Abner def overrated. Good, wasn't blown away.

Had a High Horse Minx. Super fruity saison. Maybe a bit too thin and carbonated, but tasty enough. I enjoyed it.

Followed up with another saison. Kent Falls Farmer's Table, 3.8%. Very nice. Woulda been better without the previous beers. Grassy and yeasty and quite refreshing. Dry. I liked this.

Ended up talking to a dude who owns www.tastybrewco.com down in Asheville and Raleigh SC. Guess it's a beer store / tap room. Normally wouldn't plug a rando business, but as we were talking, Bissell Bros Brewing came up and I mentioned I never had any, they don't really distribute outside of Maine. Well he had a can of Baby Genius and gave it to me, along with a coozy. Sweet!

Time for another beer review dump:

Angel City's Berliner Weisse: Has a clear light yellow color befitting of a 3.3% beer. Taste is mildy sour with a slight pineapple aspect to it. Finish is sour wheaty and yeasty. Refreshing and perfect for those hot summer days. If you got to the brewery you can ask for a pump of fruit syrup to make the beer cloying as hell.

Lagunitas Equinox: "A Genuine Pale Oat Ale" says the label. Smells like a fruity IPA. Tastes like an IPA. It's an IPA. Mouthfeel is creamy and gentle.

Barley Forge's Black Dahlia: A belgian dark ale. Smells dark and sweet with typical Belgian ale spices. Taste is sweet candi sugar draped by a smoky metallic detergent like quality. Not too pleasant but hey, it nicely hides that 11% abv.

Oceanside Ale Works Daliesque 2011: Barrel aged lambic, sour Belgian blonde. Little carbonation. Color is opaque honey. Smells sour with just a touch of honey. Taste is sour and acidic with a pleasant peachy finish.

Knee Deep Hoparillo: How far is too far when it come's to IPAs? This is yet another trup IPA from Knee Deep. The hops used this time is Amarillo, Mosaic, and Citra. The smell of pine, fruit, and dank erupts from the bottle. The taste is quite sweet but balanced out by grassy piney bitterness.

Knee Deep Hop-De-Ranged: Quad IPA at 13.1% abv. Piney bitterness with alcohol and a little caramel but not any sweetness. It does taste like an actual IPA rather than a barley wine with hops. It's alright.

Vanberg and Dewulf's Lambrucha: Sour Belgian Ale mixed with Kombucha tea. Smells of sour berries and a whiff of tea. Sour up front followed by the unmistakable taste of tea. I've never had kombucha tea but I think I would like it. Refreshing but I'd prefer it just a tad bit less sour. Would recommend to anyone who does not dislike sours because it's interesting, unique, and tasty. Also read the wikipedia page on kombucha tea. Apparently it may cause "severe hepatic and renal toxicity" and "metabolic acidosis" whatever that means.

Ironfire's Last Rites: Triple Chocolate Imperial Stout at 16% abv. Cocoa nibs and chocolate malt added. Aged for a year in bourbon barrels. Smell is deep sweet dark chocolate raisin syrup booze. Soy sauce surfaces as the beer warms up. Taste starts out with vanilla chocolate sweetness that drys up with the finish. Finishes with roasty stout and bitterness with the sweet alcohol still clinging on. Not too boozy and not cloying. No overly burnt finish. The beer is good but the price is high at $24 a bomber.

Stone's W00tstout 3.0: Imperial stout with wheat, rye, pecans, and a small portion of the beer aged in bourbon barrels. Bottled at 13% abv. Taste and smell matches with a sourish chocolate covered toasted cardboard taste on top of a sweet dark stout. Bitterness seeps in at the end. I had a W00tstout 1.0 about a year ago and it had a much richer and deeper flavor. So maybe aging really improves this beer.

New Belgium Eric's Ale: Wood aged sour peach ale. What kind of wood? Doesn't say on the bottle. Smells like sour peaches and ale. Tastes like tart peach juice with some bitter pit and astringency. The finish is quite gentle with the tartness and astringency quickly fading away. The beer isn't very acidic making this refreshing even at 7% abv. This beer is alright but some may think it tastes too much like peach juice as opposed to an actual beer. And the astringency can be a bit much.

Belching Beaver's Great Lei: A pineapple colada IPA. What I expected was an IPA with some light pineapple flavors. What I got was the unmistakable smell and taste of pina colada - pineapple and creamy coconut. Thankfully the taste is not artificial at all. The pina colada taste is not too sweet but still provides an nice contrast with the bitter finish. I'd actually prefer it to be slightly more sweet but I'd feel like most others would like it just fine as it is. Definitely give it a try.

Kern River's Class V Stout (8.5% abv): Smells like a sweet roasty stout with coffee. Taste is sweet stout with chocolate moving towards bitter coffee. So far so good. Finish is overly burnt and bitter. Too bad.

Modern Time's Fortunate Island with grapefruit zest added (5% abv): The grapefruit zest dominates the smell and taste of the beer. A wheat beer and some hops are hiding underneath. Finishes clean. The grapefruit flavor doesn't include any of the pulp of the fruit but it's certainly zesty making this quite refreshing. Definitely gets a recommendation from me.

Barley Forge's The Patsy: A coconut rye stout. Smells like toasty coconut and sour rye bread. Coconut comes on very strong in the taste. Like the stronger than actual coconut. Follows up with sour rye with a slightly bitter roast finish. Mouthfeel is somewhat creamy but also a bit of sting from the rye.

Brew Dog's Tokio (18.2% abv): Sweet sweet malt alcohol with cranberries. The base beer is supposed to be an imperial stout but that's completely blanketed by all the other sweet stuff they added in.

The Bissell bros baby genius was quite delicious. Similar to eureka. Hoppy, fruity blond. Bit less citrus, bit yeastier. Hit the spot.

Would def seek out Bissell bros stuff if I'm going through Portland,ME.

toss,

Awesome reviews, thanks! Overall thought on the Lagunitas Equinox? I've been considering giving that a try.

Fortunate Island w/ Grapefruit Zest sounds awesome. I really like that base beer, and I could def see it being great with a little more tartness.

I'm with you re: the Tokio.

Having a couple beers tonight. First a sour wild ale from Mikkeller called Winbic, that was OK but a bit whatever. Tasted like a sour ale that had had lager added to it. Then this guy:



I like this. It's a bit sweet (malt sweetness), but balanced. Nice resinous grapefruity hops. Not changing my life but it's pretty much what I'm looking for when I grab a DIPA.

I'd pass on the Lagunitas Equinox. I don't think it's anything special. I would definitely seek out a bottle of Fortunate Island with the grapefruit zest. That's a good beer.

Well, it has taken many beers and many attempts, but I think I've finally convinced myself that I just don't like barrel-aged barleywines at all.

Yeah, I'd concur with this. It was okay, but below average for Lagnuitas, imo.

Thread,

Which season do you feel has the best seasonals?

Winter for me, depending on how you define seasonal. Winter has Winter Warmers among unique 'seasonal' offerings, but my favorite part of winter is the ability to drink specific styles that just aren't as appealing during warmer months. I have an intense liking of big stouts, old ales, and English Barleywines, and the summer months its just not a enticing to drink those. During a cold winter day these beers warm the body perfectly.

Also, bump. Is this still happening, or were others interested?

Fall or winter for me. Overall stouts are my favorite but I love, love pumpkin and Christmas ales.

there aren't any "seasonal" beers I look forward to.

I don't like fall flavors (pumpkin) or winter flavors (cinnamon, nutmeg). Though I will say that Pete's Wicked Winter was what originally turned me onto good beer, oddly.

Summer seasonals are just like...Summer Ales? I can't think of any I seek out.

though in general I like winter b/c I like stouts. and I like summer as lambics are really refreshing when it's hot out.

but most of the time I'm drinking IPA's I guess

Pretty much this for me, too.

I hate pumpkin beers and don't like the winter warmers or spiced stuff. Pete's Wicked Ale and Wicked Winter are the first "good" beers I remember drinking (this was mid- to late 90s on the East Coast, before they were bought out).

I love stouts, and I have them occasionally in the summer but they're much easier for me to drink when it's cooler.

Summertime is primarily pale ales, IPAs, and lambics for me. This summer, Fist City and White Rajah have been my go to ales. And I've been opening up lambics and gueuzes pretty frequently, too. A random beer that I recently tried was this Gose from Cincinnati brewer MadTree:



It doesn't get very good ratings on BA, but I really enjoyed it. RDH, have you tried it?

Man, **** lambics.

kc,
If you're thinking of Lindemans stuff like this:



I agree - it's garbage. But well-made lambics are the bees knees. I went to an open house earlier this week and brought this:



and it was awesome, as usual.

I haven't tried a lot of fancy lambics, it's true. But I'm also not inclined to spend a lot of money and effort on hunting down some sparkling fruit juice.

Anyway, I'm in Ireland. First, yes, the Guiness is better here, depending on the pub.

In galway today, and came across the salt house, a galway bay brewing bar. So I tried some local stuff.

Of Foam and Fury - double ipa. Nice enough. Pretty fruity nose. Sweet. Quite bitter. Not crazy dry. Maltier than what I prefer nowadays. Too sweet. I was kinda kicking myself over ordering this instead of the single ipa. Worth a taste but wouldn't be my go-to.

The Port Storm - Porter. Pretty much hits the nail on the head as far as the style goes. Maybe a bit thin and too carbonated to reach perfection, but no one ordering this is gonna be disappointed. Coffee, roasted malts, bittersweet finish. Very nice.

Buried at Sea - chocolate milk stout. Didn't blow me away. Looks great, great feel, fairly standard milk stout flavor, but as the pint continued, just a bit too sweet. Back to back with a porter probably didn't help. Def good, just wasn't blow away.

The place had non galway bay beers on tap as well. The bartender kept talking up this wild beer Co Ninkasi, a sorta saison champagne beer with apple flavors. I had a taster of it. Did not really see the appeal at all. If I want champagne I'll order champagne.

Cool place overall. Just beer/booze, no food. . Mellow vibe. They had a lot of American beers along their walls, including heady, piney, etc. Ran into quite a few Americans as well.

I'd probably agree that the are no 'pure' seasonals I like, but certain seasons I'm much more inclined to consume more of certain styles. I'll take IPAs fresh all year, but during winter I like higher abv beers in general and probably drink them at a greater ratio in comparison w saisons and sours. During the summer it is the reverse. I had a Mocha Wed and some big Bruery beer last week, but also had probably 6 sours/bretty saisons to go with it.

As far as beers directly made for specific seasons, while overall I'm not a fan of pumpkin beers I've had 4 or 5 very good barrel-aged pumpkin beers, which I can't really say for many other season-specific styles. I think Rumkin is delicious, especially if given a year or 2 to age. Pumpk[y]n from Avery is probably even better imo. I've had a good chocolate stout from Midnight Sun (T.R.E.A.T maybe) and I thought a couple years ago Almanac's ba Pumpkin Barleywine was good. I vaguely remember it being infected or sucking last year though.

spider,

I'm also not really into barleywine, barrel-aged or otherwise.

We have a cool market across the street from us here in Portland with a walk in beer cellar similar to some whole foods.

They put out lists of new inventory and just saw these for the first time here and had to buy.



$14 for 12oz of supplication... This better do magical things to me. Cascade here in Portland makes a very similar sour based on the description, cheeries/barrel aged/pinot, so it'll be interesting to compare.

Another quick beer report from Ireland. Today was a long, arduous day through Inishmore and the cliffs of moher. Much needed food and beer afterward.

Had a Galway Hooker Irish Pale Ale. Only 4.4%. I was quite impressed by this. Slight bitterness, grainy, grassy malt without being very sweet, nice refreshing finish. Little bit of citrusy flavor. Overall well balanced and clean, without being too weak and while only 4.4% ABV. Doesn't blow you out of the water flavor-wise, but for what it is this is great. I take this over most American "session" ipas, which are still a good deal higher abv.

Also had some craft pilsner from some other brewery here, but the name escapes me. It was fine but nothing memorable about it.

Ehh, i'm with you on the whole effort thing.....the best lambics are insanely difficult to obtain these days and I can get full cases of regular old cantillon and 3F Geueze, kriek, etc from etre pretty much whenever. That being said, the good fruited lambics are pretty far from "sparkling fruit juice."

Meh, good lambics are like stinky cheese on multiple levels. It's an acquired taste and some people won't ever enjoy those flavors and aromas. That being said, if you can ship me a case of Cantillon I'd appreciate it.

Where was this list? I've seen some Society and Solitude pop up all over Brooklyn, not so much in Manhattan though.

You still in Ireland? Can point you in the direction of some great craft bars in Dublin