Couple of ****ty beers I had earlier this week:

Rhinegeist "Truth" IPA: I've heard good things. Canning date was fairly fresh, like under a month. This sucked. No real interesting hop flavors and tons of malt. wtf?

Lord Hobo Consolation Prize, DIPA: not totally awful, but it's quite high abv (9.something) and it's way too sweet.


I just bought a couple Averys cuz of this thread. I have the same lineup at my packy as El D, but not as cheap. Still not bad. 9.99 a bottle. I bought the Czar and the Hitler one (imperial oktoberfest). Prob won't try tonight.

My packy just happened to be fully stocked with a ton of beers I like regularly and also want to try. Was quite the dilemma. Limited myself to new beers I hadn't tried, rather than loading up on Be Hoppy and Nightshift.

Long Trail Space Juice, DIPA, 8.7% (VT): Starts off great. Lots of citrusy aroma. Bit of malt sweetness but not crazy. But this definitely has a fair bit of mosaic to it, and as it warmed got a bit too much berry flavored and resiny. Def a very solid beer but I'll drink the other can I have colder.

Otter Cree/Lawson Collaboration, Double Dose IPA, 8.5% (VT): they call it an IPA but it's really a DIPA. Unfiltered, a few floaties, aroma is pretty peachy. SUPER bitter flavor. Grapefruit up the wazoo. Nice feel. I look forward to trying this without having anything before it, but maybe a bit too aggressively bitter for me to totally love this. It did go down fast and easy despite the bitterness. So if you're into aggressively bitter beers, give this a go. It was pricy tho. Like $16/4 12oz bottles.

Singlecut Billy 18-Watt IPA, 5% (NYC): After finishing half of it did I look up the abv. 5%? wtf. This is very flavorful. very clearly galaxy hopped, both in appearance and flavor. I guess if you just dry hop to **** with galaxy, you get a pretty acceptable beer. Def a tad thin which for 5% I'm not shocked.

Modern Times Black House, Coffee Oatmeal Stout, 5.8% (CA): MT just started showing up in MA. I picked up 2 of these and 2 of some hoppy amber ale. I passed on Fortunate Islands because the canning date was a tad old and based on the description I think it's a beer that MA is already crushing. Anyway, this beer here.. right on cracking the can, you smell roasted coffee. Overall this is a pretty good beer, but I'm not blown away. Quite thin. Bit on the burnt side flavor-wise but with some good sweetness as well. Perfectly acceptable low-ish ABV coffee stout. I think nightshift's "awake" coffee porter is a tad better.

Modern Times Blazing World, Hoppy Amber, 6.8% (CA): Says it's an amber with Nelson, Mosaic, and Simcoe. Not really getting much nelson, but can def pick up on the mosaic and simcoe. I dunno. I'm pretty drunk at this point. Nice hops, solid malt sweetness. Very well done India Red Ale. Maybe a tad medicinal on the finish.

had the Avery Kaiser (imperial Oktoberfest)... maybe shoulda tackled it sober. but got damn. I did not like this. Super, super malty and sweet. I am not against malt-forward beers. But this was too much for me. I had like 4 sips then poured it.

K,

Around here at beer stores, the raspberry and vanilla barrel aged are $12.99, the czar is $7.99, and the reverend is $5.99.

Had the raspberry and vanilla tonight. Raspberry I've had before and loved it, still loved it. The vanilla was good, but between the alcohol, bourbon barrel, and vanilla it was a little sweeter than ideal for me. Still very good with some nice vanilla and coconut notes. I would be ok with this at $12.99, but it's excellent for $6.99!

yeah those are the same prices for raspberry and vanilla here as well. Agreed with your assessments.

First beer of NFL sunday is Maine Beer's Beer V, part of their ongoing hop program series. I've had good experiences with all of these that I've had, with Beer III, a black IPA, a real standout (possibly my favorite beer I've tried this year?). This is a lager with german hops, Wakatu (new zealand), and an unnamed american hop. 5.2%. Bottled on 9/14/16.

As is usually the case with Maine beers, delivers almost exactly as advertised. Smell is mostly lemon/lime zest. Super refreshing, taste is a mix of grassy flavors and lemon/lime, with some bready malt underneath, slight hint of pilsner. The bottle says the american hop gives it lemon and tangerine qualities. Mostly lemon for me. If there's tangerine or orange there it's very slight and only on the finish. Crushable as hell.

Overall, another super solid, super balanced jam from Maine Beer Co. Just sell 12oz sixers already!

Went to Trillium today to pick up Never and Again (Monkish collab, DIPA aged on mango) and dialed in. Also wound up grabbing the sigtebrod because I was curious about it.

Cracked one of the N&As tonight. Pours really turbid, almost totally opaque, pure trillium. Tons of mango aromas. Tastes more like a west coast IPA, really spicy and piney finish. I think I've preferred some other trill DIPAs (mettle, scaled up, citra and galaxy cutting tiles) but this one is good. I taste a little of the oniony-ness that is characteristic of some of their beers they package too young. I'll revisit this one in a week and see how it develops.

Was at Rare Beers on Friday, excellent event.

Some notables:

Freemont Rusty Nail - Hands down my favorite beer of the fest.
Lawson's Sip of Sunshine - First time having this, was impressed, refreshing given almost everything there was barrel aged or sour (or both).
Cigar City Double Hanapau - A lot of chocolate, bold flavors.
Weldworks BA Coconut Medionoche and BA Mexican Achromatic stouts - Had these at releases previously, they're just excellent.
Alaskan Bourbon Barrel Smoked Porter - Interesting take on a familiar beer. Ended up blending it 1:2 with Alesmith's Port Aged Wee Heavy and it was really nice.
Casey CFP Attika Cherry - Good, not as good as their Balaton Cut, maybe on par with the Montmorency CFP.
NoDa's Rum Barrel Aged Double Chocolate Vanilla Bean Monstro RIS - A mouthful of a name and an equally complex beer. Really interesting and enjoyable.
Odyssey Quadratic Reality - Like chocolate covered cherries, nice beer.
Portland Brewing Gin BA Spine Tingler - Remember this being a solid hit.
Prarie Sherry Bomb - My favorite bomb yet, this was awesome!
Sam Adams Cherry Utopius - Was my 2nd "beer" of the event. Would've loved to sip on this with a cigar, but is more of a mulling drink for me. Too hot to drink so early in a beer event.

The only beer I was disappointed with was Lost Abbey's Duck Duck Gooze. I love gueuze beer and was really excited for this beer. Had a dominant flavor that was out of place, maybe it means it was young, I don't know enough to say, but it just made it an OK beer overall (let alone a limited $38 bottle).

Oh and I volunteered, got to drink all those and many, many more. You essentially have a buddy and can sub out whenever. I poured most of the time for a brewery that couldn't make it, while my buddy went around with both of our glasses and filled us up.

This easily ranks up there with my favorite festivals, the Bull and Bush Christmas Party (vintage beers) and Big Beers Festival.

finally took at a look at my bourbon county bottles from last year

5 are from infected dates
3 are ok

yay?

I also have 3 Coffee which are apparently all infected

what are the odds if I send in the 8 labels they give me some refund even though I'm late? I guess it's a freeroll for me, just time to send in the labels and take pics etc.

Had the remaining bottles over the past few days. I ended up really liking this. I poured a little more carefully to keep the floaties in the bottle, then I'd swig that. This is just a really nicely done old school American ipa. It is bitter but it's got enough citrus and sweetness to balance it and it finishes fairly dry. Maybe not worth the price but very nice for what it is.

Probably because it should've been called "Duck Duck Grey Duck"
#MN4Lyfe

Seriously though, that event sounds awesome

Did anyone have Founders Lizard of Koz last year? Saw that its getting release mid Nov through December. BBA stout brewed with blueberries, chocolate and vanilla.

I'm looking forward to trying Lizard of Koz, but I'm guessing it's going to be much harder to find than their recent backstage stuff. Mango Magnifico is still sitting around all over the place.

Also pretty disappointed that it seems like I've experienced my first lost box from Belgium. Hit O'Hare mid-September and there have been no updates at all since then.

Gotta say, wasn't a massive fan of Avery's the czar (rus imp stout). Quite medicinal and cough syrupy to me.

First time I found this one in a can, much better value at $11 for 4 16 oz vs $7 a 22.
http://i1268.photobucket.com/albums/...psbqeulpyw.jpg

Email them and tell them you just tried some of your bottles and they didn't taste right. Tell them the liquor store didn't say anything of note, and when you started telling your friends how different it tasted they showed you the recall and you're claiming your refund.

The whole "you get x months to redeem refunds" system is no good imo, I can't imagine that's even legal because the purchasers weren't contacted. What if you don't read the news closely and don't follow beer groups? They sell like 40k bourbon county brand stouts, a real # of people have no idea about the recall. It's not like some brewery with 500-1k bottle releases.

Beer geeks do not have a legal right to refunds for beer they do not like the taste of.

well...

legal right? right, I agree, I doubt that is the law.

but "don't like the taste of" is not really the case either. and clearly GI knows this bc they offered to give people their money back from selling them beer that doesn't come close to tasting as intended or marketed or expected. and when it costs $15/bottle (and coming off a huge price increase YoY) that makes sense. we're not talking about a $8 6 pack that got old.

so it's not exactly good faith that they're giving refunds, but not exactly required either. the deadline for refunds smells like something they bargained with their finance team so they don't have an unknown liability floating out there forever. which again I get, but it's also arbitrary and as a consumer it sure would be nice if they cut people some slack

Yeah, totally get that. But it's not a Takata airbag, it's just a beer that doesn't taste the way anyone wants it to. To the government it's not even food.

Was at City Beer Store today picking up the Lagunitas Born Yesterday and there were cases of Half Acre Daisy Cutter by the register. The guys said they are just starting to distribute in SF now which is interesting.

A recent Trillium/Monkish collab has all the boston beer geeks asking for refunds. It's some IPA aged on mangos, and apparently it's a disaster. And it was like $22/4pk. I'd be more sympathetic if people weren't buying in bulk to trade and re-sell at a big markup.

Ended up buying a 4pk of Modern Times Fortunate Islands. Even if it was a tad old (canned mid August), it was quite nice. Reminds me of some of the low abv TH and Trill offerings, a bit thin and the citra dry hopping being in the forefront, but the caramel malts are a nice twist to balance it out a bit.

This sounds just like Tired Hands Mago Tago. I didn't get to try it, so can't say just how bad it was.

That's brutal that they even released that. At $22/4pk you better not release something that doesn't pass quality control. I think I remember reading about some local brewery (prob Other Half since they're collab whores) that did some kind of weird beer with white chocolate that didn't come out how they wanted so they dumped the entire batch and re-brewed it.

I had the Never & Again with two other people and none of us finished our pour. It was easily the worst Trillium I've had. It started out decent and smelled/looked like some deliciously tropical oj, but it was so bitter and spicy throughout that it became undrinkable.

I see this is on at the fest that I'm going to tomorrow. May pick it up although I think there's enough domestic stuff that'll occupy me

Had never seen it in cans before, but picked up a 4 pack of imperial biscotti break for $14. Way better deal than the normal bomber prices.

Yeah that's a good deal. I enjoyed it. Was not a huge fan of "even more Jesus" tho, which is a similar deal.

Picked up a bunch of trill tonight. Few samples:

Nelson Fort Point Pale Ale: super solid. I like Nelson hops.

Decidiuous, imperial Brown ale: uh.... Like an air freshener mixed with toothpaste? I thought this was awful. Was hoping for some actual malts and smoothness. Instead more of an overhopped red ale, and far inferior to well made India Red Ales like 21sts Toaster Pastry.

Pot & Kettle, Oatmeal Porter: this is probably one of the better beers they make. Thick, creamy porter with roasted malts and notes of coffee and a little chocolate. Nothing fancy or out of the ordinary. Just a really well made porter.