It took forever to get scheduled with 10 people, but we finally got together this past Sunday for a Dark Lord variant tasting. Overall we had 10 guys with 12 beers (11 variants and the 2017 base, which the variants were made from).





I won't bother listing what's in each variant because it would take forever, but www.darklordday.com should still have descriptions up. My top 4 and bottom 4 were really easy, with things in the middle really being in any order they were so close.



Overall group was very close to my list with Spaceforce>Hung Drawn & Quartered being the only real difference. Turtledog (scotch barrel aged) was offensively terrible, but one guy did have it 9th. Chemtrailmix (Rye barrel with cinnamon and pink peppercorns) was amazing, and a clear winner for me. Had the bourbon barrel version of this last year and think the rye is even better because it cuts some of the inherent DL sweetness.

Some had Handjee first, which i can't fault anyone for, complete vanilla bomb. HDQ was great (straight rye barrel aged). Probably the most interesting for me was Spaceforce and French Vanilla Militia. These are the same beer just aged in different barrels. Its really crazy that spaceforce was a coffee bomb and FVM was just an overly sweet mess. Greatest teachable moments was the most interesting flavor overall, but it was just dominated by Ginger so wasn't very good.

As if that wasn't enough, people started opening some crazy good bottles after and things got sloppy fast. Cantillon 2013 Vignerrone, Casey Family Preserves Plum, Alvarado St. Oolelallie, Veritas 17, Jahvanilla tenfidy, BA Abraxas, Miami Madness b1, Cantillon RdG, Jester King Fen Tao, etc, etc. Great sunday but my body paid for it Monday at work.

Bode,

That’s awesome. How did you acquire all the variants?

I just read the descriptions and turtle and greatest teachable sounded worst to me, and Chemtrail sounded best, funny to see you rank them just like that. Your overall ranking pretty much lined up with what sounded good to me, seems like we have pretty similar preferences. Only one that surprised me was FVM being so low and too sweet, though in retrospect makes sense with the Sauternes barrel.

The post-tasting beer list was awesome in its own right!

We all went to DLD this year, and then pitched in to buy the turtledog. it was a great time and honestly a 2.5oz pour of each was more than enough of each. It was also really cool to see how much some of them changed as they warmed. Lounge Against the Macromachine was amazing cold but really fell off as it warmed.

Bode,

So I guess you coordinated and traded for different variants at DLD? Or got really damn lucky with the random variant bottles you got!

ED and Bode-ist, thanks for sharing! Good reports. I've always wanted to do something like the tasting Bode-ist did but I can never get enough people together and you need a decent crowd especially with the big stouts.

Few close friends and I had 5 of the bottles covered. We reached out to one of our smaller local beer groups and they filled 5 more spots. We then all pitched in for the missing bottle.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/articl...nd-ranked.html

Who was the guy in here who said GN wasn't very good?

i've tried to win a mixed 4 pack of invader/ripe in razzles this week 3 times and no luck yet!

There are so many great beers out there these days. Not many are in my 5* club. This one gets in. So good

I don't think wasn't very good is what I said at all. They are just over hyped and do tons of stupid gimmicks.

I do really like ripe and space incaders.

Just thought I'd pop back in here and say hi. I'm almost never on 2+2 anymore, despite still playing cards 5 days a week.

I've been busy the last couple years creating my brewery tour company in LA.

This forum was one of the cooler little resources and RunDownHouse especially was super nice to me in PMs, sharing info, etc.

If anyone is in LA, I'll try to check in here every few days - would love to give recommendations for breweries to hit!

Honestly surprised to see Offshoot Relax get #2 - it might be the 3rd or 4th best IPA I've had from them, and the one time I tried it I was kinda meh on it. Maybe I'm not super into whatever hop combination they use for it, and I think I was really digging their anniversary release (One) when I tried it and didn't feel like Relax held up.

Props to them for getting recognized though.

Personally, I think lists like that have almost 0 value.

The difference between most of those beers will be almost entirely on an individual's pallet, so it really holds no real value to anyone besides the writer. They make for interesting experiments - but just read the descriptions. Every hazy IPA has the same keywords and every west coast IPA has the same as well. That shouldn't be surprising, given they are the same styles of beer, but it shows how little difference there are between a lot of these beers.

And the fact that an author thinks he can definitively say something like beer #36 is better than beer #37 is just silly.

Any beer recs for Calgary area? Stuff I can find on the shelf or breweries in Calgary itself? Up in Banff for the week but will be in Calgary for 2 days.

It's Troegs Nimble Giant season. It's tasting great. Basically a perfect DIPA for me.

It’s not one author. It’s blind tasting amongst a panel of people (not sure how many, but includes beer experts, brewmasters, etc). They have a points system and it’s all combined to make the ranking.

Bit silly to say it has no value. Obviously the beer at 36 and 37th will be quite close in aggregate points, but that goes for any list of anything. The highest scoring beers are “the best” using their metrics and even minor differences amongst beers with similar hop/taste profiles can be the difference between a great beer and a truly elite one.

For me this is something akin to movie reviews. In the aggregate they'll steer you towards good beers and away from bad ones, but it's inherently subjective so unless you know you agree with a certain reviewer, or scan for keywords like thriller or juicy, it's not as useful outside of extremes. And then there's always the one product that catches a massive wave, for good or bad, that you personally disagree with.

Minor differences like a week's worth of freshness - which I know they mention in their disclaimer - and hell, even how on-point their cellarman was that day, which is why it's all kind of useless at the margins.

Did a good deal of beer tasting in LA last weekend. As someone who drinks 90% IPAs I thought Monkish >>>>>> LA Ale Works > El Segundo > State. Monkish is really damn nice for both IPAs and Belgians and stacks up well vs the top Bay Area breweries. All the rest of these are skippable, though the Meseeks Juice hazy IPA from LA Ale Works was pretty good.

When not at a brewery, I think Simmzy's in Manhattan Beach is my current favorite place to drink beer in LA.

This weekend visiting some friends in DC/Northern VA. Planned stops include Churchkey (I used to live across the street from there and it still might be my favorite bar in the world), Rustico (Churchkey's sister bar in Ballston), Paradiso, and perhaps Old Ox out in Ashburn. Let me know if there's somewhere else I need to hit, it's been 6 years since I lived in DC so I'm pretty rusty!

Yea, monkish is above everyone in LA. Next best is green cheek or brouwerij West probably.

Near Virginia, the best would definitely be veil if it's not too far for you.

Thanks a lot! Richmond is probably too far for me on this trip but I'll search for bars that have it on tap in NoVa.

I'll admit I mostly skimmed it.

I have two main points against these things. First is minor, but they are comparing everything named IPA and while they mention up-front that is now a very nebulous term in American brewing - how can you possibly rate West Coast IPAs with Hazy versions? They are just 2 different styles of beer?

I think my main point is because taste is so subjective (especially considering they are not doing an explicit to BJCP guidelines test), these lists hold little value for the average person.

Take a regular dude at a brewery and give him any 5 of the top 20 or 30 beers on that list and I'd be really surprised if there were any significant differences noted over a large sample of such dudes.

Personally - I feel like the best parts of beer are the differences "between" styles, not within styles. Once you find a "really good" representation of a particular style, the marginal differences between that and the best beer in the world of that style is so tiny.

Monkish is definitely the place if you want Hazy IPAs and before they brewed those - they were almost as well known for their Belgian styles.

I'd say besides the 3 mentioned, I'd throw Offshoot (the Bruery's hoppy sister brewery) and Highland Park Brewing into the ring for specifically IPAs. Highland Park might have the best overall tap menu from top to bottom from IPAs to pilsners to stouts, saisons, and sours.

About NEIPA and WC IPA, totally agree with you there. Two different styles.

I’d say for an IPA fan, the list has some value. Individual rankings you can flip with but it’s unlikely someone would prefer beers 65-70 over 1-5. There’s variance and flaws in this of course but all beers are judged with the same methodology.


I understand your general point regarding taste (I think), but don’t really agree with it.

I think if you gave a guy the 3 best single hop citra NEIPAs in the world, it might be tough to tell the difference. But throwing out some of my favorite IPAs I’ve had - Great Notion Ripe, Bissell Brothers Swish, Other Half All Citra Everything, and Trillium DDH Congress Street - all are world class IMO, but distinctly different in flavor profile and I have no doubt I could identify them in a blind taste test. Great Notion in particular (I’ve had a few of their IPAs only) has a distinct taste for me. I think what you’re saying applies more to the beers within the brewery themselves, or perhaps in the medium tiers of breweries. IMO, the world class guys separate themselves. This goes for sours and saisons too for me.

Lost Coast Brewery, Eureka, CA.



The Beer Sampler; a simple four:



The Pale Ale ain’t bad. They make a few IPA’s; I had the Indica, which is common on tap in the area. Not spectacular but good. The apricot wheat was wonderful – a great summer beer, crisp and clean. A worthy place to stop for beer – no food, just packaged junk that probably tastes like plastic. Nice selection of T-shirts.

A good place to get bombed:

I went to reply to this and had a nagging feeling of deja vu which led me to discover we did this a few months ago:

So, uh, yeah, check out Mad River if you're still around there!