having some more captain's daughter today. from a growler my roommate picked up. I've only ever had growlers, have yet to source cans for it.

Gotta say, maybe the most inconsistent beer I've had. First growler was fine, wasn't mind blown, but I chalked it up to my roommate dumbly putting the growler on its side in the fridge and seal got busted a bit. 2nd growler was wowzers in me trousers. Extremely good, and I had it ranked above TH's Haze, which I absolutely love.

This 3rd growler, bit maltier and maybe slightly buttery. Maybe that's just bias creeping in, I've read about diacetyl problems with this beer in its early incarnations, but they supposedly have that cleaned up.

If canned version reflects the 2nd growler, I will be all about it. But as of right now, I actually liked the IPL I had last week more than this (which isn't a knock, that was great). It's still very good, but something is off imo.

is this true in other peoples experience? i just got my first growler ~6 months ago, but its always been cheaper for me to get a growler fill than to buy cans/bottles at my local breweries.

So I never heard of this, but I'm sure most here have. This Saturday is zwanze day. The lineup of beers on tap at a local joint looks pretttttay goof.

https://instagram.com/p/7no7JwkXDM/

If any local bros wanted to meet up at armsby abbey, I'd be down. Lord Hobo in Cambridge is also doing something but I heard it gets crazy busy there.

Having a Founders ReDankulous imperial red IPA. Lives up to its name with the smell and pours a deep copper color with a thick head that lingers. Not sure what makes it "red", but it has a good hop bitterness and malt sweetness balance. tastes about as boozey as I would expect at 9.5%,and not great value at $11, but I would definitely recommend.

FWIW tt might be for places that do can/bottle, but the places I'm filling at here generally aren't. The fill at Cellarmaker was $25(which is on the higher side of what I've paid) for less than a 6 pack's worth of beer.

Forgot to mention, EEB specializes in Gruits. Anybody have them? Interesting flavors. Their current full list. Lots of crazy stuff, most of it I've enjoyed thoroughly.

My 64 oz. growler ranges from $15-20 to fill, depending on ABV.

hmm, the place i go to mainly is $8/fill ($6 on fridays) for their house beers and between $12-$18ish for specialty. A few seasonals are $20 i think, but i've yet to get one.

Rochesterian here. Best Rochester beers are probably Rohrbachs (not much distribution outside of Roch) and Three Heads Brewing (gets some distro).

Feel free to PM (or post here obv) if you need any Rochester pointers for bars or bottle shops or whatever.

I was at their brewery this summer. Their beer is very nice, and we really liked the food. A good place to go for lunch.

My girl picked this out for me ask for a la folie and they were out. Smell is sweet flavor is kinda not bitter or sweet more like a mixed drink than a beer, I wouldn't call it wine either just different

would anyone be interested in a swap for some zombie dust? i have a case coming to me in the next couple weeks and would like to try some good beers from out of my market. maybe some FRESH MASS PINTS?

mass pints are the best pints for sure

Bode-ist, I appreciate that you got the OOT fantasy league up and running when it looked doomed and would like to make some MASS PINTS show up on your doorstep. PM me.

If anyone wants to hook me up with some FRESH MASS PINTS I will gladly pay 2x + shipping or get you some local NYC stuff to trade for. Also have an extra bottle of Mexican Cake if you fancy that.

If any of you New England guys are interested in a super last minute Hill Farmstead Zwanse day ticket PM me. My buddy has a work emergency and cant make it tomorrow.

Anyone go to Zwanze today? I went to Spuyten Duyvil in Brooklyn and it was great!

Was in 3rd group of 10 admitted and immediately got draft pours of Fou Foune and St Lamvinus. Our small group ended up splitting bottles of Vigneronne, Iris, Cuvee St Gilloise, Drie Fonteinein Kriek, and Crooked Stave Key Lime Tau. The first people through the door bought ALL of the Framboos and Lou Pepe Framboise

Zwanze beer was interesting. It was tart and a little roasty. Definitely more tart as it warmed up.

I'm basically unwilling to wait in any line these days (nevermind for hours) + I have less patience for packed bars (I guess I'm a grumpy old man) so I did KBZ zwanze today.

started with a 375ml of gueze



drank a 750ml of Fou - which was a great way to do this as after having the base beer, the apricots really popped.



and that is about as much acid as I can take so I switched up

I went to the Zwanze day in CO at Crooked Stave Barrel Cellar. While I enjoyed the Zwanze, it was no better than Tart of Darkness (which I think is great fwiw). The big treat was the bottle share before the event. I waited in line at 8am, which wasn't a problem after waking up at 5am for EPL. I was 80th in line or so, but everyone brought bottles to share and I ended up having a lot of amazing beers. I started with a Chocolate Rain and ended with a 2010 Lou Pepe Frambois. The best beers I had were Framboos, cCasey Sour Balaton, and Imperial Blackberry Bu. I was so tipsy by the time I had the Zwanze I couldn't have cared less how it tasted.

Part of me wishes I went to Zwanze day (did the HDH auction instead), but the other part of me says: just bloody go back to Brussels for a weekend and drink it there again

Sour beer fans,



Instead of zwanze day at mikkeler went to city beer store.

Err on the side of awesome collab rare barrel/new Belgium was indeed awesome

Cosmic dust was the hot bartender's favorite, so I had that. Was good, not great. And $11/7oz p ridiculous. She's really hot tho.

I've had the other two rare barrels at rare barrel where they are a way more reasonable $7-8/10oz

Went to cellarmaker after and had a solid permanent daylight IPA and an excellent four barrel coffee porter.

All this Zwanze talk is making me jealous. Only consolation is that the idea of a wild stout doesn't appeal to me much.

Anyway, I've recently been intentionally drinking some of those bottles that have been sitting around for a while. Bottles that I've thought sounded very good, but apparently never good enough to actually open. (My typical practice is to order a bunch of stouts and lambic online, then drink local IPAs and pale ales. Which is why my basement office is turning into a war zone.)

Some recent ones:


This was fine/good, but not noticeably better than the standard Cuvee Rene. Also, I want to emphasize what a great value the standard Cuvee Rene is. And if the Cuvee Rene Kriek ever gets distributed in the U.S., that's going to be great value, as well.



This ended up being pretty good and followed the same pattern I've experienced with Fantomes before: starts off strange, but becomes pretty enjoyable by the end of the bottle.



The original bottling of Bourbon County Coffee Stout (2010). Hard to believe, but this was very easily available when it came out. I ended up buying 6-7 bottles, I think, when I still lived in Chicago. When fresh, I thought this was the best beer I had ever had. Now? Not even close. Look, aging coffee stouts is a terrible idea. Not only will the coffee fade, but it can develop weird vegetal flavors, too. That being said, this had actually aged pretty well, and I finished the bottle without a problem. Goose Island just does magic with their barrels.



I got this in a trade as an extra, and I thought it was pretty great. A nice raspberry flavor, very easy to drink. Apparently their new "Beret" is similar, and I'd love to try that.



This is a great Kriek. I'm not sure whether I like this or Cantillon's better, but I think it's close. It's nice that this one is still readily available from the online Belgian places.



This was really tasty, but verrrrrry oaky. So much so that it was distracting at first. But either I got used to it or other aspects took over. Pretty sad I only had the one bottle.



This is a monster beer - almost 18% alcohol. I wasn't sure what to expect, but I really, really liked it. It was of course boozy and rich and syrupy. But still very, very good. A great example of a beer being in the right sized bottle: 12 ounces is (barely) an amount that I could drink on my own. Putting this in a larger format would have been a disaster for me. I think, ideally, I'd have wanted about 8 ounces of this, but am overall happy with it, even at the ~$15 price. It does make me wonder about the people that are able to drink a bottle of Black Tuesday on their own.



Tilquin Quetsche Prunes de Namur. This is the version made with Belgian plums rather than French plums. I couldn't really tell a difference between this version and the French version. Maybe a side-by-side tasting would have helped. Very tart rather than fruity. I think I just prefer the standard Gueuze to the Quetsche.



I had this once before and remember liking it. This just tasted like it had gotten old. No particular flavor jumped out.

And that is my "force myself to open some beers that I otherwise wouldn't have" story. (That description does not apply to the 3F Kriek or Tilquin Quetsche.)

I disagree with this pretty strongly but i'm also not a huge fan of tart of darkness and I thought Zwanse was really great and interesting once it warmed up a bit.

Got my side of my trade with FedFan in the mail today and am super excited to try everything.

Cracked a Julius tonight after basketball and wow is this good. Super juicy and incredibly easy to drink. Big thank you to Fed for throwing in a Gandhi-Bot and Lawsons Super session. Thanks man!

That is a sick haul. Haze a lot.

Laurelwood's Workhorse IPA might actually be the best IPA