Beer in the new era

these guys didn't like it aged http://www.guysdrinkingbeer.com/founders-backwoods-bastard-2-year-vertical

this guy did http://allthesamebeer.com/2013/11/24/redux-review-0013-founders-backwoods-bastard-2012/

lol "it's more boozy!" "it's less boozy!"

second review rings very true to me tho.

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/10/yes-the-future-of-craft-beer-is-in-question-dont-p.html

I really liked the Death By Coconut. Good dessert beer.

Happy Rare Day! Check out eBay and your trading spots if you want to overpay/compensate for some beer!

no thanks

So used to stupid hoops that it was nice to walk into a store yesterday (Tabb's - any locals been? Just down the street from the equally great/low-key Puerto Rico Food & Liquors) just as he was unloading Double Daisy Cutter and the new Firestone Walker anniversary beer. In fact, he brought them to my attention.

My places doesn't get the FSW anniversary beers. Or any of the barrel releases.

Hey! Got a surprise bottle of BCBS Rare 2015 today. Random local Twitter follower went to rare day and felt bad about buying $180 worth of beer so she DM'ed me offering to sell me one bottle of her allotment at face value. YOLO.

whoa nice.

Sell it on eBay to fun your child's education

Tempting, but I'll probably just drink it.

We've had a new bottle shop and tap room open up in Hereford and today I had a lovely lemon & pepper gueze and a coffee milk stout. Then I bought some bottles to take home.

https://farm1.staticflickr.com/603/23038711235_d346998c67_z.jpg

You're a brave man.

I'll force myself.

For reference l-r

Rogue Voodoo Donut IV
Thornbridge/Really Wild Beer Bakewell Tart Gueze
Alaskan Brewery Smoked Porter
Rogue Sriracha Stout
Weird Beard Black Christmas Cranberry Stout
Really Wild Beer Cucumber Saison

I was filling up a buy-4-get-20%-off order a while ago and settled on a Rogue Blueberry against my initial judgement. But I noticed it had honey as well as malt, and I've made mead a few times with fruit, so I picked it up. Was actually pretty decent - would drink again.

Just had the latest Stone collaboration, Sorry Not Sorry, a great IPA with peach in there somewhere.

I hadn't heard of the third in the Stone collab, but the second, Bale Breaker in Yakima, has been on my road-trip visit list for a while. Their Topcutter IPA is fantastic - on my personal top 10 along with Alesmith's IPA.

Constellation Brands just bought Ballast Point for $1 billion (I can't imagine anyone would turn down that many zeroes). So just this last year or so, Firestone Walker, Elysian, Lagunitas, Dogfish Head, and Ballast Point all took the cash, plus a few more. But factor in Goose Island a couple of years ago, or Stone's CEO stepping down, let alone AB InBev bidding for SabMiller, and the times they are a-changin'. More beer more places for everyone, I guess.

seconding the topcutter recommendation, they should distribute that more

these grimm 2xipas are AMAZING btw, if you can get your hands on them you should. afterimage was the best possible version of the juicy/fruity/citrus hop-candy flavor profile i've ever tasted, light in color and nearly perfect (if you like that type of thing). pulse wave was an excellent counterpoint too, probably the most cannabis flavor from a 2xipa that i can remember. excited for cans of tesseract to drop this week, the hype for these has been massive but they're all pretty special

Constellation Brands just bought Ballast Point for $1 billion

whaaaaat

i love the grapefruit sculpin as much as the next poster on this thread but how could that brand possibly be worth that much

my thoughts exactly

(except I think the grapefruit is over-flavored, prefer regular Sculpin)

As much as I hate to link a gbh article, this was an interesting read. http://goodbeerhunting.com/blog/2015/11/17/sightlines-feature

Anyone going to FOBAB?

costs too much

been enjoying mikkeller's peter pale and mary lately - become a go-to at my local bottle shop/bar.

What Dan said.

I thought FOBAB was really well run, and literally not a single of the people pouring checked my passport/tickets. I'm a total lightweight and not even sure I could have gotten a full 20 2-3 oz. pours, which were pretty generous, but even if I could have I probably could have gotten twice that, easy. Apparently a few of the more coveted things kicked early (18th St.?), but there was so much, and so much good stuff. I'd basically shuttle around trying things, dumping the rest, then moving on. Every once in a while I'd get some BA cider or BA fruit beer or BA sour to cleanse the pallette. Best of all, the dreaded Goose Island line moved fast (no more than 5 minutes, max) and didn't seem to be running out of anything. Had Rare, couple of Props, Vanilla Rye, Regal Rye, etc, all ample pours. Interesting to have them all at once, to compare years/recipes.

I have a sweet tooth, so other faves included a Haymarket Imperial Stout Aged on Cherries and a Moody Tongue Chocolate Barleywine but also Bell's BA Expedition Stout, which was sort of light but weirdly refreshing compared to all the viscous stuff. Also, nice to try all the weird things aged in gin barrels, cognac barrels, etc. Not always successful, but always distinctive/different. Only bummer was the food, which seems like a missed opportunity. Just the usual Connie's pizza, hot dogs and pretzel convention BS. If I ran the zoo there would be a room with tables and some local spots selling burgers and tacos, just to have a place to chill and eat.

Oh hey, we get Sixpoint in MN now. Digging what I've had so far quite a lot.

Weirdly my favorite at this point is Sweet Action, which is way outside my normal beer zone, flavor wise.

https://www.barrelbackers.com/

so....they will ship you a 12-pack of founders porter for 50 bucks?

I had Sixpoint Sensi Harvest 2015 recently which was pretty good but definitely on that heavy-handed, fresh hop, "we dumped a pile of moldy wet leaves into this beer" tip, which is not my favorite style of beer.

I also just picked up a Stone variety pack at Costco, which was a pretty nice deal. It has the Cali-Belgique IPA, Ruination Double IPA, the Coffee Milk Stout, and the Pale Ale. I like the Cali-Belgique and the Ruination a lot. Stone beers are always nicely to the drier side. Unfortunately coffee stouts kind of give me nightmares and/or insomnia.

Cad, seems like it. Kind of dumb.

so this thread is kind of the conversant internet peoples' untapp'd, should I post here on the creeping draft choice conservatism observed in establishments which only a year ago prided themselves on having many, many tap handles representing many diverse types of beer? Or should that be another thread?

I don't drink enough in such establishments to notice, but I have to imagine it's economics, i.e. over saturation plus novelty wearing off = no one is ordering the Montanan lambic-saison hybrid and everyone is getting the famous microbre name ipa, and it doesn't make sense to stock kegs of 20 beers 15 of which no one orders.

but they're still stocking 20 kegs - it's just that 5 of them are session IPAs, 3 are pilsners or "vienna lagers," 2 are ambers, 2 are unremarkable wheats or witbiers, 2 are belgian (chimay and something else), 1 stout, 1 porter, and the remainder are local seasonals, 3 of which are not actually seasonal.

I'm sure it's economics - they're just avoiding carrying stuff that either doesn't have the right price / margin (I've noticed Boulevard's beers have all either gone up in price quite a bit or just plain disappeared from the tap) and the nerdy stuff that takes forever to kick (imperials, sours, nitros, hard-to-describe saisons). So you end up with a very limited range which is highly annoying when you look at the entire list and there's nary a double IPA in sight.

going into places where I used to be able to order a Small Craft Warning or a Wookey Jack on tap and discovering basically the same range of options that you can now get on many airplane rides is just a tad disappointing. It also points to the tremendous improvement in airplane beer options since AB InBev bought Goose Island and Sam Adams starting canning, but that's not the point!!

Distributors might have a hand in the problem.

I do suspect there is now a division between the brewery-specific guys (like the boulevard dude, for example) who are tailoring their approach to "taphouse" places that focus on the beer variety over the food, and are willing to suffer possibly ugly margins, against the wholesale distributor guys, who will just bring you a lot of New Belgium and Dogfish Head and Goose Island and probably negotiate price based on quantity, and if you're a middling bar manager who puts most of your professional reputation on moving simple cocktails with funny names, not craft beer, you'll just run with what the distributor suggests. And then run out of the only actual IPA on tap within four days because who cares, we're not a beer place.

My impression is that two years ago bar managers were encouraged by their superiors to put neat stuff on tap and try to distinguish their bar based on the draft list, not just on cocktails. Economics have clearly intervened and bar managers are now being encouraged to get kegs of stuff that kicks quickly and can be bought in quantity on the cheap - so IPA drinkers who don't mind going for the "session" edition (i.e. we literally took our cheapest IPA recipe, added water, and then more carbonation) are good to go. I feel like there's a good metaphor dealing with music genres just waiting to go here.

I'm amazed that New Belgium and Sam Adams (right?) remain independently owned, the former 100% employee owned, I think. Given their ubiquity.

It seems weird to me that bars wouldn't have some IPAs on tap, doesn't everyone still love IPAs? Or has everyone moved on to session IPAs? I can't keep up.

Felt like session IPAs were being pushed hard for a while, but no one really wants session IPAs. At least not when the weather gets cool. And then for a while trends seemed to be shifting a tad toward sours, but no one really wants them, either. So yeah, IPAs, ales, lagers, pilsners ... drinkin' beers.

I wonder if all day is still founders best selling beer.

considering the stack of All Day 15-packs that's taller than I am at my local liquor store, I'd say probably.