Yes, I personally approve of this years edition of 3-Way. In fact I am enjoying one now. They collaborated with Modern Times this year and I have it on a par with last years. Definitely could see it as exceeding expectations when you walk up to it as a random IPA on tap at a friendly gathering.

GN Space Invaders and Ripe are setting the bar for the Portland IPAs (and Nationally as well), but I have recently started to take notice of some offerings from Trap Door out of Vancouver. I hadn't heard much about them until this year but hey have been putting out a lot of intersting different IPAs lately.

Trap door is great, we go there all the time. Food carts there are good too. They don't touch great notion, but they are doing some great stuff.

Brothers Cascadia is nearby and making some great stuff too.

Good write up on Great Notion. I'll probably bite the bullet and just buy a few of their beers on mbc. I'd like to go out there and do the Portland/Great Notion/de Garde thing, but it'll probably be a couple of years before that happens.

For folks who live out there, what are the can lines like there? It sounds like if you can get a case, they have decent quantity?

As for what I've been drinking lately...

Great Taste came and went, and was fun. Lots of DDH and triple-dry hopped hazy IPAs and barrel aged imperial stouts with maple syrup/coffee/etc. I mean those are the hot styles for a reason, they taste delicious. But you kind of get desensitized to it when everyone's doing it.

Big beers for that weekend for me were:

Angry Chair - Some saison that I think may have been aged in oak. It was pretty good and flavorful.
Voodoo Big Black Voodoo Daddy (2016) - This was pretty mediocre. Dry/chalky without much flavor. Makes me a bit skeptical of their BA beers if the base beer is pretty weak.
Perennial - Barrel aged Vermilion. I'm not a barleywine guy but this was pretty damn good.
Prop '17 - I wanted to try the damn banana beer. It was solid/good, but it didn't live up to what I expected. It's hard for beers to live to that kind of hype. Hell, if I was gonna have a 5-8oz pour, I'd just take the base BCBS.
New Glarus R&D Kriek - This is probably the best R&D in a couple of years and one of the best kriek's I've ever had. With flavor it's up there with JK Montemorency v Balaton, just straight cherry pie filling with tartness but not too much acidity.
Hailstorm - Coffee Vlad. I'd not had any of the vlad's before. This was legit and one of the better BA stouts I've had in a long time. Pretty much no flaws.

In the hazy game... well everyone can make a good hazy IPA now. Standouts for me here were Pulpit Rock, who continue to kick ass and take names. And a brewery I'd never heard of called Corridor Brewing out of Chicago. They had a DDH Galaxy beer called Galaxyeah that was very good, and Hazy Daydreams which was a more standard double NEIPA was very good too.

The new larger facility where the canning line is won't be open for the public until early next year, so for now they do strictly can releases on Saturdays at noon, usually 2 different beers, and usually half or full case per beer. Only takes about 30-60 mins to get through, not bad.

Then during the week they randomly offer cans at their open Alberta location, but smaller quantities and no specific schedule.

dont sleep on Voodoo. I've had 2 of their Black Magik's recently (Willet Barrel and Buffalo Trace) and they are 2 of the best non-adjunct BA stouts I've ever had. Both were this years i think.

Hailstorm is also killing it. Got a bottle of the neopolitan Vlad that was released last weekend that I'm itching to open.

Banger of a NEIPA from Indy. Also GOAT can design.


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Haven't had anything from them since they decided to stop being terrible. Heard sumo was good too.

FYI, deviate put out bottles of a Carmel coconut stout that's

This thread's been slow and I've been making an effort to get rid of old beers. Some quick thoughts:



Tilquin squared - I've had several bottles over the last several years, and they've pretty consistently been among the best beers I've ever had. Sadly, this bottle suggests that they may be on the decline. Still a delicious beer, but I wouldn't have been able to pick this out blind from lots of other gueuzes. Hopefully this was an anomaly.



Big Bad Baptist Reserve - This isn't old, but I was hoping it would be good. It wasn't. This year's variants have been pretty bad. If I had to rank the Baptist versions, it would probably be 2016 Double Barrel>= 2016 Baptista=2017 Baptista >>>> Regular Baptist >>>>>> 2017 Reserve > 2017 Triple Barrel. Obviously the 2017 Reserve and Triple Barrel were not worth buying.



Fantome whatever - Batch 1 of this was amazing. This wasn't as good. More like "generic Fantome", which means that I thought the first 1/4 bottle was pretty weird and the last 1/2 bottle was very good. I'm hoping this gets better with age.



BFM 20th Anniversary. This is a little more tart than the first bottle I had, but still fantastic. This is an auto-buy if I ever see it on the shelf again. Really delicious.



If I remember right, this was a 2012 bottle. I assumed it would be terrible, but it was perfectly fine. I really enjoyed the bottle and wouldn't have guessed it was so old. Revolution is pretty great.



This is not a beer. This is a chicken sandwich from my favorite Columbus brewer - Wolf's Ridge brewing. Food and beers are both great.



2013 BCBS - This was really good. I randomly opened it on a weeknight, and I wasn't planning on being drunk, so I wish I had saved half of it for another night. Glad that this is still hanging on strong.



No idea how old this is. I thought it was terrible and dumped it down the sink. However, I'm pretty sure I thought it was terrible fresh, so I don't think this was an aging issue.



Another Fantome whatever - this tasted just like a standard Saison from them, and I have no idea what's supposed to make this distinctive. That being said, Fantome is great when it's good (it's high variance), and this was good. So it was great.



OG 2010-2011 Tilquin - I was a little nervous considering the recent relative disappointment with the Tilquin squared. But this was amazing, among the best bottles I've had.

Fin

Nice reviews Spider. That Fantôme De Tous Les D’iâpes is why I almost always buy a Tome if I see one even though they can be explosive messes, the bottle I had (batch 1) was easily in my top 5 bottles of all time.

I haven't had a chance to have the Tilquin squared, but it's been on my list of wants for a while. Interesting to hear that it is fading, makes it easier to pass if I get access to an older bottle. I'm super excited for the few different grape versions coming to the states this fall.

The last 3 hazys they put out have been incredible. Best in town by far. I’ve enjoyed Elemental as much as I enjoyed some Treehouse beers. I’ll hit up Deviate, I work nearby so it’s much easier for me to get there now. Do they still not fill growlers unless you are a member?


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Nah, they do growler fills for almost everything.

The Bruery is starting to can some of their non-Offshoot beers, and this one is a huge winner imo. Partially barrel-aged imperial stout, 13%, with coconut and vanilla, I think MSRP is $8 for a 16oz can, and it seems to be getting wide distribution at least in California. I grabbed a can at a local bottle shop yesterday and it's pretty damn nice for how affordable it is.

I see the "bomber" of today has arrived.

No Name IPA, from Artifex Brewing Company. I thought it excellent; had it on tap at a local bar in San Clemente, CA - where Artifex is located. IPA lovers take note.

When I tried it for the first time last summer I thought it was excellent as well.

If I were to go to treehouse tomorrow at noon will there most likely be a big line? Should I get there earlier?

Flying into Boston at 830am and I’m trying to coax the non beer drinkers into a “quick” trip “on the way” to cape cod. I’m aware that neither of the quoted is true but hopefully my friends aren’t.

That sounds like torture. Going to Trillium in Canton when they open at 11 and getting a bunch of the Storrowed Double IPA and Seesaw Gose cans seems like a much more reasonable move. Can even have a morning brew there to start your vacation.

Yeah got to agree with Fed. Especially given TH often does big releases for holiday weekends.

Keep in mind Cape traffic will start backing up bad around noon tomorrow. Lol Cape.

Yeah, do NOT attempt that Hoagie. Get on the road to CC as early as humanly possible and godspeed, sir.

Yeah I’m on said road. The torture was part of the plan. We are here for a dinner in New Hampshire on Sunday and the genius ladies decided cape cod would be a good idea unbeknownst to me.

It’s a shame to be so close and miss it though. Any recs on the cape?

Whereabouts in NH?

I haven't been to the Cape in years, but there is an absolutely killer breakfast spot in W. Yarmouth. The Keltic Kitchen. If you're in the area, GO. You won't regret it.

I’m an idiot. The dinner is in Rhode Island. West Greenwich. It’s one of the outstanding in a field things.

Should have just done the whole weekend in RI as Aquidneck Island and Jamestown >> the Cape with way less hassle.

West Greenwich is near Proclamation Ale Co and Tilted Barn.

I'm in Boston Tues-Thurs for a conference next week. Is there a huge difference between trillium downtown and in Canton? Staying very close to the downtown location. Anywhere else I should be trying to hit?

Back in Chicago for a weekend, fun times getting rained in at Villains last night! See menu below.

Man did I run hot. First I ordered a Prison Rodeo, but they only had enough left for about 90% of a beer so they gave it to me for free. This was pretty good but not the best coffee IPA I've ever had. Next up was the Chili Bomb, this was fine, I think you guys like imperial stouts a lot more than I do. I wrap up with a Deep Space (really smooth DIPA, couldnt believe it was 10%, want to drink more of these this weekend) and at this point the kitchen mistakenly sends out a quesadilla that they give to me for free (Villains' bar food is good, but I definitely wouldn't recommend the quesadilla over all the other options). The total for all of the above is $13, and I tip $12 in appreciation of all the freebies, and when the bartender sees this he gives me a Double Daisy Cutter on the house. So yeah, 4 nice beers and a quesadilla for $25 including tip.

I think at this point Villains is definitely my #1 place to drink beer in Chicago, though I'd like to get back to Map Room and Fountainhead before the end of the weekend to test this theory.