are u gonna do ipa's?

I've had the Stone side by side with the Old Rasputin. I preferred the Old Rasputin.

I wouldn't hold your breath. As I mentioned, many in this group aren't so big on beer, esp. hoppy beer. We generally try to do alcohols such that everyone will find at least one thing they like on a given night. I'm not sure turn out would be very good for an IPA night.

I fookin' love stouts, I am definitely going to look up the Yeti imperial as well as the Brooklyn black stout. ($9 for a 6 pack of 10% beer really is smokin' hot.)

Disappointed you didn't include Samuel Smith Imperial Stout.

I remember first getting into beer. Being introduced to Duvel was what made me realise that beer could actually be enjoyed beyond being a means to a drunkening. It's not my favourite now (though I certainly don't mind it) but it made me experiment with other "fancy" beers. My favourite styles are wheat beers and porters/stouts*. I've had really good wheat beers in pubs and ultimately, I think that this style contains the best beers. But the porters/stouts are much more reliable IMO. I always feel pretty good about trying a new one and very rarely regret it. For this reason, it's probably my favourte style.

Since my dad gave up the drink though, I've regressed back to my days of cheap lager. Not just because he would fork out for it more than I would, but because it's less exciting when you have nobody to talk about it with. Seriously, I may as well go whole hog and drink what the tramps drink because it purely a functional thing at the moment. I buy beer to get drunk. But this thread has made me realise just how much I miss good beer and with the festive season coming up, it's much easier to justify spending my pauper salary on princely beers. The first thing I'm going to stock up on is imperial stout, using the recommendations ITT.

*I've always been ignorant about what distinguishes porter from stout and having consulted Wikipedia, I'm not exactly enlightened. There seems to be a suggestion that stout is stronger than porter but in my experience stout is the most commonly used term for both strong and weak versions of the beer. Porter seems to be used rarely to refer to the weaker variety. I wonder if a stout is more commonly Irish than is a porter, which is more likely to be English... seems like this could be true.

The line between stout and porter is definitely blurry, but it's also not that important, right? You'll like a stouty porter the same as you'll like a portery stout, right? A commonly referred to line is the use of roasted barley in stout, and not in porter. Generally, if the beer is roastier than it is chocolatey, call it a stout.

The lack of Oregon beers is a serious problem for these tests.

Great TR as always Wookie. Gonna try some of those stouts soon.

If you want to fly out, you're welcome to attend and ensure they're represented .

Typically, I will ... put the bottles in a brown paper bag... Then, I label the bags... with a letter. I write down which letter is what... Then, my friend goes and picks a letter, writing it down... When we've gone through them all, we ... then reveal them. My friend says "Beer #1 is C," and I then look at my notes and say, "Beer C is Spaten," etc.

My monthly wine club in NYC does everything blind, but our method is a bit different. In a separate room, one of us puts all the bottles into brown paper bags; then they come back to the main room and another of us goes and marks each bag with a number. Then we pour and taste them in order. We all try #1 together (with a strict "no talking about the wine" policy), then we try #2, etc. After the last bottle, we read aloud our notes on #1, then we remove the bag and reveal the wine.

Each person brings one bottle and is allowed to spend up to $15, but one person spends about $50 on the "ringer." We rotate each month which one of us buys the ringer, so the average cost per month is about $20 each.


Have you had Ayinger? That was the other beer I considered bringing. It's probably my favorite Oktoberfest

Oh, man. I've tried a lot of different beer in my time, and Ayinger is in my top ten favorite breweries. I could drink their Jahr Hundert all the time.

thanks for this - will have to try that #1 stout.

I'm actually quite surprised you didn't have Sam Smith's Russian Imperial Stout in the test as it's supposed to literally be the world reference. (I may be wrong that Russian Imperial Stout may be a slightly different category than just imperial stout - and yes - you mentioned one's favorite's may not be mentioned - I'm buzzed as I type,.........