Yes! I cant wait to try these!

I recently met a fella who said he helped build their new distillery. He shared some of their gin with me too, and it was mighty fine.

Let us know what you think, please.

Brooklyn's Black Chocolate Stout is exceptional. I enjoyed my first one last night. Many other forays into this style of beer have left me underwhelmed. Brooklyn's entry restores my faith in chocolate stouts.

This is a beautiful sight in the glass. It is Black with a moderately thick tan head. It smells of roast, chocolate, coffee, fruit and molasses. The taste is extremely well balanced considering the variety of flavors present. For a 10.5% ABV the alcohol is barely present in the flavor. The chocolate/hop combo gives a nice bitter characteristic that is missing in many other stouts that taste like melted candy bars.

I definitely recommend this.

Yeah, the BCS is great, and one of the best values in beer, although they raised prices this past season. I preferred it over the Old Rasputin in the double blind taste test my friends did, although the consensus had them tied.

I am drinking Central Waters Brewhouse Coffee Stout right now. It is one of the first stouts I've had and it is phenomenal. It pours a very very dark translucent brown (it looks exactly like coffee) with a big poofy off-white head and leaves sheets of lacing up and down the glass. Hordes of tiny bubbles slowly rise to the top of the glass. A slight bitterness greats you right away and after that it is a wonderful iced coffee flavor. This is a great brew for any coffee or stout lover. It's not something that I would probably like to drink more than one of at a time, but it is still an easy .

That beer sure photographs well. It is getting to the point where soaking in the visual is almost as good as drinking some of these beers.

Anyone know anything about this: http://www.fda.gov/NewsEvents/Newsro.../ucm190427.htm

I read in a Norwegian newsletter that it had recently been banned by the FDA, does that mean that there will be no more coffee stouts?

Would suck if true, as it might be my favorite type of beer.

Yeah I read about that nonsense in a thread from a beer site. It is unfortunate that coffee stouts could possibly suffer due to the FDA wanted to crack down on Sparks/Tilt etc kind of beverages.


Here is the Q&A http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodIngredie.../ucm190793.htm

Off that Q&A:

So as long as the caffeine comes from coffee (which is added for flavor), this ban will not affect coffee stouts?

That's the way I read it. Let's cross our fingers!

Yeah too bad my crappy camera phone can't do it justice.

First I tried the Ballast Point Coffee Vanilla Porter. And after my first sip, the first word that came in my head was 'balance'. This beer was so well balanced. And actually that was kind of a fear mine before I opened this. Its a coffee vanilla porter, a lot of flavors there, so something could be more noticeable than others. For example, Bell's Java Stout, not a bad brew but way too much coffee flavor. When it comes to my feelings on beer like this, I'd much rather have whatever flavor added to be more of an undertone/after taste/subtle flavor rather than the dominant flavor. So naturally with all thats going on with this, I was a little apprehensive. But it was very very well balanced, a hint of coffee, a hint of vanilla, just right. The 10% abv can get to you. Its pretty easy to drink, so the 10% can creep up on you. If you're a fan of porter's, try and grab this one, its a must have I think.

Next was the Ballast Point Sculpin IPA. It smelled like pineapples! I was so excited to dive in. Very refreshing IPA. Sadly the smell was more exciting than the taste, but that's not to say it was bad. Very good IPA, lots of citrus notes. Overall this is a good IPA, I cant comment too much on this one because I haven't had a lot of IPA's to compare it with. But overall, very good, very refreshing.

My girlfriend and I were meeting another couple at their house before going out to dinner on Saturday. I was offered a beer and I politely accepted. The beer was a Budweiser Select 55. I will be generous by saying that it was not delicious.

lol In these situations I say no thanks, because 95% of the time this is what happens.

I had my first taste of the Stone Ruination last night in a bottle. It looked like an orange sunset in a glass topped by fluffy white clouds. The aroma was sweet and hoppy. The hops were also quite prominent in the taste but were complemented by the citruisy sweetness. There was also a faint taste that was reminiscent of gin. It also had a nice creamy quality that wasn't cloying.

This beer deserves the maximum number of hearts allowed by the rating system.

I went to the new Revolution Brewery in Chicago's Logan Square neighborhood tonight.

The place is designed nicely. Restored silver tin ceiling, interesting medieval light fixtures, a lot of wood and brick as well. Their "fist" logo is pretty nice, and prevalent throughout.

The place was hopping with hipsters, it's only a few weeks old. Took about 45 minutes to get a table.

The Wee Heavy was good, it's about 8.5% with a lot of dark fruit type flavors in it. The IPA tasted like it was heavily hopped with Simcoe, I would guess. It's a more intrusive hop to me, if that's what it was. Every time I feel an IPA has an "intrusive" hop in it, it seems they tell me it's Simcoe. Maybe I just don't like Simcoe hops all that much (though some great FFF beers have Simcoe in them and I love em). It's $6 a snifter for the IPA, so that was a pretty terrible value to me. Then again, I wouldn't of gotten another for $4.

I also had the mild ale. They serve this thing much too cold, so it was tough to pick anything specific out, but it felt well balanced and good. The pale ale was also a decent beer, though once again too cold.

The Oatmeal Stout is in my fridge in a growler. I'm told it's their best beer. After some really good beef stew with mashed potatoes, as well as a bruschetta appetizer and some bacon/sage/parmesan popcorn (really good, though all the food was delicious and slightly overpriced) I couldn't drink any more. So alas, the stout will have to wait.

Overall, the place was jam packed, but beautiful. The food was very good, even if it's a little on the high end ($27 for a ribeye at a brewery?) and the beers were small brewery quality, if nothing spectacular. I'll go back, it's worth an occasional visit, though it will likely not end up as a favorite or a "regular" place.

Oh, and it's http://revbrew.com/ if anybody is interested.

I'm brewing today at LagerHaus. Here's the set up:

I was going to visit my friend who lives in Chicago in the next few months. Is this a solid place to check out? Or are there better ones?

My favorite in the city is Goose Island (Clybourn location).

If you can get to the suburbs with a vehicle, Three Floyd's is definitely worth the trip (southeast of the city in NW Indiana). Flossmoor Station isn't far from there either, if you want another excuse to travel 35 minutes or so from downtown.

Rock Bottom in downtown Chicago is pretty good as well. Half Acre is a new startup, good brews, they are on the north side of the city and now have a tasting room. They're all really nice guys too.

Lunar in the west suburbs is a cool small brewery with terrific brews and your best bet (from my experience) if you're stuck in the north suburbs is Mickey Finn's in Libertyville.

Revolution is probably a step below all of these (two steps below the best). Goose Clybourn is not far from Revolution, so I'd definitely go there first. Piece is probably about on par with Revolution too. They are fun places to go, but not quite as good as the ones I named above (in my view).

I'm sure beer mapping and BA/Ratebeer cover all these places pretty well too, so you can check out their opinions for additional info.

Thanks for all of the info

No problem.

And while they don't have a public space, if you enjoy lagers you should definitely buy a 6 pack or two of Metropolitan Brewery. They are a newer mom and pop brewery that only does lagers, and they are quite delicious.

FWIW, my favs are IPA's and stouts. Any of those places specialize in those?

I just acquired some very good beer from a very generous west coaster.




Alpine Duet
Port Hop-15
Alpine Nelson
Alesmith IPA
Ballast Point Sculpin
RR Blind Pig
RR Pliny the Elder(2)
Port Wipeout
Alpine Pure Hoppiness
Ballast Point Big Eye
Moylan's Hopsickle

I've only had the Alesmith before and it was very good. Cant wait to try the others!

Had a Founder's Nemesis tap and bottle recently. Bottle was significantly better, but both were excellent. Tasted of maple and bourbon and kind of fruity to me also. May still be able to find it some places.

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/founder...s-2009/117205/

Glad to hear it was good, today I called and put a few on hold at our local beer shop as they just got a case in.
Looking forward to trying it.