild ale that will cleanse my palate of any pumpkin, cinnamon, ginger, clove and nutmeg for the time being.

Also one of my locals got bottles of that absurdly strong (and priced) Sam Adams Utopias, not even curious about it except who buys it.

there are plenty of beers that come out this time of year that didn't raid the spice cabinet with all that crap. this is great beer time imo

Had a Two Brothers Night Cat the other day and liked it a lot, fits the profile of wintery non-spiced beers.

Also saw their coconut stout The More the Merrier in the store and kind of wondered about it, but didn't bite.

was this discussed
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/dec/16/limited-edition-beer-meantime-brewers-craft

fuck dat

idk, i see meantime here but it's never fresh so i don't know how good their stuff is, but 20 bucks for a large format bottle really shouldn't be a big deal if you're talking about a high-quality product.

Right. Depends on the quality. Like all the Eclipse variants that just came out. At $30 you'll see them in shelves for months. I think they taste good but putting out like 6 variants and charging so much, seems like you could just dial in a couple of variants and it would be more worthwhile.

Also one of my locals got bottles of that absurdly strong (and priced) Sam Adams Utopias, not even curious about it except who buys it.

yea i see specialty sam adams stuff all the time, seems like they are really expanding their lineup with new varieties. i had a couple bad experiences with some imperial pilsner and something else a few years ago and i cannot bring myself to ever buy sam adams. at a work function tho if the options were like, heineken, budweiser and sam lager i'd probably take the sam lager.

I was at a holiday party Sunday where a friend opened a bottle of Sam's Merry Mischief Gingerbread Stout, and I thought it was actually pretty good, not overwhelmingly spiced. Ended up finishing the bottle because only two of us were into it.

so yeah, that pizza boy dollars for diabetes blueberry sour is pretty fantastic.

had a great weekend for beer, though i realize that all these experiences are very place-specific so it probably won't do much to excite all you midwesterners and east coasters and people who don't live in the pacific nw...

on friday i went to the commons for their two-year anniversary party where they brought out a bunch of special kegs and was pretty blown away. my favorite was definitely the 'gin enkel', which was aged in gin barrels and was just an all around great, complex, light-in-color but still very strong belgian. they also had a ton of delicious bourbon barrel-aged stuff and were selling their popular urban farmhouse ale for $1 a pint.

my most significant discovery, though, was dean's scene. seriously, if any of you come to portland, make sure to hit up dean's scene. it's not an official establishment, it's just a dude - dean - who opens up his basement to visitors 4 nights a week and always has 4-8 beers available on tap. it works sorta like a house party - you put at least $5 in the donation box, grab a beer glass, and taste whatever you want. he made one of the brightest/freshest tasting cdas i've ever tried, a nicely hoppy bock, one of the most unique pepper-based beers i've ever had (i think he used anaheims?), and the only thc-infused beer i've ever even seen (pretty good! tho it was very, erm, potent). not sure how long it'll stay open but if you ever had the desire to drink a bunch of great beer in a dude's basement while he smokes an enormous bowl and brews up the next couple of batches in the kitchen, this is the place for you. i guess it's set to be featured on that "brew dogs" show fwiw

I always have trouble keeping track of which Firestone Walkers are hard to come by and which are readily available, especially since they expanded in Chicago. The Double DBA ... easy to find? Hard to find? Sounds delicious.

Probably the easiest to find of their barrel series. Still, I don't see it very often.

i see it somewhat often on the west coast, but then again i used to live near paso so i might not be a representative sample

oh man dean's scene sounds so beautiful i want to cry

But it sounds like it's only a matter of time before it gets shut down.

def going to go to dean's scene next time I can leave canada and get down to pdx (not for q while,immigration shit),sounds right up my alley.i suppose they've gotten round licensing laws with the by donation system?

Dean's Dream morelike

Oh shit I'm going to be in portland next week, staying not too far from dean. I wonder what his christmas week hours are like.

Lots of Double DBA at my local store, so bought a bottle. Very excited to try it!

i don't really like meantime shiz. i mean, it's just not very good relative to the competition any more. it's a cutthroat world in the london beer game. on your feet, lose your seat.

my favorite pale ale, india or otherwise, is five points. it is the fucking bomb. there's another one whose name i can't remember that i had a duke brew & cue, which was fantastic, but it was on tap which means i'm comparing apples to oranges. for pale ale in a bottle it's five points for me.

/hipster

went to tired hands tnite and had the cask communication is the key lime pie coconut cream pie (lol that name) it was delicious tho, citrusy + very smooth w/ most of the coconut in the aroma. i've had the communication is the key ipa in like 4 different iterations now (og communication is the key, communication is the key lime on cask, communication is the key lime on normal draft, communication is the key lime coconut cream pie on cask) and it's notably different + delicious each time. i think my fave of the bunch is the current on draft key lime bc i think i can really taste the graham crackers that they conditioned it on (lol graham crackers).

then had the new sergeant salamander berliner weisse. i got a growler to take home of it normal so at the pub i tried it w/ their vanilla bean + cinnamon syrup which i guess is not traditional berliner weisse syrup (which is generally raspberry?) but still really nice - very sweet and seasonal tasting and strongly reminiscent of cinnamon toast crunch cereal. i missed the sourness tho - the syrup def masks most of that.

never had last year's debut of sierra nevada's narwhal but really really loving this year's edition. flavor reminiscent of speedway stout but i find it doesn't have the lingering chalky finish of the latter.

narwhal is good but not elite for me in the non-barrel-aged imperial stout category. founders imperial stout is just as good as breakfast stout but i feel like no one talks about it. and the bottle of bell's expedition stout that mordy sent me really kicked my ass. that's a great beer.

i'm really happy you liked that one! i'm aging one -- ppl rave about older ones

Founders Imperial is great. Haven't had any recently though, need to remedy that.

Stumbled upon a Backyard Rye tonight. So I ended up getting a little of everything of this years BCBS.

xp there are some totally unfounded rumors abt bell's starting to distribute here and i can't help but hope they're true

I'd wear this

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bb3AuMEIIAAVtdT.jpg

omg, that is really something

beer sponsoring minor league hockey makes perfect sense

If Narwhal isn't an elite for its category, it's close enough. Probably my most consumed imp stout this year.

Bought an Erdinger Variety Pack 5 beers + a cool glass. Had only had the Weissbeer and Dunkel before, Kristal was a revelation.

xp there are some totally unfounded rumors abt bell's starting to distribute here and i can't help but hope they're true

― call all destroyer, Thursday, December 19, 2013 11:37 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Where do you live? I didnt realize they had limited distribution.