Beer in the new era

i had a few shots at it here, but between being sick this week and not wanting to go through great lengths for 1-2 12 oz. bottles i passed on them all.

My folks live in middle of nowhere Michigan but the store with the best beer selection in the area got 6 cases of the shit. Half the price it was selling for in Chicago.

yeah i don't think any stores here got more than a case

btw dan i'm drinking the first of those hopslams you sent--super intense, not really high on drinkability, but the flavor is outstanding

Went to one of my favorite local stores to enter a lottery to buy a bottle. They were only selling 20, and about 50 to 60 ppl showed up. Didn't get one but had tons of tastings. 2 years of KBS, 3 years of backwoods bastard, Great Lakes Barrel aged blackout stout, Westy XII, bolt cutter and a few more. Great little event, wish more stores would drop the first come first serve or buddy system and do it this way. Everyone leaves happy and I bet they sell a ton of beer.

how was bolt cutter??

It was very sweet! I didn't get a huge taste, but I don't think I could have taken much. I never had it when it 1st came out, so I can't compare. Didn't taste much barrel at all. So not great, but interesting.

got one bottle of KBS today, and a very nice customer brought us two cans of heady topper....!

I know this is the beer drinking and not the beer brewing thread but we just opened a saison we made and holy crap and had an earnest discussion abt starting a brewery. So not (prob) going to happen, but 2 dudes with lucrative jobs that they hate plus some dumb dude who owns a guitar store, stranger things have happened.

sounds like the descriptions of the majority of dudes who have started breweries around here in the past three years

Brought it to my beer nerd local store and dudes flipped out over it. Which I would assume was just politeness if I hadn't brought 40 other homebrews over the years that they verbally didn't give 2 shits about, including the other 3 I brought by at the same time. Plus they are generally saison haters.

:D

YSI?

Some local dudes out here trying to get their brewery/bar off the ground want to focus on session beers and other low ABV beers, complaining of alcohol creep in craft beer that makes it hard to hang out and drink more than one or two of these knock you on your butt beers. I sort of get their point, but on the other hand, a craft beer bar that specializes only in weak beer ...

http://www.notchbrewing.com/

what's up w/ brewery tasting rooms closing so early? i don't expect them to have bar hours, but so many close at like 5 or 6 PM!

Just don't leave. Stand your ground Mordy.

Having the Stone Stochasticity Project Grapefruit Slam IPA tonight--decided between that and the 4.20, both at Plum Market. (I don't follow beer super-closely but wanted to get something tonight and have liked Stone a lot.) IPA made with grapefruit peel and tasty and interesting, not to face-scrunchingly grapefruit.

drinking a Hop Valley Citrus Slam right now, same deal (made w/grapefruit peel), delicious

oops that's Citrus Mistress, not Slam

#GrapefruitBros

went to a bottle share tnite armed w/ a bottle of spencer trapist beer + framinghammer vanilla from jack's abby. thx to cad for the contributions bc drinking tnite was excellent. highlights were petit mutant and focal banger from alchemist, feral one by firestone (so danky), melange no. 1 from the bruery, upland's strawberry lambic (this was really out of this world delicious)... can i just say unironically while i'm still drunk that i love beer + it is all so good. bless.

Hoppy beers and problems...as I approach forty anytime I drink anything relatively hoppy i end up with a massive headache after two. THIS IS NOT IDEAL.

I wonder why that would be? Is it the hops, type of hops, ABV? Dehydration?

I have no idea, its killing my beer drinking. I would assume its dehydration since I drink nothing but caffeine and beer. Haha.

http://www.cvs.com/shop/product-detail/CVS-Stress-Formula-Tablets-With-Zinc?skuId=217208

Friend of mine swears by these things esp in relation to 40-ish drinking.

hmm, thats worth a shot.

You know, I like those things too, in general. I get mine from Whole Foods, and at the very least they turn your urine the brightest, richest (in both senses) orange/yellow.

Caffeine/beer could do it, though in the case of coffee its diuretic properties are I think strictly in the make-you-pee sense, no worse than a lot of water. But alcohol will accelerate dehydration.

i do notice if i take my old man multi-vitamin the headaches aren't as bad.

got a photo of last night's tasting:

https://scontent-b-iad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-prn2/t1.0-9/10172796_10152009120750036_2043793757_n.jpg

Hoppy beers and problems...as I approach forty anytime I drink anything relatively hoppy i end up with a massive headache after two. THIS IS NOT IDEAL.

i'm approaching my thirties and this basically killed my craft/"good" beer drinking hobby.. i drink ridiculous amounts of water all day but as soon as a get a taste of something hoppy, i feel dehydrated.

because of this, i tend to prefer your cheap beer variety: old style/schlitz/hamms/pbr because they are clear, light, and refreshing. can anyone in thread recommend maybe some upgraded beers of this variety?

I've taken to watching the occasional ep. of one of the many youtube beer review shows, this one where the dudes blind taste brews so as not to be swayed by hype. The results are pretty fun, though the best rated beers tend to be, you know, rated the best. But I think that attests to the generally high level of brewing going on right now, anyway. I like it when one of the guys absolutely nails a guess at the ABV or some other superhero skill that is eons beyond me.

link? i've done quite a few blind taste tests, they're a lot of fun and a good way to confirm your suspicions (with the caveat that freshness is at play when you're dealing with big IPAs and also palate fatigue).

Here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WTeflNpMbyY

i still need to try zombie dust. love the label.

Shit, not that one. He bugs me. Hold on ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FZM1XhZlfag

Or this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zznVhHDEeYA

xxxp Wait, did you post the wrong video?

Yeah, not Beer Geek Nation, these other ones from Better Beer Authority.

Hahaha, I was like... ummm this is one of the worst reviewers I've ever seen (just keep repeating "bitter, fruity, astringent and biscuit" while gesticulating wildly for 5 minutes).

Ok, the Dark Lord BBA was a great episode (and also confirmed a lot of suspicions, heh).

jfc mordy i am super jealous of that tasting. how the hell can you taste that much and remember anything about it / not spew?

even drunk i find that talking about beer while you drink it helps you remember different tastes. i don't remember every single beer there, but i do remember the standouts. i loved: rook & leer, the upland lambic, hunapu (so hot/spicy!) and gga (tasted like sweet potato pie), the peche was a peach bomb, the petit mutant was the alchemist standout (i don't really remember the other can), the feral one was probably the funkiest sourest thing of the night - firestone totally nailed their first sour, the spencer was surprisingly spiced, reminded me of a saison, and also historical!, in general i wasn't in love w/ the barleywines tho other ppl were very enthusiastic. you're right tho, looking over these bottles some of them i can barely remember. but the ones i loved i loved even at the end of the evening (and after we took a vigorous 420 break). oh yeah, the bruery stuff was fantastic as well, tho all very reminiscent of their tart of darkness. all those dark, stouty, barrel aged sours have a similar taste to me. i think my fave of that genre is the pnc elevator.

also i thought for sure by the time i got home that i was gonna spew - everything was pretty spinny. but i put on Alvin Lucier's I Am Sitting in a Room and laid down on the couch and it lulled me to sleep. no spewing! yay!

lol, yeah i'd imagine that after all that sugary/strong/spicy/sour in a row everything would start to blend together but it seems more than worth it cause how the hell else are you gonna get ahold of that all stuff otherwise

this thread needs more METAL MADMAN content

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6uRUqHKlA4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJxraH7HbSw

Costco had an IPA variety case for $28 -- Torpedo, Snow Wit ("White IPA"), a Black IPA whose name I forget, and the Nooner "Session IPA." I've always liked Torpedo and so far the White IPA and Black IPA are very solid, so I feel it was a good deal. The Session IPA I'm guessing is going to be the weak link. The White IPA is especially nice because it's really dry.

the session ipa was pretty good!