Beer in the new era

I've got 3 of each left, Jeff, we should have a beer sometime soon.

You bet! It's about time at had just you and R over, shoot me a message and we'll coordinate.

Is the Beer Camp 12-pack to this thread what a Daft Punk release is to ILM? Who's going to bring up Michael Jackson?

Speaking of which just had the beer camp supplementary bomber (west coast double ipa) and it was totally awful. Avoid.

i'm doing the beer camp thing now too lol. the belgian pale with allagash is definitely something i wish i could find year round with sn-level distribution, and i'd probably pick up a six pack of the oskar blues rye bock thing too. pretty great to have this many choices all in a box at home

I found more at a supermarket last week and bought 2 boxes @ $25 each. Yesterday I was in the same market and they still had one left.

i was into the beer camp thing until i heard they were gonna be 25 bucks each and i'd have to hunt for them. shit is ridiculous. i used to work at a fancier bottle shop in MPLS and dudes would beat certain distributor's trucks to the store by 10 minutes and asking us where different releases were. like 9am asking where Backwoods Bastard was and shit. like, truck chasers are totally a thing, it's not an exaggeration in the slightest

^ that is crazy, tho i do have to admit i get the impulse to follow the boneyard trucks whenever i spot one

but beer camp does not seem like something you'd have to hunt for? i've seen boxes everywhere, pretty much anywhere that updates their stock consistently and sells sierra nevada beers... has it been harder to find in other regions?

of course the supermarket i picked mine up at also had (has?) peche n brett in stock for some glorious reason, perhaps this is not a representative sample

it wasn't very hard to find here

Yeah, I found it at my local supermarket without even looking. And the price is a bit steep, but still totally worth it.

Gone everywhere as far as I can tell in Mpls/STpl on the first day, maybe not in ringer suburban stores

I haven't seen it, but the only supermarket I've been to recently is trader joes. Or using peapod.

I bought it at Whole Foods for $25. Didn't seem steep for a 12-pack -- I buy plenty of $12 6-packs.

i spotted it several times in michigan too. i thought that was kind of the point, working with breweries that have limited distro and making the results available pretty much nationwide

the more i think about the choice of beer styles in this thing the more i love it; all these breweries that have built their reputations on imperial stouts and IPAs and sours and whatnot making bocks and altbiers and english bitters and pales. beer nerds predictably respond with indifference because their beloved styles are not represented, but how the hell could you not enjoy all these easy-drinkin' throwbacks? definitely feeling jon/via/chi and cad's perspective... the more ppl talk shit, the more i wanted to do this thing

i have to drink 3 more before i can talk about the whole box but so far i'd say one has been dull, 7 have been at least interesting, and one has been borderline excellent.

xp - Yeah, the Ballast Point 12-pack samplers are actually a little more here (though commonly discounted to the low 20s).

My local WF is having a Beer Camp tasting on Aug 28. Haven't seen it for sale there, but I assume they'll bring some.

ballast point seems to be taking the rogue model of egregiously-priced 6-packs to the extreme. $15 for a sixer of anything seems crazy to me unless i'm in a manhattan convenience store or smthg

they make good beer but it says something when their beer is relatively a better deal in a bar than it is in a store.

yeah, good but overpriced imo

After an initial sixer or two of Sculpin I've only ever consumed their beer in bars.

i still have never tried sculpin for this reason

Sculpin is great. Habanero Sculpin, not so much for me.

It is really good but it's at least 33% more per 12oz than a lot of other beers that aren't that different. The only other ballast point I've had was the dorado double IPA which I really did no like.

No luck finding Beer Camp in Atlanta last weekend but I did pick up a few other bottles, including the La Folie I'm drinking right now -- I LOVE this. Also got the Kriek that was $15 in Tupelo for $12.50 at Total Wine (or Green's).

I went to Total Wine for the first time last weekend and found the Ommegang Glimmerglass (4-pack for $10) that some mentioned loving, hadn't seen it anywhere previously. I liked it well enough but I guess I'm not a Saison fan because it didn't bowl me over. Also found an Anderson Valley whiskey barrel aged (Boont Barl?) that was lower abv than the previous two I've found, pretty nice. There are 8 or 10 Total Wine stores around LA, but none less than a 30-minute drive from me.

I don't get these "Not a Saison Fan" people. What are you doing with your lives between May–October?

they're drinking session ipa, gose, light lager, assorted shitty 'summer ales'....

i love saisons and other farmhouse ales, they are my fave summer drink THOUGH I STILL DRINK A LOT OF IPAs...

WilliamC - I had a La Folie last week when ilxor elmo argonaut was visiting. I had brought it home from California not realizing it was available in Jersey (though Jersey is close, honestly, I can't remember the last time I was there.)

oh right the last time i was in jersey was cuz i accidentally went thru the holland tunnel while trying to circle around to helen's office building.

Still doesn't explain being "Not a Saison" person. It is kind of like those cilantro people who eat everything else but claim to have this allergy, awareness of which the parsley & thyme council has spuriously funded. With this kind of person you have to suspect a) media gullibility, or b) deep personal weakness.

It's the "yeastyness" (I think that's what it would be described as) that can be off-putting to me, when it's the predominant flavor. I don't really care for Duvel, or even Chimay (the two most available Belgians in the US, from what I've seen) for this reason, though there are many Belgians I do like.

IPAs and other ales, lagers, stouts (they're not just for winter, damnit!) keep me well-refreshed all year long.

lol I am an evangelical saison convert but I don't call people out for preferring other stuff. Like, I don't really ever drink hoppy IPAs but I'm a human being too.

Belgian yeasts are a huge turnoff for me, not really into any of that saison/farmhouse/sour stuff, sorry. I got sick off of Pranqster once like 15 years ago and I just don't like any of it, I can taste the yeast instantly.

I don't get these "Not a Saison Fan" people. What are you doing with your lives between May–October?

― fields of salmon, Wednesday, July 30, 2014 4:30 PM

drinking the hoppiest pale ales I can find, looking for decent ISAs other that Hop Valley's Proxima

I like sours (Cuvee de Jacobins, La Folie), I think it's the yeastiness with much else going on that I don't like.

Ones I like: Orval, Gulden Draak, Delirium, and many others that I haven't had enough times to remember the names of.

Saisons. Saison Brett is one of my top 5 beers ever.

At least tonight.

it's not really that crazy to not be into saisons.

this tastes saison-y. guy at the bottle shop marketed it that way but now i see it is technically a "belgian ipa". it's good though.

http://beerpulse.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/stillwater-IBU.png

Can't believe we drifted off topic from Beer Camp!

Bons Voeux from Dupont is my gold standard saison and a beer I still get excited for its release every year. Spending time in Belgium helped me acquire for taste for the rustic farmhouse styles as all the Abbey ales got old pretty old quick, whereas in South Flanders and Wallonia the brewing style was much more experimental and radical to my younger self.

i am a HUGE fan of saisons but i'm definitely finding that i prefer the less sweet, more intensely yeast-driven stuff. i thought the off color apex predator that dan m sent was a pretty good example of this, it had a nice lemony, grassy funk that came through the lighter body. very surprising that it was over 6%. old favorites like great divide colette and other easily available local stuff has put me off a bit lately for being too thick and too sweet for summer (maybe it's just been a really hot summer)

maybe it's just been a really hot summer

it sure as hell has been hot in the Willamette Valley!

Apex predator has been my summer beer.

that being said i think the higher abv saisons are perfect for summer nights, peche n brett i <3 u

Did a Prairie Bomb! vertical last night: batch 2, batch 3 and current. Surprisingly the coffee holds up with aging and overall really gets silky and nuanced. The batch 3 was a bit of a chocolate bomb and made me check the label to make sure it wasn't barrel aged. Basically sit on these for at least 18 months.

Does anybody need 2014 Parabola? I found a small shop that's sitting on a few boxes...

Related, somewhat: my local shop has a few DBAs left that have sat on the shelf for more than a week.

Er, DDBAs I suppose.

hey cad, what's your experience (if any) with Night Shift Brewing? Just had their Viva Habanero over the weekend and it was kind of life-changing

xp Al, where in Jersey is that Parabola shop, I'm interested

xp in general i think it would be nice if they had figured out what they were good at by now but given their comically large new brewery/tasting room i guess their current formula is working.

their fruited berlinerweisse series is outstanding, and apparently some of their one-off experiments have worked really well. but their hoppy beers are essentially just sort of bad, and i've had things like a "stout" aged in wine barrels that were drainworthy.

i guess that sounds more negative than i mean, they seem like good guys and i could see them turning out a bunch of really good stuff, without the bad stuff in between, sometime soon.