Yeah, Breakfast Stout is great. I also love their dark penance. Can't remember if that is year round or seasonal, but it's a very good Imperial Black IPA.

Dark penance is seasonal

I second the Breakfast Stout recommendation. It's on the same level as Victory at Sea, but not as sweet. The chocolate is more of a bitter dark chocolate flavor. Also be on the lookout for Backwoods Bastard, which should be hitting market by the end of the month or early November. It will probably sell out quickly.

El D,
I'm not sure what they're distributing in CA, but here are my thoughts on what they list on their website:

Year-round:
* All-Day IPA is a typical watered-down session IPA that I would not buy or drink again. (I don't think I've ever liked a session IPA, so my opinion may not be worthwhile.)
* Dirty Bastard seems to be a decent scotch ale, but I'm not crazy about scotch ales
* Centennial IPA is a good IPA that I'm always happy to have, especially in cans, but given the other stuff available to you I wouldn't go out of my way to try it for any more than a novelty.
* Pale Ale is not very good
* Porter is a world-class porter. I think this and Great Lakes's Porters are the two best non-imperial porters there are.

Seasonal:
* Black Rye - I thought this was pretty good, and I'm not generally crazy about black IPAs
* Rubaeus - I really like this, but it's reeeaaaaallllyyyyy sweet. Adding this to a stout (at like a 1:3 or 1:5 ratio) is nice.
* Breakfast Stout - excellent

Specialty
* Dark Penance - I remember thinking this was pretty good, but I can't remember what it tasted like.
* Imperial Stout - Awesome. I think it's underrated because it's naturally compared to Breakfast Stout, KBS, and CBS. Really good, and it ages well.
* Curmudgeon - Very good old ale
* Double Trouble - Really good midwest DIPA that probably doesn't match up to a lot of the DIPAs you have on the west coast. I believe that any bottles you see of this right now are probably several months old.

Limited:
* KBS - excellent, but I think has gotten a little less appealing only because so many other brewers are putting out good barrel-aged coffee stouts. I would insta-buy as many 4 packs as I could if I saw them on the shelf, but they're never on the shelf anymore. So I usually try to trade for 1 or 2 4-packs each year.
* Devil Dancer - Triple IPA. I thought it was gross.
* Harvest Ale - fantastic fresh hop ale. I love this beer and just got a 4-pack yesterday.
* Backwoods Bastard - I think this is pretty good and I don't even like the base beer (Dirty Bastard) all that much.

I feel like they also take kegs of Blushing Monk around a lot. It's an imperial raspberry beer that I think is awesome, but it's like an imperial Rubaeus, so it's also very very sweet.

I haven't spent a ton of time in NYC, but I thought Rattle n Hum was fantastic. Pretty sure I want(ed) to marry the bartender.

Rattle is great, but often crowded and in a very busy area. It is only a few blocks from Gingerman so that's a plus.

I'd echo a lot of the previous recommendations, and add in Fool's Gold. Beer Culture in midtown is decent as well. Also, if you plan on going into Brooklyn, theres probably 10 or so quality beer bars within that giant borough.

Really enjoyed last year's Black Butte XXVI and just picked up a bottle of XXVII. Anyone tried it yet? Thoughts?

Black butte is the worst tasting beverage I've ever put in my mouth.

Love everything else Deschutes, but that one is a huge miss for me.

Pony bar in Hell's Kitchen is pretty good too. Their sister bar next door has pretty decent pizza but not as a good a beer menu.

DC you want to go to churchkey. Get some tater tots to go with a really solid beer menu.

Black Butte is one of the few Deschutes beers that doesn't regularly let me down. I think its a great porter. I think of the highly regarded stout releases Abyss is my least favorite. I haven't had an IPA that I'd seek out from Deschutes either.

This year's Anniversary Black Butte sounds really bizarre:

A bought a bottle, but am really skeptical. Abyss is one of my favorite stout releases, though. And, at least last year, it was sitting on shelves in Ohio for a while. Hope the same is true this year.

Today's haul

Like others have said, you really can't go wrong with the Founders Porter/Stout offerings. I'm not an IPA fan, but hey have a couple that I enjoy. Rubaeus and Blushing Monk are my go to summer Founders offerings. Unless I'm having something dark/rich as a dessert treat.

I still have about a dozen bottles of breakfast stout from last year's release. Hope it ages well - love it so much I bought enough so I could drink year-round, then realized I didn't fee like drinking stouts while BBQing on 95 degree days

More efforts to drink through my basement:

Sometimes I think it's a complete waste of money to chase after Cantillon. Then I drink one and think otherwise; raspberries are awesome.


A 2010 Bourbon County Stout. Poured flat as a pancake. I could imagine a world where this bottle, carbonated, would have been really good. Unfortunately, this was not the world I live in. Syrupy, a little dark fruit flavor, but the lack of carbonation killed it.


This is I guess a blend of 1, 2, 3, and 4 year gueuze, rather than the standard blend of 1, 2, and 3. I probably should do a side-by-side with regular 3F gueuze to see if it's worth the higher price, but it was really good:


I had this beer during the Super Bowl earlier this year, and I thought it was by far the best beer of the night. Opened another bottle recently and, holy cow, it's still amazing. I believe Fremont is releasing this again this year and everyone should try it. It's not a stout, but I'd definitely label it a stout in a blind tasting. Crazy good coffee, cinnamon flavors and I'm still convinced I tasted coconut.


One of my favorite beers from Founders, and I wish I didn't have to scramble just to get a 4-pack. I'm not even sure what stands out about it so much - just a well-done pale ale.



Science time. I opened a bottle of Thirsty Dog Barrel-Aged Siberian Night, which I kind of think is a mediocre stout, and added some coffee beans:


I let them sit in about half the bottle for 30-40 minutes, then added the rest of the bottle to get good carb:


Coffee flavor came through, and I think the result was better than the base beer. Still not a great coffee stout, though.

Today, I opened a couple of Tilquins. I had convinced myself that I liked the standard gueuze better than the quetsche. Then today just flipped it - I completely loved the quetsche and thought the gueuze was just ok.





It's crazy to me that I have no idea whether I'm going to like a particular lambic or not. Don't know if it's vintage or bottle variation or taste bud variation or what, but I feel like a complete doofus in predicting how much I'm going to like something when I open it up.

This year I went to GABF and What The Funk and had a lot of amazing beers, but I will definitely say Bourbon Barrel Aged Abominable was one of the top 3-4 beers I tasted. Fantastic stuff.

I had a Belgian Dark Strong homebrew that 100% failed to carbonate. I hadn't had that happen before. I tried dry yeast in each bottle, and when that failed I tried an active start in each bottle. Still nothing. The beer seemed good, but on the syrupy/sweet side, and I wondered how it'd be with some carbonation. Adding brett was my last ditch effort for this beer.

I got a vial of brett brux, made a little starter, and added it to each bottle. I tried a bottle for the first time the other night, and it was great. I'm letting the rest of the batch sit for a couple more months, but there was noticeably more CO2 and a slight hint of the classic funky brett. Since I had basically given up on the beer, having any hope for it at all is pretty great.

spider,

I made a coffee stout by making the base beer and then adding beans before kegging. I tasted the beer at 24 hours and thought it could use a little more. I tasted it 12 hours later and it was over the top. Very fine line in my experience.

x-post from BA I just made you guys may enjoy. TG = Toppling Goliath

_____
I have a hilarious story to share.

I run a craft beer bar and one of my co-workers also works in the adjacent building at a restaurant that carries a few craft beers but nothing notable. He texts me tonight asking, "Were you expecting a keg of King Sue? There's no one here that can seem to explain why we have a keg."

Immediately I'm freaking out because TG has never been on tap here and it's King Sue of all things in a place that has no idea what they have. So I say, "Yeah that's ours, I'll come grab it. If you paid for it I'll just remiburse you otherwise I'll notify the rep and pay him."

So I go over to grab the keg and my buddy/co-worker is shaking his head in disbelief. Turns out, they've had a 1/2 barrel of King Sue on tap since August.......advertised as Bent River Sweet Potato Ale. For months we've joked about them having that beer on tap of all things. Never bothered trying it. $5.25/pint of King Sue on tap since August 15th. Distributor mistakenly put a BR SPA SKU on a TG keg. Mindblowing. Some poor account probably received a Sweet Potato keg instead of King Sue.

I was just wondering how often that must happen - mislabeled lines. Either on purpose or by accident.

I know for a fact a ton of bars in NYC refill their Jameson bottles with some cheap Irish whiskey - most people just won't notice.

Ohio currently has a cap of 12% on alcohol content of beer, and there are current efforts at raising that cap to 21%. Here's MillerCoors's opposition letter:



Obviously I'm in favor of raising/eliminating the cap, so I might be biased. But this argument seems so weak that it's not even worth writing down. Such consumer confusion! All beer should be between 3.9% and 4.1%, and should come in cans labeled only BEER.

Any Toronto peeps going to Cask days this fall? Best beer event of the year, I can't wait.

Absolutely, I mean look at how confusing it is in other states where there is no such limit. I usually have no idea what I'm buying because as a consumer, how could I possibly know? Is it hard liquor? Beer? Milk? Thank god for that Ohio legislature and companies like MillerCoors who make it so much less confusing for the average Ohio consumer.

Spider, that Fremont is killer and that golden blend is drinking soooo well right now.

I need some opinions on a beer etiquette situation. Wicked Weed is releasing Dark Arts the weekend before Halloween. It was an online presale only release where you have to pick up the beer at the brewery on the 24th or 25th. There were three options for preorder: 2 bottles of regular Dark Arts, 6 bottles including 1 espresso variant, or 12 bottles including two espresso. Total cost for a case came out to $277. Yeah this is not cheap beer.

The preorder was this past Saturday. Here is the text convo between myself and my buddy Ric. We're not that close of friends. We met at the place I bartend and our friendship is centered around craft beer and bottle shares.

Last Thursday:
Me: "So you're in for Dark Arts?"
Ric: "Yeah I am"
Me: "You just want one bottle right?"
Ric: "How were you working the split? I definitely want one bottle & to put money towards an espresso one to share since there are only 2."
Me: "I'm going to try and preorder 12 so I'm cool with splitting one of the espressos"

IMO this is already being super generous on my part.

Last Friday I hatched a plan to get more espresso variants. I reached out on Reddit and offered to buy more with the plan of selling the extra regular bottles to people on reddit at cost and keeping the additional espresso bottles. I got a bunch of responses and decided to try and get three cases.

Saturday morning comes and I ask Ric to preorder a case because these things sell out super fast. I preordered two cases, one of them with my girlfriend's name attached. She loves beer too. So as of Saturday Ric is still in for one bottle of regular and we are splitting an espresso.

On Sunday I sit down to go through all the reddit responses and get a final count. The conversation with Ric continues.

Me: "You still only want one bottle correct? About to work out all these Reddit people"
Ric: "I'll take two & then a split on an espresso or whatever works. Or one regular & one espresso since I think with 3 orders there will be 6."
Me: "Two reg and split an espresso is cool with me. I'm hoping they have the espresso on draft Sunday."
Ric: "Alright"

Him asking for one regular and a bottle of espresso to himself rustled the **** out of my jimmies. I'm having to deal with 13 strangers in order to get those extra bottles of espresso and he thinks it's even remotely reasonable to ask for a bottle to himself and only be in for one bottle of regular? No F'ing way!

What do you guys think? Am I being selfish? I'm trading two regular and one espresso for a Black Tuesday '15 and a Black Tuesday Reserve '15. Essentially it's only a question of half a bottle of espresso, but this has really agitated me since throughout or friendship of about 1.5 years I have by far been the more generous one when it comes to sharing beer.

TL;DR