Beer in the new era

You wanna see overpriced: http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/clt/4283953816.html

According to those prices I gave away ~$250 of the shit on Xmas presents alone.

that map is beautiful and amazingly detailed.

ugh, those ppl are scum xp

I still have a cherry rye. I'm going to sell it for one million dollars.

Sierra Nevada ruthless rye ipa is really great.

otm

that map is great! so many places i either did not know about or had mentally dismissed... and yet there are definitely things missing too

and as crazy as that craigslist post is, i have a feeling that restaurants will start to mark up rare bottles of beer like they do with wine and those types of prices will become more and more common

definitely - i can think of a couple beer bars that have bottles cellared longterm (and priced accordingly)

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/t_ku-xlarge/19e26dfsn6lq0jpg.jpg

Yeah, I definitely see the high priced bottles in restaurants sometimes. Like $70 for a bottle of Cantillion, $50 for a BCBS variant. Even $40-45 for some stuff like the Founders Backstage series. I'm probably not going to pay $40-45 for a Doom or Boltcutter.

Churchkey is bad about this. I mean just look at the last three pages of their bottle list. http://churchkeydc.com/documents/BBCKONLINEBOTTLELIST1-2-14.pdf

i was thinking of churchkey especially, as well as torst (i recall seeing some cantillon bottles on their menu, admittedly a couple years old, for $100+)

pizzeria paradiso in dc does this too, though their markups are much more reasonable iirc

i think we paid $75 for mamouche at torst. that's a $35 bottle at retail so given typical bar markup + brooklyn i thought it was a totally ok price.

anyway i'd much rather pay $70 for a bottle of something that's likely to be excellent/almost impossible to get in a store than pay $45 for garbage like founders backstage.

Yeah, me too. I'll pretty much but a Cantillon bottle anytime.

yup (i think i paid in the neighborhood of $60 for a fou'foune at torst and thought the same thing - a 2x markup is pretty standard)

http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140131/NEWS07/140139966

Cool. For some reason last year there was a real glut of the original stuff. This year, less of a glut, and the even more limited stuff was as limited as ever. I can't imagine they'd seriously up production of stuff like the coffee or backyard or whatever, though obviously it would be great if they did.

Last year and this year seem about the same in regards to availability of regular. But then again I mostly shop in north side city shops, which are picked through rather quickly.

i read a rumor that they lost a batch of coffee to infection and tend to believe it

Yeah, that seems to happen. Central Waters had some issues last year, too.

Last year there were literally piles and piles of BCBS stacked up at the South Loop Binny's. I did not see that this year. I've also seen more people than usual breaking up the four-packs and selling them my bottle.

http://www.nwitimes.com/news/local/lake/munster/major-expansion-brewing-at-three-floyds/article_44cfb252-7227-5287-acde-fb2315c46c09.html

They keep saying that, but since the last expansion the stuff has been weirdly scarce for long stretches.

They were going to open a place in Chicago too but that never happened.

https://fbcdn-sphotos-b-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/t31/1412362_10152153266146738_863572903_o.jpg

After hibernating for six months in bourbon barrels, we’re excited to report that we will release Bourbon Barrel-Aged Troegenator at the brewery on Thu. 2/6 at 11am. The barrel-aging process has transformed Troegenator into a lush Double Bock with undertones of vanilla, oak, and toasted coconut amid a warm blanket of tangy bourbon notes. BBA Troegenator is packaged in 750mL cork and cage bottles and available only at the brewery through the General Store for take-out as well as our Tasting Room for on-premise consumption. The price per bottle is $17.99 and there is a two (2) bottle limit per person.

Normal Troegenator alone is like one of the best double bocks i've ever had so this sounds amazing. I'm going to try to head out there Thursday morning to snag some bottles.

sierra nevada ovila is seriously one of the shittiest beers i have ever had, thank god i didnt get suckered into buying a 4 pack

ugh yeah, the plum stuff? i had a bottle last year.

and i am far from a sierra nevada hater but christ man, yuuuuuuccckk

the plums werent even the issue, the base beer was just awful, and the plums sure didnt help. idk wtf they were thinking honestly.

i don't get why they still make a beer that doesn't play to their strengths at all

tried Three Sheeps Ewephoria (ginger chocolate stout) last night, really liked it. super gingery.

also Central Waters Bourbon Barrel Barleywine is amazing.

barrel-aged troegenator sounds delicious

totally predictable yet totally devastating news - http://www.wweek.com/portland/blog-31196-northeast_portland_speakeasy_deans_scene_closed.html

NOOOoooo

Smuttynose Rhye, fantastically earthy/hoppy. Going to buy this again.

Saw that at WF today, I was more curious about their Scotch Ale. Anyone had that?

Although once I realized what the Homunculus label was I was thinking, this is clown shoes territory.

Also I have to say I bought a SN Ovila 4-pack a month or so ago, drank all 4, and didn't find it bad.

x-p to myself

http://smuttynose.com/_Media/homunculus.jpg

Had a bunch from Ale Asylum last night, which are new to the market. Really liked the Bedlam.

Ale Asylum is a brewpub in Madison, WI, right? If so I was taken there by my in-laws last year. The beer seemed fine, if unremarkable.

Bumped into a bottle of Sucaba the other day.

I hope the bottle is ok. You should drink it.

It's always nice when you find something on the shelf you're not looking for (in the active hunting sense). Find it a bit funny that DDBA sits around for a while (out here) but Sucaba still goes fast.

i bumped the homebrewing thread if anyone is interested - i'd love to chat about homebrewing over there...

I bought a bottle of Sucuba the other day - I like beer and all but I've learned I'm not that obsessive about it and don't really care about collecting or anything - but elsewhere on the internet dan m quoted a friend who said "when you see Firestone in a box, you buy it" which stuck with me for some reason. I think there were at least four others available at the time, pondering going back to grab at least another one.

If I wanted to hold on to this for a while, what's the proper procedure? Keep it in the fridge or is that too cold? How long does one age something like this?

cellar it - no fridge. put it in a closet ~70 degrees would be perfect.

i've got a firestone parabola + an anniversary ale aging

fridge is fine if you have space, but it will change more slowly in there. you just don't want it to get extremely warm or to fluctuate in temp a lot. if you have a cellar or basement in your house you can probably just throw it down there and not worry. make sure it isn't in direct sunlight.

you don't need to age it at all, but it will mellow out a bit after a year or so and will be drinkable for at least 5 years. i haven't had a beer (at least not a non-lambic/gueuze beer) that actually improved after at 3 years plus.

I save beer not really to experience any sort of change, but really just to enjoy a beer I like at a later date. But still, drinking beer fresh is almost always preferable to me.

I don't really have a good storage area either. I keep it in a closet and it's dark, but the temp can vary. Everything I've tasted that I had through the summer seems to have held up well though.

We just moved, and our new house has this bonus semi-insulated closet in the basement. In the winter (well, at least this winter) it chills white wine down to pretty much perfect serving temperature. It has been hypothesized that in the summer, it will be perfect red temperature. In any case, it's a pretty great place to keep beer. Whiskey, not so much, but it gives me an excuse to let a glass sit a bit while it warms up.