try that with Brownies... a perfect match and that's how F/W serves it at the brewery.




#001 Parabola


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Keep your eyes open for this... coming next month

style
Barley Wine
abv
12%
ibu
29
color
13.5SRM
fermentation
Selectively fermented in the Firestone Union.
malts
Premium Two-Row, Maris Otter Pale, Munich, Crystal, Chocolate
hops
Bittering—Magnum; Late Kettle—Styrian Golding, East Kent Golding; Dry Hops—East Kent Golding

Every hop head in the Boston area go buy this beer.

Wasn't a huge fan of this brewery, thought they were just ok. But god damn they made a great double IPA. Just finished up a log of this beer. YUM!

I can't get over how much I like all the Lagunitas seasonals. Usually the seasonal beers are crappy, but theirs all taste amazing.

I very rarely try new canned beer but I had Revolution Bottom Up Wit the other day and loved it--very light, crisp, and summery. Definitely my go-to boating beer for the next few months (much prefer cans over bottles when boating).

Agree on the Wit. Beer store manager recommended it to me and I thought it was a great beer for summer. Another excellent can for summer, depending on where you are, is Ska's Modus Hoperandi.

Modus Hoperandi is far from a very light summer beer.

I guess that depends on what you're looking for. Obviously higher alcohol than the Wit, and probably not something that you'll want to kill a 6 pack of, but I think it's a great summer beer.

If you don't think so, more for me.

gotta remember to do some write ups on local Mexican brews down in Cabo. There's one in particular that I really enjoy.

I'm still waiting to like something from clown shoes. Maybe galactica will do it.

I had the privilege to go to a couple bars with an outstanding craft selection this weekend. I made the rounds with most if the IPA's. Here are the highlights:

Hebrew Hop Manna
Smuttynose Big A
Victory Hop Devil Nitro
Firestone Double Jack
Boulder Mojo Nitro
Southern Tier 2x IPA
Sothern Tier Plum Noir (porter)
Delicious!

Beer lovers,

Anyone try any of these?

Diablo,

do you like sourish / dry / yeasty beers?

KBZ,

Not too into sours. Dry I'm not super familiar with, but I do like that Asahi Super Dry. Yeasty, does that mean like sorta bready/wheaty taste? If so, not a fan.

Based on BA reviews, I'm planning to get a Barrel Noir. Sounds like it shares some elements w/ Bourbon County Stout, which I love.

3 sounds kinda weird, and I'm not a huge geuze fan, which it sounds similar to.

4 sounds interesting - I do like some REALLY GOOD sours.

Anyway, was just kinda curious to hear from anyone here who had tried them. On principle, $10 for a 375 is a lot!

ha well I can't tell if you like sours or not! I guess there is only one good way to find out. this style of beer is basically done exclusively by good or great craft brewers, b/c using wild yeast is not for the faint of heart (and afaik can't be done on any mass scale). also, yes I meant bready/wheaty/sour/maybe you'll pucker

$10 for 375ml is a lot, yes. I've paid that for some rare stuff - or stuff I know I love - but only a few times.

also I just happened to find some Bourbon County Stout still hanging around one store last week, which was pretty stunning/lucky.

xpost - enjoying a Heady Topper right now. I think what separates this from the other great IPA's I have had is the big maltiness. this is far from the hop bomb that almost any other double IPA yes. amazing. the only only I have had that I enjoyed almost as much was Enjoy By, but that was a much different taste

Kbz,

What I mean is, I like most IPAs, but way prefer really good ones.

On the other hand, I'm not a fan of most sours, but I've had a couple that were really great (in terms of flavor, balance, etc) and really enjoyed them. So a sour is gonna have to be a really good one for me to like it.

Kinda silly about the price. I don't think twice about paying for however many $10 cocktails at a bar, but buying a $10 375ml beer at a grocery store seems like a sucker move unless it's really awesome.

Diablo,
I assume you've tried Russian River "-tion" beers, like Supplication, Consecration, and Temptation? They're pretty great and easily worth the $10-$15 per 375ml.

yeah, dissonance etc

also what spidercrab said above. it's hard for me to get those RR beers but I hear they are great. I would try to get my hands on those if I were you. those are basically best in breed for that style

Spider, kbz:

Yeah, I've had those a bunch and agree they are really good.

Beatification is one of the best sours I've ever had. Not sure when it's coming out again, but I highly recommend you seek it out when RR decides to bottle more. (Might be available at the brewery only, though.)

It took me and my wife a couple of years before sours really took hold. But once you get hooked, it's all over.

This is like the American snobbification of beer gone mad. What do you guys think a good Belgian beer costs in the supermarket in Belgium?

well in the USA I pay

$7 ish for Rochefort or St. Bernadus
more if I happened to find Cantillon or Westvleteran, which doesn't happen

$7 is also about the max I pay for any great American beer (for 12 ounces) - it's what I just paid for Bourbon County Brand Stout for instance. and I'll pay up to $14 or $15 for a 750ml, which covers just about all non super rare releases or w/e.

There is stuff that costs more, but it's generally not any (or significantly) better than what you can find at the above price points.

not sure what your point is about Belgium, but it's not really relevant since I don't live there. What Cantillon costs in Belgium and what I can get for it here are 2 different things.

My point is that it's crazy that you're paying more for a high quality US beer than you are paying for a high quality import. Westvleteren is a bit of a poor comparison because it's so hard to find even in Europe, but something like Westmalle or St Bernardus doesn't sell for more than 2 euros here, so how does one justify a $10 beer?

well at a high level I disagree. there are plenty of cost factors that could exist that would overcome the cost of importing. US labor might be more expensive than poverty sworn monks, it's expensive to age beer in wine/bourbon/whatever casks (as the bottles El Diablo linked to are), shipping from coast to coast isn't a small deal, and the scale of plenty American craft brewers is tiny - much smaller than the production of Rochefort or St. Bernadus and that will contribute to cost.

Also, there are plenty of people who are ok with paying more for something because it was made in the USA than something imported as that (though generally that is more relevant when the imported product is coming from a sweatshop country, not Belgium).

again, you are comparing apples and oranges by comparing the supermarket price in Belgium to prices here.

you can find awesome American beers here which cost $3 per bottle as well. but you'll always pay more at the very high end despite the fact the quality isn't THAT much better (this goes for all kinds of products). similar to how you can't find Westvleteran everywhere (and if you can it won't be close to 2 euros), I can't find a ton of US beers where I live. there is no chance of that beer El Diablo linked to showing up where I live. if I can get them the price is going to be inflated

I don't really understand this point - of course I can find awesome US beer for <$3 per 12 oz. Looking at easily available stuff (for me - this will vary be region) from the BA "Beers of Fame" list:
Founder's Breakfast Stout
Bell's Hopslam
Troegs Nugget Nectar
Oskar Blues Ten FIDY
Founders Imperial Stout
Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout
Bell's Two Hearted Ale
Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter
Bear Republic Hop Rod Rye
Founders Porter

and I'll just stop there because the list is huge. There is an enormous amount of high quality US craft beer across a variety of styles. It's trivial for me to stop at the local grocery store and find virtually all of the ones I listed above.

That being said, I still like to occasionally splurge on other, more expensive beers because they are also awesome and because I'm not a college undergrad with an empty wallet anymore. So my basement has boxes of more expensive things like:
Parabola
Sucaba
Abyss
Pannepot
Bourbon County Stout and its varieties
Dark Lord
Westvleteren
and on and on

The fact that they cost more than $10 per bottle isn't really an indictment of US beer.

It's not an indictment of US beer at all, just this particular brewery. It's like you say, there's awesome US beer to be had for reasonable prices, so how do they justify that this one has to be so expensive? You can apparently get great US and foreign beer for much less.