Beer in the new era

I am having a beer. Off Color Bare Bear.

I am having a beer, too. Bell's Expedition Stout.

Had the PtY, and also a Russian River Supplication, a sour, wine barrel aged beer, which I liked even better.

new holland/night tripper imperial stout - boooooooze. this is fantastic tbh, i like bitter boozey ashy imperial stouts and this one also nails the right mouthfeel.

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, April 23, 2014 10:01 PM (10 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a delightful byproduct of new holland distributing here is that 4-packs of this beer just showed up. best non-ba imperial stout i've had.

2014 New Holland Blue Sunday Sour? Fucking amazing.

Dark Lord? Prepare for blasphemy. Ehhh.

Supplication mmmmm

I tried that Hop Hunter, it was OK? I feel like I could at least taste the "fresh distilled hop oil" flavor.

picked up a 6-pack of Racer 5 in NorCal over the weekend, what a solid and drinkable supermarket IPA. I don't see it around on tap so much anymore.

I love racer 5 but it's totally vanished from my area, haven't seen it in at least two years. The beer guy at my hippie co-op said they had some distribution problems but I don't know if that was everywhere or just here.

xps Ooooh 4 packs? I'm going to have to keep an eye peeled for those. I love that stuff and it'd be nice to have it in smaller than bomber volume. I recently drank a bottle of Night Tripper that I had in my beer closet for almost a year; I'm still a little unconvinced about aging beer but it was damn good either way.

Also there was apparently a one-off BA version of it, too: http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/335/77438/

cad where are you seeing new holland? my local stores don't have it :(

haven't had racer 5 in a while but i do remember it being pretty good

new holland six packs popped up at most of my normal places in camb/somerville (downtown, pemberton, etc.) but night tripper i've only seen at ball sq. fine wine.

yea i need a better beer store. west rox isn't great for liquor stores, though i guess there is a blanchard's but it seems far from where i live and consistently charges $1-2 more whatever it is i'm buying. JP has a very small but cool store (http://streetcarwines.com/) but it is also a little pricier

streetcar is one of the stores that gets trillium bottles i think so pick those up if you haven't

oh yea will do, i didn't know that

people are loving the cigar city/sam black church collaboration beer "captain of the world" but i COULD NOT HANG. it could have been my pre-knowledge of the brewing secret ingredient (not listed on the can) but all i could taste was rosemary. other ppl love it tho, so wtf do i know.

I don't like herby beers. DFH saison du buff is one of the worst liquids I've ever tasted.

i think i agree with that general statement. i am not a fan of stillwater's "cellar door" which has white sage... thought it was groosssss

I've had Epic's sage beer and like it, but it's rare that I'm in the mood for that.

New Glarus Enigma lived up to the name.

Surly is back in Chicago, with Abrasive and Doomtree in tow

Wait, hasn't Surly been back for a couple of years now?

I heard they temporarily stopped selling here because they couldnt keep up with sales in MN.

Hmm, that answers some questions!

A song of beer and weed: How Lagunitas dodged a drug bust to become a craft beer powerhouse, by Sam Laird
http://mashable.com/2015/03/08/lagunitas-beer-st-patricks-day-massacre/

grimm's tesseract double IPA... goddamn. don't think they are bottlign this one (yet?)

wonder whose palms they greased to get out of that one xp

btw is lagunitas night time any good? saw it the other day and considered

Had it the other night and enjoyed it.

Night Time is an excellent beer and I'm glad to see it in 6 packs over bombers. Deeply malty and hoppy CDA, one of my favorites in the style.

I made it down to Engine House No. 9 in Tacoma for their bottle release; expect to start hearing a lot about their wild ale/sour program. The Raspberry AWA fell just short of Supplication, but not by much.

engine house no 9 has been pretty decent in my experience, wld like to try more

so i've unfortunately had to move far far away from the amazing prices and quality pnw beer has to offer, been struggling to transition to the far far more expensive if still fairly robust brooklyn beer scene. there is definitely good stuff out here, but holy shit @ $10 / beer at certain bars!

Well, I only managed to snag one ticket, but I'll be getting even closer to my 5-year vertical for Dark Lord.

Night time is indeed awesome, restored my faith in that style after getting burned a few times

Is Parabola around yet (or have I already missed it)? Supposed to have a March release.

I think ... March 23th? So sometime around then.

made my way to the newly opened threes brewing in gowanus last night, super impressive! unreliable narrator is some seriously top notch east-coast style hop goodness, incredibly fresh with a great balance of bitter to sweet for a single ipa. also the voluntary exile was one of the best baltic porters i've tasted in quite a while, not overly malty and has a pleasant roastiness you usually don't find with that style

somehow parabola is the only limited fw thing i have yet to taste, other than as a part of the recent sucaba blends i guess. based on my experiences with velvet mocha merlin, velvet merkin, and other stout-y things from that brewery i have fairly low expectations (tho i hear parabola is very different)

There's no Parabola in Sucaba. You mean the Anniversary blends? Anyway, Parabola is pretty incredible, basically on par (to my taste) with Bourbon County Stout for the peak ultra-rich BA stout.

I still have the one I traded you for. When will I ever drink it?????

yes, i meant the anniversary blends, which have been pretty incredible lately.

yea I've never tried parabola but I haven't been terribly impressed with any of the other 3 or 4 firestone walker beers I've tried

OverratedTM

Of their barrel-aged beers I've had Sucaba, Parabola, and DBA, and I think DBA was the best. That may have been situational, though.

I spent a couple hours at Lagunitas tap room today, they had an oat pale ale and a rye barrel-aged stout on draft that were both much better than a lot of their standard offerings. Nice space, too.

I am drinking a standard Lagunitas IPA right now

a lot of the FW limited stuff is pretty legit but i do agree that the price and hype are generally disproportionate to the quality. feel like the hype has a lot to do with how long they've been making beers like that (distro is obv important too), same goes for russian river and deschutes and all sorts of first-wave west coast craft brewers. i guess they get points for originality? idk. somehow north coast has escaped this fate and continues to make tasty underrated and highly distributed stuff like old stock and old rasputin, north coast rules

speaking of overrated - nugget nectar. wtf. is it just that it's not fresh at this point?

otm about north coast. old rasputin is such a reliable and consistent imperial stout, one of the best imo. Had it on draft yesterday

also otm about nugget nectar, troegs in general is not that great. I have the "troegenator" (such a terrible name btw) in my fridge now and I was excited about an American doppelbock that is highly rated but it is just not that great imo

i'm sure i've said this before but anything fw puts in a barrel is well worth drinking. their standard lineup is perfectly good too but it runs into price/freshness issues here.

north coast really isn't that different, they have very good beers that can sit for years on a shelf and then they have red seal ale, when was the last time you even thought about red seal or scrimshaw?

nugget nectar is a great example of a beer seemed very innovative like 8 years ago but isn't going to impress too many people nowadays.

i was mainly thinking about the old stock and old rasputin variants wrt north coast, i see red seal and scrimshaw on shelves all the time but have never even considered purchasing them much less forming an opinion

and ok the history/context definitely helps makes sense of nugget nectar. i remember some mild excitement over IRAs a few years back so i'm sure an "imperial amber" was pretty unique 8 years ago, especially such a hop-forward one.