That sounds pretty cool. I'll report back on Turo after a second bottle - I shared the first one with 4 other people and I feel like I needed more than that brief encounter to come to a conclusion about it. It was an interesting flavor and had the body and feel of a wine but with a little (and just a little) traditional sour blonde taste poking through, but I'm not sure if the grenache flavors reached the complexity you'd expect from a wine.

Speaking of cabernet, I think one of The Bruery's variations of Black Tuesday this year is to blend it with Napa cabernet sauvignon grapes, should be good!

Obv ate the orange instead of adding it like a rookie.

5 of the most recent beers I drank:

Congress Street and DDH Summer Street from Trillium: Were about 1.5 months old when drank, so not super fresh for an IPA. Congress Street was solid but I was expecting more given all of the hype around Trillium. Just a normal NE IPA. DDH Summer Street was very good, if you're into that juicy, low carb soft mouthfeel style. I feel comfortable saying I'd take Toppling Goliath's IPAs over these, though.

RAR Edward Hyde: I normally don't like DIPAs as much as IPAs, both because of the higher ABV but then they also are often very overly malty sweet. This was really good, though. I'd happily have more.

Alpine Nelson: It'd been a long while, so I'd forgotten how good this was. Really damn good. So well balanced. I think I'd easily take it as the best near-nationwide distro IPA, over Two Hearted.

Dugges/Omnipollo Barrel Aged Anagram (Imperial Blueberry Cheesecake Stout): Great smell. Nails the description. Flavor was good, but didn't quite match the smell. Also had a bit of heat, because of the 14.5% abv. Still was fun to try. I've enjoyed most of the Omnipollo beers I've had.

Obviously you need to go stop at Cantillon.

IPA fans,

21A Brew free or die is one of my favorite cheap IPAs. Nothing super special, just a solid crisp, hoppy IPA for around $8/6-pack. So I was excited to check out blood orange brew free or die.



Hmmm. Smell quite sweet and fruity. First sip not bad, some hoppy bitterness with a lot of big orange flavor. But it just got worse with every sip, the sweet orange flavor overwhelming everything else. Like drinking orange soda by the end.

Won't buy again.

It's amazing to me how often base beers are unimproved by things that sound awesome. One that stands out the most is Pineapple Sculpin. I love Sculpin, and pineapple is my favorite food. I love when IPAs have citrusy pineapple flavor. But Pineapple Sculpin kind of sucks.

I'm guessing I'd feel the same about this 21A beer.

Currently at the opening night of a new place in my village, primarily an off licence but with six keg lines and the option to do growlers, as the draught stuff is all domestic stouts/ipa's don't think I'll be using that option any time soon. Will grab a photo of the USA#1 selection when it's not busy, mostly larger market stuff like stone, founders etc but will post up and see if there's anything worth a punt

Agree with this. I also prefer normal sculpin over grapefruit. I think most IPAs have enough of the tropical/citrus stuff you don't need to really be adding fruit. In general anyways.

I feel kinda this way about a lot of the dark beers too, many of which are throwing in so much that I think it kinda muddles the taste. Two of the big ones are cinnamon and chili peppers. There are some beers that pull this off (Cassian Sunset is a great, great beer with cinnamon) but generally I like just a more straightforward, flawlessly executed profile of something like Sump. Speaking of coffee beers, I feel like there's been a lot more beers recently that are *super* coffee forward, and I'm starting to get a bit burnt out on that style.

One I am enjoying a lot of the new flavor additions is vanilla, I think that works really well with stouts.

But pretty much all the breweries are hopping on the various trends out there. In general it's led to us being incredibly spoiled for options. But in specifics, there's a lot of breweries that I think are making these beer variants when they've not even really mastered just a straightforward imperial stout.

The Bruery is apparently starting another label called "Offshoot Beer Company" which is making IPAs (when starting The Bruery originally, they promised they would never make an IPA, though they've frequently blurred the lines since then by making IPLs and stuff like that every now and then). As their blog post put it: "We never said we wouldn’t launch a new brand that focuses on fresh, juicy, aromatic, and conveniently canned IPAs."

This was announced yesterday, leading many (including me) to think it was an April Fools joke, despite the elaborateness of having t-shirts and actual beers to taste at their tasting room. But a day later, they're still sticking with it:



So, apparently this is a thing. Notably they said they're only doing 7 day pickup windows for these beers cause they want you to drink them fresh.

There's so much self-deprecation in that blog post I still have a hard time believing it.

Grimm fans,



Super Going. OK, this is what an orange beer should taste like. Tons of natural orange and other citrus flavors, balanced with some oak and light bitterness. Complex flavors, but very easy drinking. Perfect sunny day beer.



Blackberry orange pop. Kinda crazy beer. Pour and first taste is like a juicy hazy NE IPA, except without the hoppy bitterness, and berry flavors dominating over citrus. Sweet berry flavor with perfect amount of citrus tartness to balance it out, with layers of vanilla and light malt. Kinda like drinking a lightly alcoholic strawberry rhubarb pie. They call it a dessert beer and I agree with that, but it's like a grownup dessert - delicious berry and vanilla flavors but not overly sweet at all.

Both of these were about $12, and I'd recommend them both.

goofy, thanks for posting that link. I went into the article ready to hate, but it actually reads pretty reasonably to me.

Everyone is jumping into the juicy-IPA game, and with good reason, it's an accessible beer for newer drinkers, yet some of the top examples are the highest rated beers in the world by veteran drinkers.

Had a bunch of good beers yesterday at a friend's birthday.

- Mocha Wednesday, got a lot of chocolate out of that one.
- FSW Agrestic and Opal, had never had these two before, really good.
- 2011 BA rasputin, 2015 BA rasputin. Oddly the '15 was stored perfectly but tasted more oxidized and aged but was good. The '11 tasted pretty fresh and rich and was better.
- Alesong shake your tree (wild in oak with peaches), I think I posted about how good this was before (and Alesong in general). Also had the gin barrel hop farm from them, excellent.
- Revolution Straight Jacket (12/2015), very sweet as expected, basically an awesome dessert or something you could pour onto pancakes lol.
- A couple trillium hops (melcher st. vicinity), and then a "boston stout" from them and a porter from a NE brewery. The dark stuff was good, but was probably a couple months old. The hops were 1-2 months old and still the usual good quality to me.
- About five Unibroue beers, been awhile since I had most of them. This time I liked the wheat tripel (don de deu or what have you) better than LFDM and the rest, perhaps palate jacked by that point lol.
- Sam Adam's double bock, a 2013 120 min (surprisingly awesome) and a 1 year old Dark Horse Scotty Karate (always have enjoyed this beer).

Bunch of homebrew too, but only a few misses out of everything we had all day, almost all of it was good stuff.

Goofy,

I bet those will be some damn good IPAs.

chiry,

I did the math, and you got loaded.

All,

I've decided 12oz cans > 16oz cans.

few beers so far today. There will be more.

Jack's Abbey / Sole Artistinal Ale: Wicked Philthy (IPL, collab, no idea abv): "New England IPL".. pretty solid, not spectacular. Slight haze, copper/orange color. Lotta yeast on the nose imo. Bit of a caramel/butterscotch malt going on. Tropical flavors come through. Solid bitterness. Nice enough. Glad I only bought two cans instead of a full 4 pack, tho.

Nightshift: One Hop This Time: Nelson (IPA): another solid southern hemisphere single-hop IPA from Nightshift. I don't really get the vinous aspect from Nelson that people always say lately. Earthy, lemony, that's about it. Very solid but not as good as Vic Secret or Ella from these guys.

Idle Hands: Adelais (unfiltered pilsner, 5.2%, MA): eh. Solid pilz. Not blown away. The problem with these craft pilz is when they aren't a clear cut above the rest, it's hard to justify the cost compared to Miller High Life, which itself is a clear cut above the rest.

12 ounce bottles, soon to be all the rage

Stoked to hear Cigar City is now being distributed in NJ.

Separately, found this pretty helpful in tasting

Speaking of Randy Mosher's Tasting Beer, I read it about a year and a half ago and learned a ton. Really made me appreciate what I had been tasting. For me at least, it's amazing how simply knowing what I am tasting and the process of creating that taste can affect how I feel about a beer. I don't have the most refined palate, so this book was super helpful. Well written text that is always accompanied by beautiful graphics (just look at those flavor wheels/spirals). Highly recommend the book.

Was in Portland last weekend and went to the Farmhouse and Wild festival at Saraveza and had a really good time.

3 different areas with beers pouring and only 1 was a hassle to get into. Best beer by far was Dry + Wet hopped La Tache from Ale Apothecary. Just a really nice balance of tart and hops. Picked up a (non wet hopped) bottle of this to bring home as well.

Was able to stop by Great Notion again, and still really love their hoppy stuff.

Overall I haven't been to a better city for beer and its always a great time up there.

Dry + wet hopped la tache is a very very good beer.

His stuff is so expensive but damn he does good work.

anyone outside of MI had any luck finding KBS so far? I asked a buddy about it yesterday who always is on top of release dates and he said that Meijer was the only place that had it and they put it out monday/tuesday this week. I was able to grab 1 bomber ($20 - yuck) today at lunch, but no 4 packs to be found. Really hate their pricing, but i'm fine with 1 bottle to try this years version.

Most of the places I've traditionally purchased KBS don't place it on the shelves.

I had some KBS in New York City a few days ago, both on tap and a couple of bottles.