Beer in the new era

just got hop ranch here, brought one home to try tonight.
drank more sucks this week.
been sick so drinking less beer :(

more Oregon... pg's list is way more obscure/specific than mine and I will check those places out, thank you.

dude how could you forget 10 Barrel? Even better than Boneyard imo, my favorite NW IPA. they are from Bend and seem to have decent distribution, sixes and 22's.

Oakshire from Eugene - we were just at their tasting room tonight, Watershed IPA is good but not great, their O'Dark 30 CDA cascadian dark ale or black ipa or whatever you wanna call it is great.

Hopworks Urban Brewery from Portland, also Laurelwood ain't too shabby but I would check out all of the ones in the post above before those. maybe try Lompoc in Portland? Fort George in Astoria is also excellent.

jeez looking at the Portland list I only know upright and double mountain (they do the Vaporizer IPA in the pint bottles right?)

besides Claim 52 in Eugene we also have the Viking Braggot folks (mead w/malt & hops, around 6%, delicious)

oh i should check that out, i love braggot. and yes, vaporizer is pretty widely available in bottles along with the ira and the kolsch and maybe one more. i was super into the double mountain ira for a while but it seems to have declined in quality ever since they bottled it. if you ever see a higher alcohol beer from them you should probably get it. the best of their seasonals are usually limited to the brewery, sours and barrel aged stuff, etc. also they have good pizza.

combine that with pfriem and it's hard not to take every single out-of-town visitor up the gorge to hood river. pfriem was started by a former full sail brewer iirc (also in hood river) who broke off on their own and is now making some very delicious belgian stuff, great belgian ipas with all sorts of sweet hop flavor and really good strong dark wintery beers, in terms of bold and fore-fronted flavors i think they can hang with lagunitas but maybe a bit less experimental and more interested in tradition. they apparently refuse to bottle their beers but you can frequently find them on tap around portland. based on what happened to double mountain i'm glad they're choosing to just do kegs tbh

A pal of mine is having a few people over to do a beer tasting and clear out his reserves before he moves next week. Looking forward to it because this dude is pretty serious about aging certain stuff and has crazy tastes.

i need more friends like that ^

about 10 barrel - i remember really enjoying their winter seasonal so i will have to revisit the ipa. hopworks would definitely make my portland list actually, though it's more of a great local spot with cheap and delicious growler fills than an interesting place to go and spend any time. i live near their "bike bar" and apparently you can ride these power-generating bikes in exchange for beer. so that's cool i guess. lompoc also has a spot nearby, with a special place attached called sidebar where they feature all the small batches and seasonals. that stuff is great, too!

Has Hopslam always said "brewed with honey" on the label? I don't think I've even bought any the past two seasons, but splurged last night. I don't remember that, and now that I know it, it seems sweetish, albeit well-balanced, with long-lingering hops on the back end.

xp Thanks for your PDX posts btw, I figured there would be more than I could possibly do in the 2.5 days I'm going to be there but it doesn't hurt to have options (and ways to get out of the standard "lets go to Voodoo Donuts" BS that my traveling companions are likely to pull).

You don't happen to be a Timbers fan, do you?

xp again As far as I know there has been some mention of honey on the label since the first time I had it, which would have been about 2007ish.

I don't know about the label, but it has certainly always been on the sweeter side.

I was really impressed by the beer selection at West Lakeview Liquors, which I visited for the first time.

Does anyone know when any of the other special winter Central Waters brews are released? I've seen the bourbon barrel around, but that's it.

I saw some bba scotch ale the other night, but it may have been an older vintage. Annoys me that CW doesn't date the bottles.

I like WLVL, but I'm always afraid I'm going to knock shit over in there.

i'm a terrible portlander and haven't been to a timbers game... i've been wanting to check one out for years now

Here's 2013 schedule. I'm guessing the scotch ale I saw was last year's vintage.

http://centralwaters.com/beers/pdf/2013ProductionSchedule.pdf

Struck out on hop ranch but found some dirtwolf.

i actually think dirtwolf > hop ranch. hop ranch seemed a little on the thin tside o me. not a bad beer by any means, i just think i prefer the dirtwolf. there was a lil tartness/unripe apricot tang to the hop ranch which is prob good with certain foods.

welp, this was fun

http://i1193.photobucket.com/albums/aa356/fugexlac/beer_tasting_zpsc9e34d48.jpg

Mordy thanks for sending that Russian River Temptation, you made me a popular guy at this party.

I love Parabola, but it's the FSW I can NEVER seem to get.

I dunno where he got it but the guy throwing the party had 2011-2013 Parabolas.

It hits all the stores each year, but is gone within a few hours. Just one of those releases that 9 to 5'ers can have a hard time getting.

I think it gets released twice, right?

Nice line up there.

(dan m's pic)

what are those beers flanking the parabolas?

and yeah, definitely looks like a good time

The one with the wax on the neck on the right is some kind of Surly seasonal, the one on the left side is a barleywine whose name escapes me.

Dan, you and R should come over and drink sometime. Don't think I could top that lineup by myself but I could get close!

I'd love to!

Was informed the beer to the left of the parabolas is a half acre product.

Also drinking a Sucks btw

Half Acre Quakerbridge

Surly seVIIn maybe?

did a little tasting last night:

http://i1359.photobucket.com/albums/q782/braudimusprime/B6DF443B-FBB4-4D6A-9B0E-A7BE9C5DF036_zps5trbiwmx.jpg

big ups to mordy and dan for your contributions!

praise bee had a lot of nice subtleties, i think the honey was very interesting and added a lot to the finish. not as hoppy as i anticipated but i think that was good since the malts and honey really showed through. pairs fantastically with stilton!

proprietors - i had this low-level fear that it really would be a boozy mounds bar, some kind of big sweet dessert bomb. luckily it was not even close to that, i think using the rye barrels helped dial back the sweetness and the coconut was incredible, really well integrated and drifted so nicely into the aroma and finish of the beer.

That looks like fun, glad to hear Proprietors isn't just dessert beer. I'm planning on bringing my one remaining bottle to a party in a week or so and it's good to know it's not as sweet as people make it out to be.

On that note, I was nosing around the Binny's new arrivals list and found this abomination:

http://www.binnys.com/beer/Rogue_Voodoo_Doughnut_Shop_Pretzel_Raspberry_Chocolate_Ale_67040.html

CAD, did you like the Bo & Luke? I had it on draft a few years ago before they smoked it and bottles it. It was one of the best beers I bet had. I probably like the smoked version less so, but it's still good.

I pretty much hated Sweet Repute.

I think overall I enjoyed backyard rye better than proprieters.

http://alchemistbeer.com/blog/#2831

In a couple weeks, we will be releasing the first batch of Focal Banger, an American IPA first brewed at the pub back in the day. Focal Banger will be brewed with Mosaic and Citra, and we are working on fine tuning the malt bill.

#bangerz

bo & luke - we had this pretty late and i'm not a smoked beer guy, but i wasn't impressed. my pal walter put it well: "the smoke chased the pappy out."

sweet repute - second time i had it. it's ok, it's just like a normal ale with some maple syrup tossed in a barrel. it's prob a step up in terms of recent founders backstage offerings, but that's not saying much.

some other notes--

spencer trappist - very nicely done, all the banana and clove you'd expect, very clean and drinkable. too bad the retail pricing is astronomically high.

marshal zhukov - serious competitor for best non-barrel imp. stout.

duck duck gooze - i got this through dumb luck and really had been trying to ignore the hype and insanity. it was wonderful though. very well-balanced for what it is.

Pre-smoked it was amazing. Not sure why they ever decided to smoke it.

tnite's epic beer tasting (i think the proprietors was the best thing there tbh! so delicious)

https://scontent-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/1658207_10203234664375209_370360611_o.jpg

nice lineup!

wow!

i don't remember disliking the figaro, but i don't remember it standing out too much either. cascade has a tonnn of stuff available in bottle shops around here right now, including the mindblowing bourbonic plague. if anyone is interested in a trade for such things let me know (bourbonic plague is p limited iirc)

which hair of the dog is that?

besides maybe that bruery selection, the only other one i've tried is the fifty fifty eclipse (i forget which version). how did that compare to the bourbon county?

does yr ilxmail work?

the hair of the dog was probably the worst of the bunch - it was Michael. really overpowering booze taste. the bcbs proprietors was by far the best beer of the night - way superior to the four roses eclipse.

I am going to this (mostly because they have amazing cheap records for sale very year to benefit the station)

http://klcc.org/klcc-microbrew-festival-feb-7-8-2014

if u scroll down you will see a good list of the local breweries

L and I went out to Agrarian's tasting room this weekend, had some damn good beer (dry hopped pale for me, hoppy dark CDA type thing for her). also pork belly and white truffle pizza which was really good. They are 5 miles north of Coburg.

never had the michael, but that's unfortunate (esp at 6% abv, it's weird that the alcohol taste was so overpowering). usually i stick to the adam / adam of the wood and fred / fred of the wood, also the blue dot is surprisingly good for a sweeter imperial ipa. i have tried another flanders red from them, on tap and with much higer alcohol content than the michael, and remember it being delicious

have fond memories of eclipse as well, but i'd imagine that those vary quite a bit from batch to batch

cheap records + beer sounds like a good idea. sounds like a gotta check out agrarian too

and yes - my webmail works!

*i gotta check...

ok just tried ilxmailing you so let me know if you get it

Obligatory Hopslam acquired. Store that had it also had Surly Darkness for $30+ a bottle.