Very pleasant surprise at work today. I go to a presentation and see someone familiar, but I can't place him. It turns out it's someone from Seattle that I met when I visited there earlier this year. He stops by my office and says, "Hey, I brought you something."



That's some sweet action.

KDS

Dug into some fresh hop beers tonight. I'm a little stuffed up so that might impact things.

Born Yesterday is very good but not as good as I remember last year's. I recall 2017 having a bit of a haze to it, though nothing crazy. I recall it having a bit more tropical flavor. This is still good but tastes like a lot of single hop Mosaic beers. This isn't single hopped, just seems the mosaic is dominating. Quite good just not living up to memory.

Celebration, on the other hand, is tasting great. Just so good. Full bodied. Super smooth.

Don't think I've ever had harvest ale. Might look for some tomorrow.

Recent beer escapades for me:

- Central Waters anniversary party was 2 weeks ago. This is where they release Black Gold. Still a great beer, but I think my favorite may be the 2016 year. Of course, I've only had it on draft in a plastic cup while drinking outside in the semi-cold. So, not an entirely fair review. They also released an NEIPA called Unsettled. They said I think a year or two back they'd never do that. Time will make fools of us all. It's pretty good, too.

- Forager - I do some work in Rochester, so I was up there a few weeks ago. They have great food and really nice workers, so it's a must stop when you're in town. Their IPA game is weak but the kettle sours and their stouts are pretty good. They smoke and I believe cure their own meats, which is kind of cool.

- Drove from Madison to Grand Rapids last weekend. Stopped at Transient Artisan Ales. I found The Juice is Loose a bit too sweet/malty as you often get with DIPAs, but their other beers we sampled were good. In Grand Rapids, we stopped at Founders. Happy to stop in there as it was one of my gateway breweries - I still rate Dirty Bastard, Breakfast Stout, and Backwoods Bastard among the best beers in their style that have near-national distro. They didn't have too much exciting on tap, though, and the space is big but almost too big. Also stopped in the Hopcat. We have one in Madison, which is way worse than this one, which is the original. They had bottles of 3F Oude Geueze (and Kriek on the menu, but were out of it) which is pretty damn rare to see in my neck of the woods. I had it, and it was actually a bit underwhelming for me. I've got a couple of bottles in the basement to give it another go, though. On the way home, we stopped at More Brewing. They mostly just had hoppy offerings on tap. Their food was pretty good as far as brewery/pub food goes, and the vibe/decor of the place was really nice. Their IPAs were good but unremarkable in today's ultracompetitive IPA market.

- 3 Sheeps - One of their recent Barrel Society beers was a Rye Imperial Stout with Cocoa Nibs aged in Bourbon Barrels. One of the best BBA beers I've had in the last year or two. My wife and I got 4 between us, and we've already drank 2.

- New Glarus - I went down there yesterday morning/midday. They are so large and been around so long that their sours don't really have the big time cache, but you can just walk in there any old day and they've got bottles of their Kriek and their geueze style beers sitting on a pallet. Also they are as good if not better than most of the big American sour names. I feel like their coolship beers are more tart and complex than some of the overly puckering sours a lot of places can put out.

Roll For Initiative would be a good one to try along with Ground State (don't think I've had JtR), they aren't vanilla bombs, RFI might be my favorite BL beer so far for my personal tastes.

Also this year's FO seems more restrained on the vanilla to me than I remember year's past, but it is a vanilla BA RIS, so you gotta expect it to be heavy on vanilla in general. Anything in that vanilla RIS category that is heralded usually is going to be in the ballpark of vanilla rye, that seems to have been the bar for elite vanilla stouts.

MBC is cool if you've got the cash. I hate shipping too, but I trade a lot locally and plenty of local guys have reliable trading partners all around the country so it's not terribly hard to get something if you really want it via local trade. Also if you want to continue trading, facebook is where it's at. PM me if you need the name of some groups near you, I've added a few around the country when traveling through recs from buddies and found it worked out quite well.

Marz Cloudy Boys might be my favorite of their seemingly infinite NEIPAs. But at (price gouging corner store pricing) $16/4 12oz kind of ridiculous.

Headed to Serbia for the Liverpool game. Know a few breweries over there and the scene has exploded recently. Have 1 suitcase full of beer from here (Other Half, Tired Hands, Trillium, Kane including a '16 ANTEAD, Grimm, Carton, BCBS). Should be some fun shares but excited to try what Belgrade has been up to lately. Last time I was there Kabinet was a new brewery and their Supernova was one of the best IPA I've had

2018 CBS on sale tomorrow. I'm in the Chicago area so it will be at Jewel grocery stores.

I was disappointed with last year's CBS release initially, but I opened another one after about 10 months and thought it was fantastic. So I'll probably end up picking one up if I see it.

On that note:

I've had a couple of Serbian beers lately from Dogma (but only what makes it over to the UK). Hoptopod and a SMASH Mosaic. Both decent enough but not anywhere near great, I thought.

Brag: It's currently on tap at my local pool hall. Have I mentioned I love it here??!!

Hearing good things about Ghoulschip. Any thoughts on it? Sounds great, but I'm not a huge fan of Allagash style beer in general.

Popped into founders Detroit at lunchtime and it’s already packed. Had a ‘17 and an ‘18 cbs. The 18 is very boozy compared to the 17. It makes me feel good about my huge overbuy of CBS last year. I still have like 8 bombers left.

Bar that I go to a lot still has bottles of 17 left. Bought one and drank in tailgating before Michigan/Wisconsin and oh boy that was fun

I've now had every beer in the tap room Haha. I really really liked Smash Mosaic. Tons of flavor and nice body for a <5% beer. Like Albino better when I had it out of the bottle more than on tap for whatever reason. Agree all the rest were solid offerings even if not out of this world.

What happened to Supernova by Kabinet? This was one of the best IPA I'd ever had when i was here 3 years ago and now is a shell of its former self. Not terrible but not on the level I remember.

Kabinet/Mikkeler Vista#2 is the best beer I've had here so far this trip

I had a Prarie RIS with oreos yesterday at a beer bar, it was excellent. 13%ish, forgot the name, but was the most memorable beer of the afternoon and there were some solid ones.

Stout fans,



I highly recommend making your way to Tulsa for some nano machines vol 2. Giant coffee flavor stout, so good.

Beer nerds,

Anyone go for this year’s CBS?

Even though the most recent CBS I opened was pretty enjoyable, that Lagunitas underneath has to be a better value, even if you're forced to buy some stupid ass mason jars.

It's FOBAB again, which means it's time for more partial recollections of excellent beers on my part. 400 mostly barrel aged beers in one room with 4 hours to sample. So basically a ****show.

Big standouts for me (while I did some damage and tried to get to stuff that was getting lots of buzz, I definitely didn't get close to everything, which is part of why my list looks a lot different than the medal winners, most of which I didn't try!):

- Barrel Aged Mehndi - More Brewing (This one did medal - gold medal strong stout!) I'd never heard of these guys before and they're fairly local. This was just a really nice stout. No adjuncts but picked up nice smooth chocolate and vanilla notes. Great texture. Will have to check these guys out more in the future. (Note: apparently More won best in show last year!)

- BCS Proprietors - Goose Island (Not really a surprise that this is good) It's BCS except it smells and tastes like fancy dark chocolate gelato. Ridiculous. Looped the line, got 2+ pours.

- Deepest Shade - Horus Aged Ales. I embarrassingly couldn't figure out the smell or taste was hazelnut until I looked in the booklet. Really well integrated into the beer. Super pleasant.

- Fundamental Observation - Bottle Logic. (I feel like Bottle Logic is well discussed here and maybe the owner/brewer is a poster her? Maybe cheap to put the best in show in my list?) Not sure what else to say here this was great. Well-rounded (I guess maybe this comes from using a bunch of different kinds of barrels?), good vanilla notes. I didn't get to any of the other Bottle Logic beers that were there last night so I'm happy I got this one. Simply great.

Other stuff/observations:

- There are so many great sour beers in the world and they don't all come in at 14%. They just make your teeth feel like they're going to fall out of your head?
- Everything I had from:
-- Blackberry Farm Brewery
-- Funkworks
-- Werk Force
-- Rare Barrel
-- Crooked Stave
-- Trve
-- Prarie
-- Blendery
was great. Would fairly blindly drink anything from any of those places happily.

There was a legit feeling of sadness when I saw anything that had kicked before I walked by, even if it wasn't something I was likely to have grabbed (I basically did not try more than a sip of a friend's anything that had been aged in malort, fernet, tequila, mezcal, gin (except cider)), but none so much as the maple BBA Vlad from Hailstorm that you had to win a plinko game to get a pour, and they only told me after I won that they'd actually run out a couple minutes earlier.

Overall, fun again. Still recommend. Still didn't feel great the next morning.

Spider:
I didn’t even notice that. Checked it out and it’s looool:

Hopefully they’re available without the stupid mason glasses. Last year 6-packs were like $12 iirc, that was so great.

Cit:
Nice!
This is part of city beer store Black Friday list, looking forward to it:
And for Bay Area sour fans, they’re clearing out their old cascade bottles:

Recently went to a dinner party and brought some beers:



My thoughts, right to left:

Gold Legacy - Wolf's Ridge is a local Columbus, OH brewery, and they just kill it. Probably my favorite local brewer (plus they have great food). This is opaquely described as a barrel-aged sour, and it's fantastic. This was my favorite beer of the night, and even non-sour people enjoyed it.

Dire Wolf Coffee Joy - Another Wolf's Ridge bottle, this one is a non-barrel aged stout that very much tasted like an Almond Joy. I love Almond Joy, so I enjoyed the beer. But it was a little too syrupy to drink much of. So I had a small amount, but fortunately several other people liked it and killed the bottle.

3 Foyds Behemoth - A barleywine that's been sitting around my basement forever. The first sip tasted great, but was just too thick and syrupy to drink much of. Like the prior bottle, I'm glad there were other people who liked the sweetness and killed the bottle.

Fantome Magic Ghost - Holy cow. Fantome beers in general are wild, and I never know what to expect. My most common experience when drinking a bottle is, "Wow, this tastes bad. I can't believe I bought this." Then, after a half glass, "Hmm, this isn't too bad." Then, at about 1/3 to 1/2 of the bottle, "Yes, I am definitely digging this." In short, Fantome beers are actually pretty great if you can make it through the first couple of tastes, but the variance is huge.

Anyway, this was green. Seriously, this was the first glass:



And if that's not green enough, this was the last glass:



It was a typical Fantome experience, where I ended up enjoying it much more at the end that at the beginning. But it's not close to the best bottles I've had. This is flavored with green tea, and it just didn't do much for me. I'll continue to buy Fantome, but not this bottle.

Rodenbach Alexander - I'm pretty sure I've shared this bottle with this group before, and exactly the same thing happend this time - everyone (wives and husbands both) loved it. I barely got any. This is not super complex, but it's a great way to end the night.

(I left the bottle of BCBS with the hosts - they like bourbon stouts. I assume it tasted like BCBS typically does.)

That Fantome is bad beer and they are bad brewers.

Anyone ever go to Hunahpu's Day? A friend of mine posted about it earlier, looks interesting.

I went Sat late (eta: lol originally wrote Sunday, prob still inebriated). I think I'm the only person in Chicago who thinks More Brewing is overrated, but I def don't chase stouts or pastry stuff, so idk. Their stout that won was not a pastry fwiw, so I am sure it's good. I had it at 3.75 on untappd. I just go for the saisons and #notlambics, so wtf do I know.

In that vein, I drank 1000 sours and they were all k. Highlight for me was veritas Kriek, just a great ****ing kriek. Also really enjoyed an under the radar kriek "Just Passing Through" from Transient, Wildings from Off Color that deservedly won something (I think they are the best brewer in Chicago, fight me!), and to immediately contradict myself: Chemtrailmix was great as were BL Darkstar November (didn't try FO, got drunk and didnt' find it) and the 2018 bcbs reserve. Prop was k, but I don't think it's magic to put dark chocolate in beer and it made me take down my trade offer for my fdf for 2xprop+vanilla now that I tried it. /StoutPhilistine