crack open a bear

Triple post because I'm clearly the biggest beer connoisseur here

Tried Pliny the Younger.  It was good, but it was 8$ for I think an 8 oz pour.  It's another west coast IPA. In fact it's probably just a scaled up recipe of PtE so it was essentially identical. I'll take some Palate Wrecker over it for sure.

Went to an event at a really cool beer and spirits store  in the city in an attempt to get Pappy Van Winkle 20 in a raffle. I didn't win anything, but they had Cantillon, cellared Russian River sours, a lot of different Prairie ale offerings, cellared w00tstout, beer/bourbon infused ice cream they made, hummus they made, and a bunch of beers they essentially contract brewed with bourbon barrels they purchased from Four Roses... I've never seen a single store do this much.  They had Fifty Fifty do some barrel aged blending (25$ a bottle), they had some FiftyFifty Eclipse aged in rum barrels, They had a coffee imp stout made by Alesmith I believe (18.99$) for a bomber. One was made with Four Barrel Coffee and was in BT barrels. Another one was aged in Four Roses barrels with Philz coffee added.  Way beyond impressed.  This is how you do business. This is how you attract customers.  Extremely knowledgeable staff. Could have talked with the beer and bourbon buyers there for hours.  If anyone of you guys visit SF for some reason you seriously can't miss checking Healthy Spirits out on Clement Street.

After_The_Barrel_Roll wrote:

Triple post because I'm clearly the biggest beer connoisseur here

I CONTEST.



But yeah I have pretty much zero interest in trying PtY. The hop craze can go fuck itself.

Green Flash Saison… Meh.

I guess it's trying to be a belgian ale, but to me just came out as this way too thin flowery lager-esque thing. not good.

Haha so it was a saison? That's how theyre supposed to taste.

Then they're supposed to taste boring :p When I read something something Belgian ale on the bottle my mind went more towards the trappists (which I usually enjoy), but they have depth to them, this one didn't. Maybe it's a good example of it's style, but it wasn't my cup of tea. I guess I won't be trying anything else labeled saison any time soon.

Tried the Oskar Blues G'Knight Imperial Red yesterday. OB don't disappoint. Very solid, balanced red. And I don't usually go for reds that often.

Saisons are cool and Green Flash is pretty great. I haven't had their saison though. OB's Old Chub is really good too. I picked up some Ten Fidy from them even though the price is kind of bogus (15 for a 4 pack). Hopefully it lives up to the hype

Stone has a pretty full-bodied smoked saison out right now called "Matt's Burning Rosids". It's new and limited though, so I dunno if you can get it in Sveeeeeeden.

I don't even want it anyway!!!!

Also, you fuckers don't have Mohawk (except the people and the sports teams and what nots) or Oppigård.

I bought a bottle of the Matt's Burning Rosids a while back, but I can't decide whether to cellar it or drink it now. Stone does too many beers that will never be brewed again and I don't have the money to buy two of every beer.

Going on a short vacation in Windsor in May. Place we're staying at is 8.5 miles from Russian River Brewing in Santa Rosa, hope to finally visit.

Be ready for a line. They had a 2 hour wait to get a table the one time I went. The full sampler is pretty worth it though. Some other brewpub is within walking distance if you want to put your name down for a table while getting food ahead of time. The food does look really good there though.

Brewed a Scottish Ale on Saturday and am going to Bottle House Brewing Companyin Cleveland tomorrow to help brew a beer for my friend's band. Sick.

Amazingly I somehow landed an interview at a local brewpub. Going to find out if it's contract brewed or what, but they only do session ales with no funny ingredients. It's 5 minutes away from K&L wines too which is amazing

Black Metal stout was a bit meh. It had some kind of funky taste going on that I didn't quite like. Can't quite place it. Not as "smooth" as other IRSs I've had.

Recent beers:

Elysian Milk and Espresso Stout
UK Toffee Bread Pudding Ale (can't recall the brewer)
Whatever the Fat Tire Imperial IPAs are called
Bozone Amber Ale (one of my favorites)
Red Lodge Bent Nail IPA

So, that batch I showed you a while ago just ran out as I tried the Brewdog Mix Tape 8.

Now, Brewdog have a reputation for being overpriced. Which is true. But when they get it right they really do get it right. This is fricking epic.

Oak aged Belgian Trippel blended with an oak aged IPA. 14.2% ABV.

So. much. taste.

It's plenty sweet, so if you have a problem with that, you're probably not going to like it. However, it balances that sweetness with a good bitter finish from the IPA and some harshness which I'm guessing is from the whiskey barrels. Either way, it's awesome.

Shrike wrote:

Black Metal stout was a bit meh. It had some kind of funky taste going on that I didn't quite like. Can't quite place it. Not as "smooth" as other IRSs I've had.

They probably ground up christians and put it in the beer.

This beer group I'm part of on facebook has had tards posting some "hipster beer snob" video which is months old and has millions of views AND this article titled "8 beers you should stop drinking immediately" which claims the beers are bad for you because of corn syrup, gmos, and being filtered through something which isn't vegan.

I ended up pre-ordering two bottles of 2014 Fifty Fifty's Eclipse stout. I think I ordered a Rittenhouse Rye aged variant and either an Elijah Craig or Four Roses variant. They had a 30 y.o. rum aged variant which sold out in ~10 minutes.

Also it feels like there has been a huge surge of session IPAs coming out. Stone, Firestone, Sierra Nevada, and maybe one other I'm forgetting about. It seems like beer trends can change really quickly. I admittedly do like barrel aged imp stouts/barleywines over colder weather and nice hoppy and sessionable beers in warmer weather, but now it feels like there's a bit too much competition between these guys at the exact same time.

Lastly the new Sierra Nevada beer camp 12 pk is probably going to get 2 purchases from me. I realized what their intention was with it and I really respect them for it. People who don't get Russian River distributed will finally have a chance to try a beer they were involved with without paying out the ass to get it. Pretty sure The Alchemist, Oskar Blues, and Three Floyds will also be involved with it. There's no way this could be bad

Just got some Maximus in again, so good.


That 12 pack looks pretty glorious.

I really dig the whole collaborative vibe going on in the craft beer scene. I'd like to see more multipacks.

For instance, one of the many awesome things that BrewDog does are these IPA Is Dead packs, which are four IPAs, same basic recipe (their Hardcore IPA), same IBU, but brewed with different hops. They also did one with different yeasts, but I never got to try it.

I'd love to see a collab where four different breweries attempt the same style of beer in a different way. Like, here's everyone's take on an imperial stout, etc.


Also, is Hop Stoopid worth it? Thinking about ordering, but I'm actually somewhat burned out on the really hop heavy stuff.

Never loved Hop Stoopid, myself.

Had Lagunita's Waldo's Ale for the third year in a row yesterday. The one thing I did different this year was throw it all up lol. Bummer, and now I gotta wait a whole year to redeem myself.

I finally had Waldo's Ale this year actually. It was pretty dank. I wouldn't say it's the best IPA ever, but it's still pretty solid. I had an interview today in a pretty nice area for a "taproom/bottle shop" that is opening up within a month. They are right next to a brewpub, Ale Industries has a brewpub within walking distance, every business in the area is pretty small (I saw no big chains anywhere), and they already have great relationships with Russian River, Ballast Point, and many many others. If I don't get the job you will see me in the obituaries

Went to a Trader Joes for the first time ever. They have decent "store brand" beers for like 5 dollars a six pack. Got the porter and it's pretty alright. Brown ale is much better and is only 2 dollars for a bomber.

Electroretard wrote:

Went to a Trader Joes for the first time ever.  They have decent "store brand" beers for like 5 dollars a six pack.  Got the porter and it's pretty alright.  Brown ale is much better and is only 2 dollars for a bomber.

Get Black Toad if they have it over there. It's cheap and pretty good.

now I have an interview at a highly rated beer, wine, and spirits shop in Oakland on friday. I've never had two interviews in one week and it's a good sign to me that both are places I would actually like to work for. The place I interviewed for the other day is part of "the brewing network" which is supposed to have a large podcast on itunes where they've had big name brewers on there many times. This will be their first taproom opened up and they may end up making a very small scale brewpub if this takes off.

my mum bought a sam adams ipa variety pack after I told her to just buy some boston lager to try it out. So far the variety pack has been pretty meh. One of them was supposed to have been brewed with fruits, but I didn't pick up on any of them. The "IPL" was okay. I'm not having a rye IPA in the pack and it's pretty good. None of them have been all that hoppy so I'm not sure if Sam Adams was just playing it really safe on these beers like they usually do or if this has been sitting on the shelf for many months. I still have the belgian ipa, the double ipa, and one other one to try.

Might be an older pack. I've had those before and most of them were pretty hoppy. Not an aggressive West Coast style or anything, but they were definitely IPAs.

Speaking of which, I drank a 4 year old 120 Minute IPA on Saturday night. I still argue that there's absolutely no way this beer is an IPA, even fresh, but that's even more exaggerated with the aging. Tastes like a really really awesome barley wine.