budweiser, and home made

this year's Stone Vertical Epic is pretty interesting, its a belgian amber brewed with anaheim chilies and spiced with clove and cinnamon. i like it, its almost like three distinct tastes rolled into one beer but its definitely a sipper, compared to most brews it took me a long time to finish the bomber...pours a pretty awesome red color too

that sounds ****ing delicious, although I generally dont really like most Stone beers. (Blasphemy i know)

Goddamn Californians. Is it better with the asian inspired rueben or does it go better with Innuit-Italian fusion cuisine?

my buddy has hoppy feet black on tap too. would never consider pecan beer. unless it was my only option.

Kind of off-topic, I guess, but I was wondering how similar the same beer brand tastes in different parts of the world. I suppose the ingredients can't always be the same everywhere.

well beer isn't Pepsi or something, I'd assume everything other than the huge macros, and maybe even them, are all brewed in the same place and exported to various countries etc.

I had the '11 and the '09 on Sunday night - both for the first time. I highly recommend you try the '09 - which is more of a porter and the flavors aren't so aggressive. Both are good beers, but I say the '09 is exceptional.

Boulevard Wheat ftw

yeah i lub me some boulevard

Finally, my favorite beer arrives!

Do want...need to find out if I'll be able to snag a six pack. What will they go for this year 24$?

$20/6 in Indianapolis

The head on that looks delightful.

Well the strange thing is that some larger companies have multiple breweries. Budweiser for instance has 12 in the United States alone.

All good consistent beers have an extremely set recipe that involves specific ingredients added at specific times at designated temperatures. No beer will substitute say cascade hops or pale malt for a different type.

What a lot of people forget about though is the water. Mineral content plays a huge role in the taste of beer as it effects many things such as the way yeast process the sugars or the direct influence of these dissolved minerals on the palate. From what I know, mineral content can be controlled in some way but it's fairly complicated to duplicate water from certain sources.

Beer is a very fickle thing, so I guess in short yes, you are going to notice subtle differences between batches of beer from different locations and times even if they are of the same type.

I paid $20 in michigan

Hopslam is so ****ing awesome. One thing that gets me through Michigan winters is the availability of it on draft.

do any brewers use purified water (like deionized or distilled)? wonder how that would affect the taste

for all the Hopslam lovers is it just like a perfect execution of a DIPA or is their something different/unique about it? my store carries all kinds of Bell's brews but i haven't seen any Hopslam yet, will definitely pick up whatever i can if they get some in though

The brewery for my favorite beer (Rockmill Saison) did a study on their water source and found it had very similar properties to some of the big name/quality Belgian water sources. You can read about it on their website if anyone's interested.

Edit: It's in Ohio.

That would mess with the brew in all kinds of way, from throwing off the pH of the mash, which affects how the enzymes present convert starches to sugars, to the main fermentation and providing yeast with essential nutrients for proper reproduction. However, and I don't know why I'm so certain about this other than its just practical, I'm pretty sure the big guys all start with distilled or its practical equivalent and then add back minerals to build a specific water profile. Basically a recipe for a certain water in order to be consistent. Its actually not hard to achieve just about any water profile, given you know where you want to go and you start with essentially pure H2O.

Most homebrewers don't need to worry about it, but just like many other aspects of the hobby, there's a pretty good rabbit hole to wander into it if you want to geek out about it. I don't bother - middle TN actually has pretty good brewing water - except for my Bohemian Pilsner, and even then I KISS: half metro Nashville water, half distilled.

I've only had one bottle so far, but I wasn't all that impressed with Hopslam. I'm gonna try two back-to-back to see if I just missed something. Don't get me wrong, it was a tasty beer, but I definitely wouldn't pay $20 for another sixer.

I think Pliny the Elder is the perfect execution of an IIPA. If you want to be nitty enough to draw a distinction between DIPA and IIPA, then I guess Hopslam is the best DIPA I've had, but many people put the two beers in the same category, and in that case I think Pliny takes it hands-down.

I think that this years batch is less great than the past few, however I still think that it is an outstanding and delightful beer. I agree about Pliny on this years batch, but not necessarily in prior years.

So much win in the few pages I read of this thread. Here are pics of some of my favorites, stolen from my friends pics (he has a year of beer collection)





Great TX beer!

my favorite Shiner product

killabeez finally confirmed white Caucasian male

Lol @ putting Shiner in there with those other two (especially the Ayinger).

Troegs Nugget Nectar is coming soon.

I feel bad for west coasters who can't get this beer.

This beer has never done anything for me, but I'm hopeful for this year.