Cool, feel free to ask for any beer/food recs

I went for my best man’s bachelor party and was told to bring flavored seltzer. Thought it was a joke but apparently all the employees love it. They went through the 3 packs we brought in the 2-3 hours we were there. Idk if it’s an inside joke with them or what but they loved it.

I’m never leaving Bissel. Swish is my perfect beer.


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guess I'll go there for one of the final releases this year but gotta admit I'm pretty hazed out.

The hazy beers from Tired Hands are a bit overrated in my mind. I didn’t have any of their milkshakes because they aren’t on now but I had 4 different hoppy beers and they aren’t as good as Wisconsin’s best hazy. Hell there was some brewery called Levante out here on tap at dinner tonight that was better than a couple of their offerings. The saisonhands was amazing though. HF level flavor. Which is good cause I got 6 different BA variants of it.

I feel like a couple of folks mentioned a GOAT level beer bar/cellar in
Belgium. Asking for a friend (really).

Haha niiiiiiice. Bissell pwns.

If you're talking about lambic, then it's Grote Dorst. (In de Verzekering tegen de Grote Dorst). Only open on Sunday and holidays.

https://www.hopculture.com/best-beer...eer-fest-2018/

Anyone get Bissell that wants to do a mail trade? I was setting up a trade with a guy up there but it fell through, would love to try the best IPAs from that area, including Swish.

On another note, had a '15 Matilda last night and a '15 Flying Dog Horn Dog barleywine.

The brett in Matilda really developed over time into stronger, more pronounced flavors.

For me, the light fruit esters in a fresh Matilda are what always made that beer divine to me, and those are amplified as it ages, so it's not one I would age again, but it was a good drink and interesting to see how it had changed.

Flying Dog's Horn Dog was tasting excellent after 3 years in the cellar, much better for my tastes than fresh. I have another bottle or two of that (I bought 4-6 packs of shelf barleywine/quad a couple years ago so I could drink them over time without killing my wallet). It'll be fun to try this one in the future to see how it tastes, I'd imagine it'll get better, it didn't show any signs of going south.

Friendly reminder that if anyone's going to be in the Portsmouth NH/ME area, let me know. We'll imbibe much beer.

I had four samples from Kauai Brewing in Lihue and also visited their brewpub near Port Allen (Eleele). Link below

kauaibeer

Kauai Brewing Sampler-

Lihue Lager - Helles : average lager, nothing special; probably goes well with fish tacos.

Tropical Armadillo Oatmeal Pale Ale : Cloudy in glass and a true surprise, for me. I thought this excellent. If you drink five in a row it would still be excellent, I think.

Over IPA: good but not excellent.

Citrus IPA - above average, but then I'm bias and partial to citrus IPA's

They were out of Captain Cook IPA so I can’t post any minimalist review.

From Kona Brewing I sampled many times the Hanalei Island IPA and the Castaway IPA – It is a bit hazy but I think I enjoyed the castaway better.

I'm watching the kids for a while tonight and just opened a bomber of 3 Floyds Permanent Funeral. Such an amazing double IPA - right in my wheelhouse. Wife is going to come home to a fairly inebriated parent.

Also, I need to post about the beer share I went to last weekend where I got my first real experience of Hill Farmstead and I need more of it in my life.

what'd you try?

What are people's favorite "available" coconut stouts or Porter's?

I think my favorite beer of all time is BCS prop 2014, which is not something I can afford to acquire as a regular indulgence. If you search around for coconut flavor notes you get all kinds of things, some where I find the coconut undetectable, and many that are near impossible to purchase at retail.

So, I'm hoping to crowdsource some intelligence while I slowly work my way through things. My plan is to do some recreational tasting and then assemble a blind test of the best stuff I find with some friends including the 2014 prop, and see what we all think.

This paste magazine top porters list seems like a good place to start for available coconut porters. 4 of the top 25 were coconut. The Oscar Blues is probably the most widely available. I actually happened to get the cherry street and creature comforts ones in a trade in January and thought they were pretty good. Not sure what you are defining as "available" but if you are willing to get your hands on 2014 prop, all of these should be easier to find.

Death by coconut is pretty good.

Perrin “no rules” is pretty available at least in Michigan. I don’t care for it but a lot of people like it.

Avery has a coconut porter that’s pretty widely available.

For coconut stouts, I'd say (without googling, so this may not be perfect):
- Prop 13 (I think this is the coconut version, rather than 14). Obviously going to be challenging to get, also unlikely to be worth it.

- Avery Coconut Porter, which I haven't tried, but it's pretty widely available

- Sierra Nevada has a Trippin' Through the Woods coconut version that should be moderately easy to get.

- Tusk & Grain has had coconut versions. I've been a little let down from the T&G that I've had, but they're easy to get, so worth a try.

- Fremont has a Coconut version of Bourbon Abominable that I wish I had tried harder to get. But now is going to be tricky.

- Fremont's Coffee/Cinnamon Bourbon Abominable always has had a coconut flavor to me, and I bet in a blind taste test would fare well.

- (Edited to add) Perrin No Rules is good and easy to get, but imo it's only good for the first 6-8 ozs, which makes it perfect for a share.

But my recommendation would be to get an easy-to-get stout like BCBS and just soak some toasted coconut in it.

So last weekend, I went to a friend's house to open some beers. Now, he's just recently gotten into trading and whatnot, and we're not exactly into the same things. Like, he's into NE-style IPAs, where they don't do much for me. And he's a little more into whether beers are hyped up or not. But whatever.

These were the beers I brought:



When I got there, this was the first beer I tried:


The only downside is that when someone handed it to me, they said, "This is a whale". Which, no. But it was really, really good. I didn't think that I liked milk stouts, but this one was great. You can read the full description here:
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/28743/302814/

Seemed right to me - nice and thick and sweet and flavorful. Nice job, Tree House!

I also had a Tree House porter called Catharsis - I thought that one was pretty terrible. Bad job, Tree House!

Then I had a couple of high ABV IPAs:


Red Bugatti and White Bugatti by The Veil Brewing. I generally can't stand IPAs above 10% ABV, but these were really good. I preferred the Red version, which I think was a little maltier. I would definitely drink these again. They were the first beers I've had from Veil, but I'm interested in trying more.

Then, the Hill Farmstead. I should preface this by saying:
- I've seen an enormous amount of HF hype
- My only actual taste of HF has been some weird collaboration they did with another brewer that I thought was gross

So here's what I had:


The Madness & Civilization was fantastic. This was a barrel aged stout, and the most striking thing about it was how "clean" it tasted. There were no off-tastes or weird adjuncts - it just tasted like a perfectly-executed barrel-aged stout. On the one hand, this could be seen as disappointing because there was nothing enormously memorable about it. But on the other hand, it was kind of perfectly done, and the kind of beer I wouldn't ever get tired of. Simplistic perfection.

Anna was the one I had been most looking forward to. And the first taste was a little disappointing - it just didn't hit me the right way. Later on in the night, when I had another glass, I thought it was wonderful. My immediate reaction was that it reminded me of pickle juice, in a good way. I really want to try this again to figure out what's going on.

Civil Disobedience was great. I don't remember much about it, other than really liking it. Sorry.

As for the beers I brought:
Tilquin Quetsche was fantastic, and many people agreed
Drie Fonteinen Cuvee Armand & Gaston was fantastic, but not many agreed. So I ended up drinking most of this bottle myself, which was perfectly fine.
Drie Fonteinen Intense Red was bad. I think this was a bad bottle, but other people thought it was ok, so whatever.

Bottom line:
I want to try any and all Hill Farmstead, especially more Anna.
Tilquin is great
Drie Fonteinen Gueuze is great
NE IPAs can be very good, but I don't appreciate them nearly as much as others do.

I haven't had a ton of hill farmstead, just whenever is available on tap at a couple bars around here, which leans towards their hoppy offerings. I think I've had Anne or Anna once (can't keep track of such bs) and a couple other saisons from them. Just wanted to point out the following description is pretty common with HF.

Both 13 and 14 featured coconut.

Guessing it was Anna. FWIW they shorten the names of the saisons for the BA versions, so Anna becomes Ann, Arthur/Art, Florence/Flora (they usually age Flora on various fruits). Ann and Art are both pretty big whales.

Spider, you shouldn't have much trouble aquiring more Anna, as well as most of their other non-BA saisons. They almost always have them in their retail shop in unlimited quantities. Shouldn't take much to trade for them, or you could probably just find someone heading up and work out a deal where they'll pick up whatever you want in exchange for cost+shipping label and maybe thank you beers. Lots of generous folks on the hill farmstead enthusiast/trading FB page or over in the HF thread on talkbeer.

Yah, 13: "Toasted coconut," 14: "Coconut water."

I didn't mean to imply that 14 prop was "available" to me, but rather that I would spring for a single bottle for a fun night of beer tasting with friends.

Started my tour of random coconut stuff with Victory at Sea Coconut. This was nice enough, but it's possible I just don't love porters? Haven't had a ton, honestly, but I missed the thick mouth feel that I enjoy from stouts. Contrary to many notes I'm seeing on Beer Advocate, I found the coconut to be pretty subdued, especially in comparison to the coffee notes. Both smell and flavor.

Definitely drinkable, but not really my cup of tea.

Spider,

I very much appreciate the artistic choice to keep cleavage in perfect focus at the expense of having the beer in the foreground incredibly blurry!

Cit, despite how good it sounded, I thought Coconut Victory at Sea was pretty bad.

Also, I can't claim credit for that picture - I was running late and it's what my friend texted me to encourage me to hurry over.