Beer in the new era

I was in the same store yesterday and that sour box had sold out almost immediately. They have singles available of the other 3. Talking to the guy who is the beer buyer there, I think he spends most of his paycheck on his own stock.

there's an artisanal cider thread, but since I come at this as a beer guy: really recommend basque cider if you're into sour beers. still, hazy, low ABV, bright apple flavors and a ton of notes similar to a great gueuze: hay, grass, pleasant mustiness, a bit of tang but not puckering. i really don't like most ciders (even craft ones); too sweet and not a fan of malic sour, but it's my understanding that basque cider goes through a malo-lactic conversion so you get a lacto kick instead of the norm for cider.

there's not much on the internet about this stuff (at least in English), but the liquor store around the corner from me has like 30 bottles of Txopinondo Sagarnoa which is delicious, and like $11/750ml. compared to $25/750ml and rushing to grab a bottle before the shipment moves, I'm feeling spoiled.

I love ciders, especially those that have the dankest barnyard essence. But I can never remember which ones they are, since I rarely drink them.

I like a good cider maybe once every three years, but usually when I see so many hogging the shelves or taking up space at the bar I'm all gtfo where's the beer.

xp didn't even realize barnyard was a thing in the cider world, this really pleases me.

anyone ever manage to try Aaron Burr cider? was driving upstate last week and popped into a store they list as selling their stuff, guy chuckled at my expectation that it was just sitting on the shelf. didn't realize the cider scene was so buzzing.

<3 ciders, mostly drink Vandermill, Seattle, & Citizen. Zeffer from NZ is really good too but a bit too much $ to buy regularly.

very interested in ciders, and your description of basque ciders is very intriguing to me franklin. I think the reason I haven't bought more is that the commercial ones are terrible and the craft ones are pricey and I don't know enough to venture in to th cider world.I should prob just read a couple reviews of the craft ones at my local store, or maybe talk to the staff or something

my favorite beers this year have all been cloudy musty sours with strong lacto or brett flavors so I imagine i would really dig ciders with similar profiles

Most Basque ciders (and some Breton/Brittany ones) are spontaneously fermented with wild yeast which is a technique shared with belgian lambics and geuzes. Also some natural wines but those are so over the top trendy I feel weird talking about them.

Some American cideries are starting to pitch wild yeast/spontaneously ferment with varying degrees of success, many centered around the Gravenstein orchards of Sonoma County, CA.

would love to hear about natural spontaneously fermented wines too tbh, I am so clueless about wine in general that any trendiness factor would be lost on me anyways

don't want to cloud the beer thread up with this too much, but def into idea of spontaneously fermented wines/brittany ciders.

actually "naturally fermenting" some cider right now. bought five gallons of unpasteurized cider from an orchard in PA, dumped it in a fermenting bucket and let the naturally-occuring yeast/bacteria do their thing (added some oak i have for homebrewing and dregs of basque cider because why not). made my living room reek of rotten eggs for two weeks, but a month later this is getting nice. word is they let it sit for 6 months in the basque tradition, so i'll give it until the spring to comment on it much. but cheap/easy as hell, $30 and little effort to get two cases of (hopefully) tasty stuff.

and fwiw my understanding of the difference b/w belgian lambics and "natural fermentation": belgian lambics "catch" the right bugs; you make your wort and let it sit exposed in a manner that the yeast/bacteria in the air will do work and make it tasty (the yeast/bacteria of the Zenne valley appear uniquely suited to do the job -- the yeast/bacteria of the DC area, per my few homebrew fuckups, do not). "natural fermentation" in cider (and presumably wine) is about the yeast/bacteria on the fruit/press doing work on their own. that can also end up pretty gross, depending on the fruit/press, but there's a distinction between the two processes afaict.

Just loaded the whole thread and did a grep and no mention of cicerones? http://cicerone.org/

Seriously I would love to become a sommelier of beers. Except it probably requires learning to appreciate shit like peanut butter stouts, so fuck it.

What do folks think about Habenero Sculpin? I've seen some takes that were like, whoa, my mouth is on fire, I can't drink this! But I have also seen people say certain barrel stouts were as strong as bourbon, which of course is crazy talk.

I don't like it. It's hot enough to seem like a gimmick rather than a serious beer variation.

i'm not a fan tbh, i'm okay w/ some chili peppers in beer if it's done right but really i just don't like any of the ballast point ipas

i didn't think the heat was that intense (but i'm pretty tolerant of spicy foods), i just don't like the sculpin base so adding habaneros wasn't going to do much for the beer imo anways

I do like Sculpin, btw.

I haven't had it. I liked the grapefruit version.

I did taste another flavored Ballast Point the other day, Ginger Big Eye, and it was not good.

had another grimm beer recently, "super symmetry", a "dry-hopped gose brewed with lemon zest", very different from other goses i've had, the sourness was out of control, it was only 4.8% but i was blown away by the complexity. overall it was a fabulous beer. grimm is 2/2 for me on their wild ale/sour trip, i've been very impressed. i have "rainbow dome" in my fridge and will try it this weekend.

Hated habby sculppy.

OK, tried it, and ugh, the Habenero Sculpin is one of the worst beers I've ever had. I can honestly say I can't think of a single context or situation in which I would drink it, and that includes dehydration.

Enjoying barrel aged narwhal tonight.

I caved and opened my bottle of Revolution Gravedigger Billy tonight, it may be better than Backwoods Bastard. Very smooth, smells boozier than it drinks. I didn't feel bad about opening it because, like the other barrel aged Revs, I'm nearly certain I can get another bottle or two easily.

OK, tried it, and ugh, the Habenero Sculpin is one of the worst beers I've ever had. I can honestly say I can't think of a single context or situation in which I would drink it, and that includes dehydration.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, October 19, 2015 8:18 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Glad I didn't buy that yesterday along with the grapefruit, I guess. I am sort of a fan of habanero margaritas.

I like the grapefruit a lot. The hab tasted like peppers and that's about it. Like if you emptied a bottle of sculpin, filled the bottle with peppers, then filled it with water.

Non-East Coast beers I tried in SF a few months back, ranked:
1. Deschutes Freshly-Squeezed
2. Pliny the Elder

I'm not that fond of the grapefruit sculpin either, though I like it more than the habby. As I was drinking the habanero one I thought, if I wanted chili peppers I'd get some tortilla chips and habanero salsa and eat them with a regular sculpin.

Habenero sculpin also seems completely inconsistent wrt heat level from instance to instance. I just don't think they did it very well at all - controlling consistent pepper heat content in brewing is actually super hard even on a small brew level, let alone large scale. Pretty much a bad idea most of the time.

Eve then, we're not talking jalepenos, we're talking habeneros. Those things are so much hotter; some dish I made with them years back, I didn't wear gloves and my hands burned for a few days. There's no way to control that.

I will stand up as the only person on ILX who really digs Habenero Sculpin. All y'all are pussies.

my brother loves that beer, too, he was surprised i didn't like it since we both like hot peppers

honestly it has nothing to do with the heat, it is just a bad beer imo

i know i've said this before but i get kind of bored/irritated by breweries that are like:

ipa
double ipa
imperial ipa
flavored ipa
different flavored ipa
session ipa
belgian ipa
black ipa

there are different styles of beer other than ipas y'all

(and yea i know ballast point has different styles)

do you get irritated by breweries that only make farmhouse ales?

i know i've said this before but i get kind of bored/irritated by breweries that are like:

ipa
double ipa
imperial ipa
flavored ipa
different flavored ipa
session ipa
belgian ipa
black ipa

there are different styles of beer other than ipas y'all

hey cut 3 floyds some slack

also gtfo with this "pussies" bs

xxp cad haha no so i fully admit this is a personal bias, i find farmhouse ales more interesting generally

Yeah, it's not that the beer was spicy, it was just disgusting. I want more than pepper from my beer. Fortunately, I bought it at Trader Joe's so I can return the other 5 bottles!

I'm ok with breweries making all the ipas. Go with what you're good at.

yeah if you can be alpine or knee deep or something that's great, smaller shops that feel the need to touch on a ton of styles usually don't end up succeeding at many of them.

nanobrewery down the street from me opened 2 months ago with a saison and a kolsch and an ipa and a belgian ipa and an english pale ale, guess what none of them are good.

yea i think it is more that ipas are just a ubiquitous style in craft now and many of them are not good, just many unimaginative variations on hops and it gets old

agree though there are many breweries that have a narrow focus and that is a good thing if they know what they are doing

I'm not huge on Habanero Sculpy, the only time I truly loved it was when I had the idea to cut it with clamato... something I'd never do with any other beer. But Ballast Point seems to be a weird target of ire esp compared to Stone & Green Flash. BP's coffee/vanilla porter is a world-class shelf-beer available in 6-packs or bombers. They also made an Indian-spiced beer a couple years ago that I thought was pretty bold.

This is an amazing time to be a beer drinker, particularly if you are a fan of pale ales. There are breweries that churn out line-ups of legendary pale ales by the half-/full-dozens: Alpine, Boneyard, Russian River, Block 15, Treehouse, Maine Beer Company, Cellarmaker, hell even Lagunitas, Surly and Bell's. Even the best barrel-aged saison brewers in the USA also make world-class IPAs (HF: Abner, Double Citra; SARA: Simpleton).

Maybe a nice segue into some hoppy sours which seem to be a good middle ground:

Cantillon Iris: fresh & dry hopped, pale ale malted, then spontaneously fermented like a lambic would be (then fresh-hopped again?)
Cantillon Cuvee St. Gilloise: gueuze blend that undergoes a 3 week cask dry hopping
Prairie Funky Gold Mosaic: bretty/lacto saison that gets dry hopped in copious Mosaic hops
The Rare Barrel Egregious: Oak-aged golden sour dry-hopped with Amarillo
DeGarde Hose: Gose aged in wine barrels with coriander, citrus peel and various hop blends

I really like Habanero Sculpin. Only had it on draft though.
I think pepper beers are likely to get overwhelming in bottles/cans for too long - I like Sonoma Cider's "The Crowbar" as well (on draft) but I'm not buying even a 4-pack of it.

Yesterday I ordered the "Bonfire" cider by Millstone, a super premium cidery in Maryland, they make really good stuff but this was definitely more of an after-dinner drink, 10% ABV and made with clover honey and "fish peppers" - a Mid-Atlantic staple, not normally super hot but pretty close to overpowering in a cider.

xp speaking of which I really like Hop Valley's new pale ale

Speaking of Alpine, had the Hoppy Birthday and Duet, as brewed by Green Flash now. Duet was pretty good, but Hoppy Birthday was like..... this is supposed to be a world class beer? Perhaps not as good as those by Alpine themselves? Too old?

Green Flash brewed Alpine is... not so good and frankly embarrassing for the Alpine folks. Massive quality control issues from what I've heard through the rumor mills. I think the founder of Green Flash recently resigned in fact.

Also Ballast Point filed for IPO yesterday... bucking the trend for micros being taken over by macros!

Otter Creek Overgrown is a good pale ale with lots of complex hops flavor without being too bitter. They tend to taste pretty fresh around here - I guess the distribution is good to the Northeast.