Beer in the new era

barleywines are real big and malty, high alcohol content, heavy. not bad if you have one.

barleywine beer is good and strong and a little acrid tasting? definitely tastes like theres a lot of stuff going on in there (ie not crisp or clean like a german beer obv), and often tastes (at least has been made to taste) woody, like cask-fermented beer?

dogfish head's old school barleywine is great and kicks like a mule!

barleywine makes me think of brandywine which makes me think of hobbits so i like it for that reason as well.

shitll put fur on your feet

OK, you just ruined it.

hobbits have never ruined anything in their sweet, innocent little lives.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barleywine

yea barleywines are delicious

Oh man, how is it? I almost tried it at Hopleaf last week.

awesome. so bell's is officially back in chicago now, huh?

so has anyone tried aging beer? i bought some north coast old ale a few months ago that was just too hot, too boozy. i set it down along w/ some palo santo in my parent's basement (my apartment is far too temperature-variable, gets way too hot in the summer), will try it next year

may xps - i thought DFH aprihop was great, tbh. tho i tried only a small sample at a bar. thought it would be a good spring beer

has anyone besides mr que tried GUMBALLHEAD? its an IPA, not of extreme hoppiness or anything, but SO SO tasty and fresh. def one of my favorite rare beer finds.

Yeah, Jordan, it's been back for about 6 months now.

i've always been kind of curious abt aging but def do not have the infrastructure to try it.

Yeah, Gumballhead is good. Doesn't seem that rare here, because the brewery is in northwest Indiana. I downed three of them pretty easily a week ago at pub quiz.

science experiments

loving this thread today

btw jaymc: Full Sail is available around town

Huh. It doesn't even look remotely familiar to me.

so we didn't take any photos, but our homebrew the other night ended up looking pretty similar to this (from GIS):

http://greenpreferred.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/dsc02948.JPG

we did the all-american thing to do and brewed an strong IPA

Thanks for the Gumballhead tip! Hadn't heard about that one, but <3 <3 <3 Three Floyds Brewing.

v v good

did you use your bathroom as the brewing space?

ha, no, that's not my photo

just found on GIS, used it b/c the color was pretty similar to ours

lol yeah i'm just playin

perfectly good use for extra bathroom space though

yea totally, would actually not be a bad place to do it once all the boiling's done

er except for all the nasty-ass microbial shit prob floating in the air

yeah on second though it's kind of weird

Alaskan stuff is super common here in WA, like available at your basic gas station. When I used to live in AZ 10 years ago, Fat Tire was a huge cultish kind of thing but now I see it all over and honestly haven't had one in ages. I like other New Belgiums but Fat Tire doesn't do anything for me.

Barleywines are great, I see a lot of those over the winter and they're usually really good. The Stone Old Guardian is really nice.

And jaymc, the only time I've ever seen anything from Harpoon was actually in Chicago last summer - I bought a bunch of their IPA (and a lot of Gumballhead) to take back home because I was road tripping. I got it at some crazy huge beer and wine store in Lincoln Park area? I've been there twice but don't remember the name of it.

I got it at some crazy huge beer and wine store in Lincoln Park area?

This would either be Sam's (North/Clybourn area) or Binny's (Clark/Belmont area). Yeah, I bet there are probably a number of craft breweries that you wouldn't necessarily see at your corner liquor store that have a presence at one of those warehouse places.

I've also recently been consuming a bit of Troegs "Nugget Nectar" and I swear it's not just for the name. It's an "Imperial Amber" but is comparable in taste to, um, I dunno like Lagunitas Extra IPA or something? Sort of flowery and fruity. Strong, but quite drinkable.

Another ugly label, though not as ugly as the similarly-marketed "Hoptical Illusion" by Bluepoint.

http://mondaynightbrewery.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nugget-nectar-mnb-pint.jpg vs http://farm1.static.flickr.com/159/397050610_be72beb238.jpg%3Fv%3D0

http://www.shoppersvineyard.com/img/productImages/02788.gif

oh now i understand the name of our scrabble game i thought it was an easter bunny thing

i bought a single of nugget nectar a few weeks ago, since i had heard about it so much (beer message boards talk about it nonstop, wau). think i just wasn't in the mood at the time. it's got almost a thick mouthfeel doesn't it? almost syrupy up front? agreed btw that it's much more of an extra/double IPA than an amber tho

i kind of love nugget nectar. i like the label too

Yeah, it's got an almost syrupy sweetness. I've been buying one or two at a time and then usually switching to an english ale (Old Speckled Hen, if the bodega has it) or the Brooklyn IPA which is a much more beery-tasting beer, if that makes sense. xp

yea the label's cool. i like the fist grabbing the hop flower

btw this thread made me contemplate buying a beer instead of an iced tea to go with my lunch.

part three in a series:
http://api.ning.com/files/lh9TEx715lRBpwtFBNPqkpuLPPh07Gb9sDeEyxyM1ql-KpBthlkhPczMKREc4mAPvtboDEC1kowcvLwu7Ygjl-zAo5kSIQ73/hopdevil.jpg

nice! xp

yea that beer is awesome, prob one of the best american IPAs i've had

90 minute IPA 4-evah

see i need to try 90-min again. think it was the dude from brooklyn brewing who called it "unbalanced and shrieking" (tho maybe he was talking about 120 min?) b/c i tried it and it just kind of grated

i am not crazy about the 90 at all. the 60 has a nice balance and the 90 seems to throw it intentionally.

see again i think DFH should start selling some of their crazy-ass high-gravity beers in like 7 oz bottles or something. that or i need to start sharing them w/ a friend. so many are great for the first few sips but are just dragging mid-pint

yea 60 min. is great, basically just a perfect IPA

maybe 90 minutes is the imperial ipa for people who don't like imperial ipa's i.e. me.