Speaking of Magic Hat.. I remember reading about an "odd notion" that had cardamom in it.

I cannot find this brew on their website and I'd like to ask my beer shop if they could order it as I would like to try it.

It's a seasonal brew, so you may have to wait for next spring. Although I think their "Odd Notion" line changes every year.

This would be a pretty awesome thread...... but they already have websites totally devoted to it.

I already rate atleast 2 different beers a day at www.ratebeer.com
There you can actually keep track of your conquests in nice lists.

Yea, but so many of those people suck. I met dozens of them at Dark Lord Day at Three Floyds, I see so many of them at the Map Room downtown, and some of them (though a lot of people are a lot cooler) even at my local Mug Club tappings.

It's easy to know who the Beer Advocate and Ratebeer people are, bc they don't stop telling you about themselves and what THEY think about everything.

I'd much rather hear what a random casual drinker from Australia has to say, or even a pretty dedicated person like Wookie, you don't see any evidence of self indulgence there.

Don't get me wrong, if I need some quick info on a beer, I rush to ratebeer to see if the beer is still available, the abv, some other quick info on it, or if I want to find a beer place when I'm out of town, but otherwise I don't find much other use for it.

I've met a lot of great hardcore beer lovers in my few years of craft beer experience, but for every great person I've met a dozen douchebags.

Sorry for the rant, it's just nobody good has ever directed me to ratebeer or beeradvocate.

Tonight's brew is from PA brewer Victory. I'm trying out their Twelve ale. This is a Belgian ale (quadrupel?), but they don't give much more detail than that, other than it's mighty 12% ABV. With an ABV like that, it'd have to be something like a quad, no? Anyway, it ran me $9.69.



This is a bottle conditioned beer, and as such, it's pretty bubbly at the start. However, at 12% ABV, it can't hold much head. It's a little lighter brown in color than I expected.



The beer has a nice aroma of cherries, wood, and spice that kinda resembles a dunkel weizen. Tasting, it's not as overwhelmingly sweet as I thought it might be. It avoids being syrupy or mediciny, but I do think a little more sweetness would help it. I'm missing some of the yeastiness or spiciness characteristic of other similar beers, too. What I taste mostly is a mild brown malt, a light cherry flavor, and a touch of grassy hops. It's fairly tasty, but when I'm paying this much for beer, I generally want something a little more bombastic. I'll give it and a half . It's certainly better than a kick in the nuts, but it doesn't compare well with other beers of this style or in this price range.

New beer from a new brewery tonight. I'm trying the Abbey Triple from the Sprecher brewery based in Glendale, WI. They don't indicate the ABV on the bottle, but I looked it up and it's 8.4%. I paid $8.49 for a four pack of 16 oz bottles. You don't find that very often.



The beer pours fairly dark for this style. It's a little redder than the usual gold. It is light on head, too. Usually this style is pretty heady, even though it has a higher ABV.



The smell is darker, too. I smell more like plums and cherries than oranges and bananas. The flavor doesn't have a whole lot of spice or yeastiness to it. It's a little syrupy and lacking in carbonation. Still, the flavors, mostly honey from the sweetness with some prune, apple, and the malt, linger, I'm sure due to the sugar. Some more carbonation would do a lot for this beer. I'll give it , but it's a disappointment for the style.

I had their Black Bavarian sometime ago and wasn't very impressed. Too long ago to give particulars.

I'm tossing the idea of visiting their brewery sometime soon as part of a Wisconsin brewery tour (probably in October or whenever Surly releases Darkness), some of their other beers look worthy.

I'm definitely wanting to go to New Glarus and Capital though.

Looks like Flying Dog decided to jump on the Belgian white bandwagon. Their offering is called Woody Creek White, and a sixer cost me $8.98. It weighs in at 4.8% ABV, a little under par for this style.



The beer is a nice unfiltered, cloudy, light gold color. It has a decent head, and while it doesn't lace my glass, it holds on to some carbonation.



The beer smells like a classic Belgian white: citrus, spice, yeast, and wheat malt, but the flavor doesn't quite live up to the smell. The flavor is a little lacking in the spice, yeast, and wheat flavors. It has a strong lemony citrus flavor, but the others are more subdued. This is about a beer, but compared to Mendocino's offering, which is tastier and about 25% cheaper, it's a disappointment.

I'm kinda surprised to see no comments on the impending takeover of Anheuser-Busch by InBev. I think it's a great thing for American consumers as it will increase availability of European beers hopefully, and the merged entity will have more leverage in purchasing barley/hops/etc, which may reduce their price.

It might reduce the price of hops and barley for them, but it'll probably drive up the price for microbrewers, which is not a desirable outcome.

First, it may increase margins for the new company, but it won't reduce retail prices. It's a law nearly as immutable as gravity: once beer prices at the gas station increase, they don't come back down. Second, the uncertainty of the impact on the city of St. Louis cannot be overstated. AB is practically the heartbeat of that city, InBev is known for firing people when they acquire another company, and there's no assurance they won't do the same in this case. Third, which products in InBev's portfolio are you hoping for that you can't currently get? Sure, I'd love to get the same beers now that I drank when I lived in Germany, but those breweries don't ship to Berlin, much less to the US. InBev, just like AB, isn't interested in selling little known, little volume beers. They're interested in using AB's distribution network to cut costs on selling beer from breweries that already ship hundreds of thousands of barrels a year.

Finally, "more leverage" on ingredient producers isn't a good thing. Craft breweries in the US don't buy malts from US producers. Why? Because BMC has so much "leverage" over those companies that they can dictate the terms of production, which means that domestic maltsters churn out flavorless 6-row as fast as they can. US brewers interested in more depth of flavor have to turn to foreign suppliers to get the flavor profiles theywant. In any case, the increase in ingredient costs isn't driven by some OPEC-like oligopoly, where the farmers restrict their production in order to increase prices. It's not a demand-side issue, it's supply side: bad harvests, less acreage, spikes in steel and copper. These guys want to sell more produce to brewers, they just can't (hops) or are finding other, more profitable crops (barley).

I'm a very free-market kind of guy. If InBev can pump out the same product at less cost, great for them. The main reason I'm uneasy about the sale is the uncertain impact on the city of St. Louis. I'm not thinking of retail beer prices because those won't change. I'm not thinking of increased competition from an expanded portfolio because, largely, that won't change, and micros don't really compete with those extra beers in any case. I'm thinking about the history of Busch Stadium, and how St. Louis won't be the same if the Cards take the field at "InBev Field at Hoegaarden House."

I'm all for keeping the city of St. Louis nice, but it's hard to feel bad for a city that relies on the biggest and one of the lowest quality beer makers in the world.

That being said, it seems like AB did a lot of good to their employees and the city, so hopefully InBev at least keeps up some of that good.

AB is one of the best brewers in the world. There are hardly any other breweries in existence that could brew such a flawless American Light Lager. Just because the style category sucks doesn't mean they don't execute it perfectly.

Man, Budweiser just kills me! Not that I really can't stand the taste. It just kills me. Instant hangover. There are a few other beers that do this to me but not a lot.

I herd one time that it could be a kind of allergy to some ingredient like the hops? Not really sure but I have learned just to stay away from those kinds that hurt me.

Rice Beer FTL

FWIW, when InBev took over some German brewery 2-3 years ago (one big and several smaller ones) they didn't really change too much in producition facilities and products they offer.

If a beer is popular and sells in sufficient numbers they seem to keep it...

not so much an allergy perhaps, just general intolerance for some ingredients in bad beer. i won't drink carling anymore, not so much because it tastes terrible, more because it's full of crappy chemicals that cause insta-hangovers. i can easily drink a lot more of stronger imported lager/real ale than i can of that crap.

just tried Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout for the first time. Review = Pure deliciousness.

RDH,

Fair enough, I guess the only thing I can say is they have a monopoly on one of my lead favorite styles of beer, so it's tough for me to feel bad for them.

I've been aware that they are masters of production/consistency, as all the craft brewers seem in awe of them when it comes to that.

MEbenhoe,

Agreed, haven't had it in awhile but always enjoyed it.

I'm actually looking forward to their ale coming out soon. Hopefully it will be as good as Yeungling's Lord Chesterfield and a solid go to cheap ale.

If you're referring to their "American Ale," that's supposed to be coming out shortly, I just had it at Nashville's Brewer's Fest. I even got a nice bookmark-type thing that had a basic ingredient list and tasting notes. Thoughts: not bad, but very forgettable, so exactly what I would have expected. A beer fest isn't exactly a great tasting environment though, and they're obviously trying to inject more flavor into their brews, so I don't want to discourage anyone from picking up a sixer.

Their booth had the slickest marketing materials, including little jars of each major ingredient. I picked up their jar of whole leaf hops, stuck my nose in there, and felt like I was at a French cheese tasting. Really old, musty hops. Kind of defeats the purpose of having ingredient samples at all, but I guess most people there wouldn't know - or care - about the difference.

Drinking Bluepoint's Hoptical Illusion.

IT IS AWESOME

I just got back from some fantastic shopping at Beers of the World. I was planning to just pick up another case of Mendocino White, which I can't get enough of, but I did much better than that. I picked up Stone's new 8.08.08 and bitter chocholate oatmeal stout. I got the Ten Fiddy from Oskar Blues. I got new beers from Victory and Flying Dog. I got a fantastic deal on a Unibroue variety pack (seriously, about 50% off) that includes one style I haven't tried. And when I was strolling through one of the Belgian aisles, I picked up a bottle I hadn't tried before just because it was on sale, and that's what I'll review tonight. The beer is Kasteel Bier Gouden-Tripel-d'Or, which is apparently also known as Kasteelbier Donker (lol). I bought a 750 mL bottle on sale for $7.33. Sometimes when things go on sale, you're not sure if you're getting a good deal or not. We'll have to find out with this one. Since it had tripel in the name, I assumed that was the style, and the ABV would be around 9%. I didn't realize what I was getting myself in for. It's actually 11% ABV.



On pouring, it's pretty clear that this is not exactly a traditional tripel because, well, it's pretty clear. It's a light gold, but it doesn't have the cloudiness from yeast, and lacks any semblance of a persistent head.



From the smell, it's definitely not a tripel. I smell a strong grassy hopping and a light malt. The flavor is surprisingly smooth for a beer that's this strong and that smelled rather hoppy. It's not too sweet, and it's not too bitter. I might guess this was a high ABV beer from the lack of head, but I wouldn't know it from the flavor, certainly not 11%. It's not a particularly bold, flavorful beer, but what it lacks in boldness it makes up somewhat in drinkability. I prefer bold to smooth almost universally, but there's at least something to be said for smoothness, and it does have a lingering finish with some nice subtleness in it. And for a lowest common denominator comparison, this has almost the same alcohol content as a six pack of Budweiser, and it's definitely preferable for a not-too-much-higher price. I'll give this beer . On sale, it's not a bad price. I would have been disappointed had I paid full price for this, but for $7.33, it's a subtle yet tasty beer that will get you as wasted as a sixer of Bud in a much more pleasurable way.

Tonight's beer is a fitting one for watching the Olympics: Stone's 08.08.08 Vertical Epic, the release of which coincides with the start of the Olympic games. According to the description on the bottle, this is a Belgian triple augmented with American hops. I've had a couple hoppy trippels, most notably La Chouffe's offering, which, while the reigning champion of head in beer, wasn't particularly great as either an IPA or a trippel. However, if there's anything Stone does well, it's hops, so I expect their offering to have a solid hop character, but the trippel character could go either way. I paid $9.95 for a 22 oz bottle of 8.6% ABV beer.



Like the beer from last night, this beer was unexpectedly clear. You can see my finger through the glass. It's also pretty light on head. Both of these characteristics are unlike my favorite trippels.



I was right about Stone getting the hops right. The hop aroma of this beer is potent and deep. The flavor is dominantly hops: rich, delicious hops. This isn't much of a trippel, though. It doesn't have much in the way of fruit or spice or yeastiness that are the hallmarks of a good trippel. Still, the malt is a little different from a typical IPA. This is easily the best hop character of any trippel/IPA I've had, but it's also probably the weakest on the trippel side of things. I'll give this beer . I tend to grade beers on overall deliciousness rather than how it compares within a style, and the hops in this beer are more than enough to make up for its shortcomings as a trippel.

Wow and I thought I was a beer snob.....I kid I kid....

I was wondering where you find this excellent selection of brew? Our local place to buy import beers is OK, but much to be desired...

Just wondering if you ever tried this, I had it the other day and I'm in love. Course, after reading this thread, I dunno if I even know what good beer is anymore lol