Beer in the new era

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.

When I returned the Habenero Sculpin to Trader Joe's, the staffer there started laughing and told me they were taking an informal poll of who liked it. So far it was 4 nos and 1 yes. A second later the yes came by, so I asked the yes what she liked about it. "I don't know," she said. "I like spicy stuff." It's not the heat that's the problem, I said, it's that it's gross and barely tastes like beer. "Yeah," she conceded. "It's like pepper water." (Which is how I had described it to her coworker). "But I think it would be good for cooking chili." No argument, I said. But that's like praising a wine for being good to cook with. You don't say that about the best wines, only the stuff not good enough to drink.

She's right, though, it would make a good beer for cooking chili.

habAnero

AAAAAAA

hey gabbers, if you want to go around correcting the spelling of every ILX post you've got a long job ahead of you. better hurry!

otter creek rules still tho i've neglected to get any overgrown this season

The idea of returning beer is very lol to me.

Likewise, though I have to admit if I bought a sixer of the Hab Sculpin I'd be seriously considering it. That, or bringing it to the next party I attend and leaving it in the collective beer bucket while drinking other beers.

Glad I tried it on draft first.

Trader Joe's lets you return anything, which is great. Anywhere else, my only options would be drink it, dump it, or drop it off at some unsuspecting stranger's house. Option one was untenable. Option two was a waste. Option three would be cruel. If ever a beer needed to be draft or bomber only, it's this one. Just looking at the five remaining bottles in the pack made my stomach turn.

I just put it in the alley and usually it's picked up in minutes.

Huh I thought legally it had to be disposed of in one of those far flung bins for compact fluorescent bulbs and other toxic metals.

I bought a 6 of Sierra Nevada Torpedo and some of them tasted skunky but others didn't. For a second I wished I could return them but they came from Cermak Produce, not TJ's. :(

You can probably just take them back to TJs anyway, like a toys-for-guns exchange.

Founders Spectra Trifecta: tasted like shampoo/conditioner from a Sheraton hotel. Ginger, chamomile, lemongrass, gross.

I didn't like it either.

Jeff, how do you think barrel-aged Narwhal compares to regular Narwal? The base beer is pretty good and a pretty good deal, not sure the upgrade is cost effective.

Have any of you locals had any 18th Street Brewery stuff yet?

yeah i didn't care for spectra trifecta but i tried redankulous at the founders tap room last night and am mad i passed on bottles, that beer is delicious.