FYP

Pliny if you check this thread check your PMs for my number. Got some homebrews Herr.

Enjoyed a 2006 Cantillon gueze tonight. Incredible beer.

Met up with PtE and gsupoker on Saturday. PtE let me try a few homebrews of which his IPA was clearly the standout. I think he said it was a cascade + amarillo profile (could be wrong about the cascade) and it was clearly Americanized. Wonderful citrus profile in the nose and the taste and a good malt backbone which balanced quite well. Carbonation level was spot on and there was no alcohol burn. He and his friends also let me try some commercial pours they just got at the fest, Funky Buddah's Last Snow was insanely good, and whatever beer that tasted like black licorice was as well.

I brought my apfelwein, second runnings ipa, peanut butter brown, and the esb we brewed. It was my first time trying the peanut butter brown while it was chilled and carbonated and it came out decent enough. Definitely a lot of peanut butter character at any rate. I also tried the 2012 Hunahpu (which was good but not worth all insane prices people pay for it online), Smokabaga (which is their hoppy red on chilis) was insanely good, Cookies and Milk, and their batch 1000 Baltic Porter which was pretty tasty.

The event was insanely well run and Cigar City said over 5k people showed up throughout the day. There were food trucks, homebrew clubs (giving out free samples!), a dunking tank, and obviously a ton of beer. My favorite part of the whole thing is the fact that Cigar City encourages bringing beer, whether homebrew or commerical, and sharing with your friends and others. If you ever get a chance to go there is no doubt in my mind you should.

Cool TR, sounds like fun.

But for the love of god, can someone tell me how to pronounce the word Hunahpu it has been driving me insane.

I'll second Wraths' recommendation of Hunahpu day. (Coff- pronounced who-na-poo) A great atmosphere, well thought out and some really good beers. My favorites was Funky Buddha's Last Snow, which we thought tasted almost like a latte, Whiskey aged Hunahpu and CCB's Hungarian Oak Peach IPA. The black licorice beer was a baltic porter with some Sambuca soaked chips added, really nice. But really everything was quite delicious.

Wraths' beers were all good, his apfelwine was really nice, I've never had one of those before and it was really refreshing. His peanut butter brown is awesome, the backend of the taste is pure peanuts and I really enjoyed it. The ESB you all brewed was really refreshing also, I could drink a lot of that.

drinking a founders devil dancer while posting. holy crap, what an intense beer. this is similar to dogfish 120 but much more drinkable.

Mini TR time:

We arrived at Hunahpu's Day at about 8:30am, and this is the line that was already formed:



While in line they came around and handed out the initial taplist, which would change pretty much whenever a keg blew:



Here is a pretty poor cell phone picture of the inside the event:



The event was pretty awesome. Here is a list of beers I was able to try, in the order that I tried them:

• Pablo Beach Pale Ale - Green Room Brewing (I brought this in a gallon growler)
• Heady Topper - The Achemist (PtE brought this)
• Hunahpu's Imperial Stout - Cigar City Brewing
• Pineapple Blonde - Johnathan Wakefield
• Wostyntje - Brouwerij Smisje (PtE brought this, sort of as a joke. It was not as bad as I remembered.)
• Dreadnaught IPA - Three Floyds Brewing
• Ich Bin Ein - Rainbow Jelly Donut - Pegs Cantina: Wildly different from the first time I had this, which was excellent. I did not enjoy this at the event, its flavoring was very off.
• Older Viscosity - Port City Brewing
• Trogdor the Burninator - Avery Brewing
• Passionfruit Berliner - Funky Buddha
• Sexual Chocolate - Foothills Brewing
• El Murcielago - Cigar City Brewing
• The Last Snow - Funky Buddha: Easily my favorite beer of the day. If you ever get a chance to try this, jump on it.
• Oak Aged Dirac - Cigar City Brewing
• Hunahpu's Imperial Stout (Whiskey Barrel Aged) - Cigar City Brewing
• Maple Bacon Coffee Porter - Funky Buddha

I was also able to try a few of Wrath's homebrews. I really enjoyed his peanut butter brown ale.

Overall the event was awesome. Easily my favorite beer event that I have had a chance to attend. My only gripe was that an enormous line would form for the really rare beers, which would essentially clog all of the taps at that trailer. I wish they had had a separate line for the highly sought after brews (Oak-Aged Dark Lord etc.) We managed to get a few extra bottles of Hunahpu also, so all in all I would say the day was a huge success.

Looks cool.

I wish I would have taken pics at the MI Winter Fest but was way too drunk to bother. Next year!

anyone going to Dark Lord Day at 3 Floyds this year?

I'm thinking about it. All depends on if/when a friend comes into town. I think I'm going to take that weekend off regardless

I have acquired a 6 pack of 120 minute, Id like to do a trade for something equally as rare/not distributed in my area.

Just applied for a job (not any specific position though) at a craft beer bar set to open at the end of the month. I created a cover letter asking for a "back of the house" position so it was obvious I didn't want to just be a beer server, hopefully something comes out of it. The guy opening it used to be an owner of a decent sized craft beer store so I'm hoping he knows his **** and this place takes off as it is considerably closer than the nearest bar to me now.

Hard to say anything from so far outside of the position, but if you want to work there and have it be obvious you don't just want to be a server, why wouldn't you say you'll take any position but are looking for something more than just beer server?

That makes more sense worded that way, I just went with what I came up as I typed up the letter in a few minutes. I'm assuming I'll get a callback sometime and I can speak to him with better clarification then.

The first of my reviews from the Special Bitter's trade




I did a head to head tasting of my Special Bitter and Coff's last night. Mine is on the right and Coff's is on the left.

Appearance both were clear and colorwise very similar. Mine was a bit more clear, not sure if shipping caused a bit of chill haze on Coff's. His head was a bit more creamy then mine.

Aroma. Coff's had a much more british smell to it. Much more malt in the aroma and a hint of fruit from the yeast. Mine had a slight malt aroma, but over all I have been disapointed in my beers malt aroma. Not sure what I do in my process that hurts it.

Taste. Coff's is much more balanced then mine. A lot of malt flavor melding with the hops. Mine is a bit more bitter, I think it is a bit more attenuated which maybe is what makes it taste a bit better.

Overall I like both of the beers. Coff's taste more english if that makes sense. Mine is cleaner I think and a bit more bitter. I used dry yeast S-04 and upped the hops a bit as they had been in the freezer for a while. My mash was a degree or so cooler then the recipe which may have dried it out a bit as well. Which may expain most of the differences. It is amazing how different the two beers taste when they both had basically the same recipe.

The review before was from yesterday. Today I tried RunDownHouse's Yorkshire Square SB against a tasting of mine. His is in the larger glass. His has a slightly redder tint, but not nearly as much as the picture shows.



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Appearance wise as expected pretty close. His looks a bit redder, but it could be presentation.

Aroma. Again the other beer has much more malt and yeast derived aroma. I get fruit, malt, and spice from his. Almost a slight belgianesque aroma. Or atleast compared to mine. Mine smells like beer, slight malt but it takes a while to appear.

Taste. Today I am getting a bit more malt from mine. The carbonation gives a bit of a bite. Hops are there with both of them. Malt is there with RDH, a bit more forward then mine, mine has malt more in the aftertaste.

RDH beer is more complex then mine. Again I like both. The S-04 is just too clean I think for the beer. Or maybe I should have fermented a bit warmer.

RDH threw in his box a bottle of Sue brewed by Yazoo (where I think he works?), it was a great beer. Imperial Smoked Porter. The smoke and hops worked well with the richness of the porter. The hop's bitterness keeps everything together and from being too sweet. In general I prefer Porters to Stouts, so was pleased to see the bonus beer.

i drank a 4 pack of founders breakfast stout, as well as some other beers, for the parade today. then ate a ton of chinese food. my stomach is not pleased with me at all.

I'm going to brew up two beers this weekend. One is a 3 gallon berliner weisse and the other is a 3 Floyd's Gumballhead clone.

For the berliner, I'm going to try a sour mash. Sometime tomorrow or Wednesday I'm going to mash 2 lbs pale malt, 2 lbs wheat malt as normal. Then I'm going to take the wort, add a handful of grain that I saved and put it in, put a lid on and keep the bucket as close to 110F as possible with a water bath/put it in a shed outside. Hopefully it'll be nice and sour, then when I brew during the weekend I'm going to do a 15 minute boil with hallertau hops and ferment with a kolsch yeast. I play on racking it to a secondary with some raspberry puree, but that's a month away.

Nice reviews lacticacid.

Did you check the ingredients from your brew and compare them to the ingredients that others were using? I know you said the recipes were the same, but there can be some real variation between different malsters and I've learned the hard way (usually it's for worse lol) that substitutions can really alter the profile of the target recipe.

Put in an 8 hour brew day today, using Pacman for the first time on one of the batches. My body is also yelling at me.

Cool, thanks for the honest review.

I thought I had decent clarity (not brilliant) until I saw your photo, most certainly some chill haze there compared to yours especially.

Im looking forward to trying your beers.

Did anyone that brewed the ESB not get any bottles yet? I still need to send a box out.

So this is my wort with a handful of grain pitched for the lacto. It's in my incubator of a fridge getting up to 110F via a lightbulb. It's beginning to smell like creamed corn which is supposed to be good, but rather weird to smell coming from a fermenter.

I did get mine on Monday, thanks! Now that I have them all I will do the side by side with non scoring reviews, probably this weekend.