Beer in the new era

one time i went to a blind tasting at a beer store near here that was mostly industry ppl and wannabe cicerones and correctly called mosaic as the hop in what turned out to be funky gold mosaic /braggin

lagunitas sour is really good

ive mostly had a bunch of local things lately. the cleveland beer scene has exploded in recent years and there are a bunch of places i've never even heard of before moving back here. platform is probably the best of these. i had an outstanding winter ale from portside brewery/distillery, a murky barleywine-type thing.

also after living on the east coast for 14 years it is really nice to be able to buy bell's anywhere!

there are so many places i haven't even tried yet, lots of brewpub places that don't sell bottles too. there's a brewery and meadery place near by, a cider house, all these little places that have sprung up in the past few years.

Had a real nice rye IPA from Block 15 the other day. Also on the tap list was Dogfish Head's stout brewed with maple syrup and Scrapple. There's a point in beer experimentation where I just walk away.

Also just want to mention that anyone visiting Seattle should do their best to get some Holy Mountain.

http://a63.tinypic.com/f03tdz.jpg

Conspiracy theories abound. Bots are buying all the beer we are entitled to.

lol

Wait, are you guys talking about Lagunitas Aunt Sally as the sour?! I thought that was terrible.

To be fair, sours are one of the weirdest beers to rate and I feel like maybe it's more of a "to each their own" sort of vibe.

That's the only sour lagunitas has as far as i searched on their site

Mentioned it a bit ago but i recently got into sours, and they're so refreshing after being a stout guy or generally really malt forward beers for so long

They have another one called Dark Swan, it wasn't terrible:

https://lagunitas.com/beers/dark-swan

oooh

okay will have to look out for as it's on tap only

On the plus side, this year Lagunitas released 6-packs of High West-ified Barrel-Aged Coffee Stout, which is better than bombers. On the downside, this year people were scrambling for them like BCBS, and they vanished pretty quickly, afaict.

Yes aunt sally
The only sours I've had are that one and the Peekskill one and basically I wake up craving the taste

Having it on tap if that makes a difference

Ooh that high west stout is on tap in my neighborhood

gonna pick up aunt sally and give her a little taste today

She was dece

Heard that some BCS dropped at my local store so I went, and of course it was gone.

But I snagged the last bottle of Big Hugs instead so I'll count it as a win.

Smuttynose Single Digit Dubbel aka Winter Ale is kind of nasty. Now I need to figure out what to do with the other 5 bottles in the six pack. I had a very nice Affligem Noel recently and I guess I was thinking this might be like that, but it was just kind of cloying and bland instead.

Beer bread?

Please to Chicago must-drink recommendations, no idea where I'm staying yet either just to be as unhelpful as possible.

So im at hangar24's pugachev bottle release

Please to Chicago must-drink recommendations, no idea where I'm staying yet either just to be as unhelpful as possible.

I'll come back to this.

Must-drink places or drinks?

Drink with me at Maria's!

Are you looking for bar/brewery/with eats/all of the above?

Food is not necessary, brewery is not necessary, just recommendations for somewhere I can drink a good beer or 2 in the city.

Chicago beers I've enjoyed:

Vanilla Rye
Apex Predator
Zombie Dust
BVDL

Duseks
Publican
Bad Apple

Hopleaf!

If I'm recommending one place to have a beer in the city, it's going to be the Hopleaf. Been around for a long time, great selection, great food, and I had my wedding reception there. Other bars that I would put in the top tier Maproom, Local Option, Northdown, Quenchers, Maria's, Sheffields, Fountainhead. Breweries with taprooms, I would hit Half Acre. In fact, you can hit Half Acre, Begyle, and Dovetail all within a mile radius. That's a fun few hours. Dozens of other places, depending on where you are in the city.

Beer bread?

Good idea, thanks!

Thanks y'all. That's quite a lot to digest, but I bookmarked all the recs but now I need to figure out where I'm staying and see what's convenient.

Just got back from buying lemons at the local store, which happened to be selling regular BCBS for $18 a bottle, and prop for $90. I told them selling so high above retail was tacky, and brands them the grocery store willing to overprice things for a quick buck. They were unapologetic and basically said people were willing to pay that, and besides, others were doing it, too. And I told them it doesn't make them any less tacky.

Anyway, does Goose Island have a customer support line where people can report gouging? Or do they not care?

Pretty sure they don't care.

This year's Prop tasted like a smoky hot mess. Never new how spoiled by 13 and 14 versions of that beer we'd be.

so after sipping on different hangar 24 beers heres my opinion

*their sour and orange wit biers suck
*they do stouts better
*the old 2011 barrel pugachevs are not that great and i prefer the new 2016 one, which was a surprise to me

they have really really sweet tasting stouts (latte one and ...don't remember the other one), which is weird but they seem to do well

I'm burned out on sours, back to ipas I guess.

xpost: did you try the maple one?

I think the regular Puga from 2014 was 19+%ABV, glad I opened and shared it with a bunch of people.

is that the cobra one? no i didn't

is that one really sweet?

ya the latte one was like 18.9? and it was super sweet

wasnt my thing but i can see people digging it

Back to the gose. I'll never learn

https://twitter.com/prfl2559/status/813553039806173184

Infected?

Rare was never indicated being infected. But it has been popping up like this in Binnys/jewels/even target.

The NE IPA craze around here is kind of bananas. Seems like it's a new release every week that people are scrambling to get. Enough to hype to fuel a 43 page BA thread: https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/chicagoland-ne-ipas-list.445769/

I've had many of them. Many are pretty good, but I'm not going to wait in line or go out of my way for them.

Never heard of NE IPA but it sounds right up my alley

I hadn't either until like 6 months ago! Now it's showing up as it's own section in menus/tap lists.

greetings from ground zero.

wld actually be curious how other parts of the country define neipa and what beers they're looking to as originators.

calstars you're in nyc right? you can just drink singlecut and other half locally.