Shouldn't be a problem at all. I'm fairly sure all Rodenbach's are pasteurized, so you won't get much 'evolution' from the beer outside of fading cherries, but people are still rarely drinking the original version from the 90's. Duchess also won't really improve like some other Belgium's might, but unless you go crazy and lose it for a number of years, I doubt it will change all that much.

Thanks

They're not doing any black IPAs atm as far as I know. Closest thing I think is Zeitgeist, a hoppy black lager, but that's much worse, a pretty mediocre beer.

My favorite beer bar is kicking off beer week tonight. I'll be there, if anyone wants to have some fun.

Live Free and Drink NH

Beer peeps,

Recent tasteoff:

Tusk and grain #1 vs bourbon and tequila barrel coffee porter vs Brandy barrel coffee porter.

The #1 is about a year old. I loved the rich vanilla flavor when I first had it, though iirc goofy was not a fan. This time, the flavors had faded quite a bit. Still tasty and very very smooth for a high abv beer, but not something I'd get again. The bourbon and tequila was weird with the tequila flavor kind of clashing with everything else. Without the tequila that would have big an amazing beer with big coffee and bourbon notes. The brandy was my fave of the bunch. Not as big coffee as the bourbon barrel, but nice combination with the fruity Brandy flavors. Nothing wrong with these, but won't be picking them up again.

Also I almost sliced the **** out of my hand trying to get through the wax seal.


Bible Belt showdown. Liked these both a lot, but preferred the regular over the barrel aged. A little too much sweetness and heaviness in the BA. Neither of them as good as bomb IMO.

Random beer notes:
Tastes dogfish head chocolate lobster the other night. That was weird.

Have been drinking lots of fieldwork beers. They are making a bunch of really great NE style IPAs. Pulp, galaxy juice, and hazy train a few I've had - all delicious. And still cranking out excellent west coast IPAs and stouts. Crazy how many different beers they are putting out - their tap list is always changing.

Just saw mikkeler announce their NE style ipa from the SD brewery coming out this weekend.

More and more Grimm showing up here:



Saw rare barrel on a retail shelf for the first time:

Everything I've had from them has been excellent. Highly recommend it to any sour beer fans.

Goofy (or anyone) - have you had the traveling plum from bruery?

Grabbed a couple of Grimm Sugarmakers today, pretty excitied to try them

I know there's a bottle or two among the hundreds in my apartment but I haven't had it yet. From your picture, I've had...
- The Grade - not a huge fan, it's a baltic porter with fenugreek and maple, it tasted like the base beer had some good things for it but the fenugreek (I assume, I've never had it before) gave it kinda a weird flavor I wasn't feeling
- Poterie - anniversary ale (which is always a BA old ale, sticky and sweet) from last year, I always enjoy their anniversaries especially with some age on them (had Sucre, the 2014 anniversary ale, the other night at a Bruery event for SF beer week and it was phenomenal)
- 9 Ladies Dancing - the most recent holiday ale, super flavorful, pretty tasty iirc

Oude Tart is well documented in this thread, you've probably had it. That looks like Mash & Vanilla on the end, Mash is their base barleywine and they've made a few varieties (coconut, vanilla, coffee, and most recently the A+ french toast edition) - can't remember if I've had M&V specifically, but with the exception of the superb french toast I think I've found the Mash series a little too much on the American side of the American vs. English barleywine style spectrum (which is obviously a good thing for anyone who loves American BWs, but I think I'm more on the English side).

I saw the posts about KBBS. Yeah, that one's tricky.

I've been lucky to get a bottle of Mornin' Delight, and while it can sell for a few hundred on the secondary market, I mostly try not to think of it in that terms. I think of it in terms of what I paid, and the enjoyment I get out of it and get out of sharing.

But $1k for a 12oz beer is a game changer, especially if you need the money. I'd love them to turn that and potentially even Assassin into tap-only beers. I get why they may not want to do it, but TG has recently had Term Oil on tap for like 7 or 8 months and I think this is a great way to get more folks to try it. Otherwise, it's just going to be sold to the highest bidder. Which, I guess in some weird ****ed up way maybe isn't that big of a deal since they seem to be the people that want it most, but the breweries don't like it and I don't blame them.

Speaker of The Bruery, I was thinking about getting a friend to be my pickup for their beer club, since they can't ship outside of California. Their deals look to be pretty fair, and they do make very good beer across the spectrum. I've had Mash and Vanilla a couple of times - it's really good. Vanilla pairs well with the barleywine style, and I'm not even a huge barleywine fan.

A couple of the best beers I've had recently are:

Yellow Belly and Yellow Belly Sundae - these are super smooth 13% beers from Buxton/Omnipollo collab. Super strong peanut butter stout flavor, but really, really good. Somehow they don't feel too sweet to me.

Barrel-aged Darkness - this one hit the shelves recently and I was able to head out of work at lunch to grab a bottle and share with friends a couple of weeks ago. One of the better barrel aged stouts I've ever had. Aged in High West rye barrels for just a few months, so it gave it some nice character without being a really full on BA beer. I think BA imperial stouts often end up not being better than BCBS, or locally Central Waters makes great BB stouts. But this one lived up to it's hype.

An internal monologue:

Jesus, spidercrab, this is getting out of hand. You have too many bottles in here, yet you keep buying more. You've got to get this under control.

Ok, I know there are a bunch of bottles that are so old they're probably not even worth keeping. I'll just open some at random, taste to confirm they're terrible, and then dump them. That way I'll get rid of the bottles that I have 0 excitement to drink.

Great, solid idea. Let's start today.

[30 minutes later]

Oh wow, this is really delicious and now I'm on my way to getting drunk at 4:45 in the afternoon.



This is roughly 7 years old, I guess, since I think they're on #20 this year. And it's really good! This is a strong ale, but it's indistinguishable from a stout. That's not surprising (now that I've just looked it up) because it's ~40% Parabola. It's likely that this doesn't taste as good as it did at some prior point, but it's nowhere near the drainpour that I was expecting. I would never have guessed it was this old.

Re: Duchess & Alexander --

Why are you hoarding those? Aren't they relatively easy to find on shelf, and not getting discontinued, and not great for aging?

Re: BA Darkness --

Had this on tap recently and was not impressed =( Thought it was way too straightforwardly boozy.

Re: Bruery Christmas series --

Recently drank my 7 Swans-A-Swimming, and really, really liked it! Had totally forgotten that those were like, 1 a year beers and so I'd probably never see it again. Oh well. Tasty! Nothing remarkable to add to the comments you'd see if you googled. But for me, another reminder that the beer is for drinking, and if you don't actually open things once in a while it makes no sense to hoard it initially.

Yeah I didn't have a good feel for how available they are on a long term basis...I know the Alexander is a reincarnation of the 90s one but it seems fairly scarce around me to where most stores don't have it and the ones that do mostly only have a couple of bottles. I tried it after discussion in this thread and liked it so much I figured I might as well grab a few and keep them in case they become hard to find. I'm definitely not looking to age them...

I've been seeing a new crop of Alexander around town every three months or so since it came back. I think they are doing a great job of making it seem more rare than it is.

Fwiw it isn't going to go bad in a year, it just won't improve.

In other news...
Modern times finally made it to Seattle. Dinosaur world confirmed delicious.

Beer peeps,

I've been trying to work through a MUCH tinier backlog than spider.

This one was a disappointment.



I remember really enjoying this deschutes dissident sour ale when I first got it, but this didn't age well. It was fine, but the flavor seemed kinda flat/thin, not much going on and no fruity brightness.

I have one more abyss that I didn't like when new, maybe that has improved. But I figure I'm prob over their special beers.

That had to happen eventually el d.

At some point everyone drinks enough beer to realize deschutes is just OK.

Stabn,

I like that fresh squeezed IPA!

It is definitely a good wide distribution IPA. Most markets have at least a couple better IPAs in a more regional distribution though.

Can't say I've ever had a Deschutes beer that I consider to be elite. They are decent and have a good footprint. As craft beer continues to expand, I think they will be in for some trouble from better competitors. That said, I do think Black Butte Porter is pretty great.

I loved this post but WTF was that beer ever doing in your "not excited to drink" category?!?!?

Yeah, that warrants an explanation. I originally got 2 of those bottles from the same place. (I assume it was a trade, but I can't remember now.) I was very excited to try them because they had gotten such good reviews. I had the first one a couple of years ago, and it was terrible. I assumed the second would be the same (coming from the same source at the same time), and I was never excited to open it to confirm.

But it was great!

I ended selling my KBBS (and glass) for $1060. Pretty nervous those two days it was in transit. I was tempted by that BCBS offer but am happy with my decision. A buddy and me are gonna open a MD and Assassin soon.

Had Lagunitas High Westfield on tap the other day. Not quite at the BCBS, KBS level, but damn solid.

How does one obtain a KBBS in the first place? Must be borderline impossible to justify that pricing (still doesn't obv)

Entered an online raffle. Was one of 1000 to get it. Came with two Assassins for $200.

Edit: I got the wrong Lagunitas above. I had the willett barrel aged.

Ah, that makes more sense. Weird, I wonder why the bottles were so different?

Alexander has gotten easier to find around here, but it's still somewhere on the level of semi-uncommon. Some liquor stores get it, some don't. Such a good beer, as well as Vintage 2014, I wouldn't complain if I had a few of them in my basement right now.

Surprised about your reaction on the BA Darkness. I found it really smooth, without much heat. I also really dug the flavor, which I picked up as chocolate (standard), but with some nice almost peanut butter flavor from the rye. I've found some rye barrels can give beers a sharpness - I actually think another beer that's been discussed recently, High Westified, fits that. It's good, but it's got pretty loud and uneven coffee and barrel flavors to me.

I tend to agree. I cracked a Dissident recently that I'd been cellaring for a while and it was ok, but I wouldn't get it again regardless of price. I do like Abyss and the BA Black Butte Porter. Both tend to have some unique flavors, and they're not my favorite but they bring different stuff to the table. I like the red wine barrel aging for Abyss, I think it gives it a pretty fun flavor profile. I think their 6-pack stuff is just ok, and I agree with Buff that them and a lot of the breweries out there are going to struggle with local breweries that are just as good or better all over the country, and the local breweries' stuff is gonna be fresher in that market.

I'm also pretty firmly on the NE IPA style vs. west coast, so their hoppy beers don't do too much for me. I've found these days that even Bells Two Hearted can't compete with the best local hoppy beers. Here in Madison, that's pretty much any of Toppling Goliath's stuff, plus Todd the Axeman. (Edit: And 3 Floyds best hoppy stuff.)


I had a few folks over this weekend and we cracked a few bombers I'd not had before. A couple of them were Bruery beers - we had The Bruery White Chocolate and the Frucht: Boysenberry. The Boysenberry was quite good, and at "only" $12/750ml it isn't unreasonably priced. I'll probably get it again. White Chocolate was very good - I wasn't sure what I'd think, since I haven't had much in the way of wheat wines, but I thought the flavors all worked together. The Bruery is a brewery that's growing on me. 2-3 years back we didn't get much of their best stuff here in Madison, but they're improving their distro quite a bit and getting to have some more of their non-entry level beers, I'm realizing why they're held in such high esteem from some of my California friends.

Also cracked one of my last remaining Central Waters Black Golds. This may be my favorite beer. In the age of barrel aged variants, it's nothing too flashy, it's just a perfectly done bourbon barrel aged imperial stout. Excited to find this thread and have some more people to geek out with on beer.

Nice hit - I signed up as well, but didn't hit it. Do you live anywhere close to Decorah? I try to get up there about 5 or so times a year. One time they had 4 bottles of Mornin' Delight for the first 4 people there, which I was lucky enough to be in that group. I'll be going through next Friday on the way to the Twin Cities watching Golden State vs. Minnesota. Speaking of, I need to stock up on Prairie Artisan Ales when in Minnesota, who doesn't distribute to Wisconsin for some reason.