Wolfs ridge is great. I love their food. Canis mexicanus is a favorite of mine.

Cool cool. I'll reach out for NH recs as the time draws closer!

I don't look for it specifically, but every once in a while I run across Head Hunter. I always check the date and a shocking amount of the time it's ridiculously fresh, a couple times even within a week. Always end up buying when I find those.

Yes! I bought this 6-pack on NYE, and IIRC they were bottled on 12/17.

Following up on this since I've spent a lot of time in NYC these past few months and have been to every place here except One Mile House.

My vote for best in Manhattan is Proletariat. The draft list is small and esoteric, but damned if you don't find something really interesting to drink every time you go there. First time I went I had an excellent Bissell Bros. IPA, the only place I've ever seen that brewery on tap in NYC.

As Is is a close second, great variety on the draft list and gets bonus points for having good food.

One other bar I've spent a lot of time at is DBA. Draft list not quite on par with the names above, but nice can/bottle selection, and more importantly has more of a "fun NYC bar" vibe than any of the other places (though I guess Blind Tiger is kind of close). If you're with people that aren't into beer and want to drink good stuff without boring your friends, DBA is worth a look.

Went to a dinner party last night and brought several beers, as I normally do with this group. My self-assessed grade of my offerings: an embarrassing D+



Comments from left to right:
Westvleteren 12 (Belgian Quad) - I forgot to check, but I think this was bottled around 2011. (The theme of these bottles is that they've almost all been sitting around my basement for several years.) My experience with this beer is that it's fine fresh, but can be exceptional with a couple of years on it. This seemed like it had passed that exceptional point, and was back to fine/good.

Westvleteren 8 (Belgian Dubbel) - I'm not sure if I've had the 8 before, but this to me seemed completely over the hill. Just flat tasting. People use the word oxidized a lot, and I'm not really sure I know what it means, but this is what I imagine it means. A complete disappointment and I didn't even finish my 3-way share of the bottle.

2010 or 2011 Old Horizontal - this actually held up ok. Not super carbonated, but tasted fine.

2014 La Folie - I've never had this before and it reminded me of a Flanders Red that veered too far away from fruit and towards the tart/sour realm. Not very pleasant.

Peche n Brett of unknown vintage. Definitely didn't lack carbonation:



Was fine. Peach was pretty muted, but the overall experience was much better than the La Folie

Avery Raspberry Sour - I've never liked this beer at any stage of freshness. This didn't change last night.

Big Bad Baptist is always some degree of good. I'm not sure how old this was, but it was good.

Just an overall bad job by me of keeping beers too long. The two Westvleterens were the real disappointments for me, because I'm confident that I would have enjoyed them much more if I had opened them up a few years ago. The others I'm not sure about.

Thanks, Spider. We've been sitting on two bottles of West12 since mid-2015, and after reading this we're opening them this week in front of the fire.

Hopefully this isn’t too off topic, but I’m planning a trip out to Carson City to see some family. The wife and I want to fly into San Fran or Santa Rosa and spend 3 days in wine country. Any suggestions on where to go for fun 3 days of wine/beer. Would like to settle in somewhere and bike around.


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If you mean you'll be heading into Napa, I can suggest a lot, we go a few times/year. This largely depends on budget...tastings at some of the nicer wineries if you aren't a member can be ~$150+, but I could suggest plenty if you give me an idea of what you guys want.

As far as beer goes, some of my favorite beer I've had is from Moonraker which is right along your route! I can't speak for the place itself or if it's a nice visit, but they make top tier stuff.

Another common suggestion would be Cellarmaker in SF if you go down there.

Feel free to PM me if you want.

Beer stuff in wine country:

- Russian River is an area legend, they have a brewpub in downtown Santa Rosa and a newer, larger brewing facility + bar/restaurant in Windsor (about 10 miles north). The Windsor location just opened 2-3 months ago and I was pretty shocked when I visited over Thanksgiving to see that it is already pretty crowded, but it's still probably a better bet if you're worried about time, as the Santa Rosa location routinely has a long line out the door just to get on the waitlist for a table. I've been to Third Street Aleworks in Santa Rosa multiple times (not recommended, don't go) as a function of going to Russian River and being like "well what if we didn't have to wait two hours to get beer and food..." and walking down the street instead. If you can hit it on a weekday, you might have better luck, otherwise go to Windsor.

- Fieldwork has a tasting room in the city of Napa, worth checking out if you haven't had their beers before (they are great)

- I've never been to their tasting room, but Bear Republic is in Healdsburg, in northern Sonoma County (they also have a brewpub in Rohnert Park, just south of Santa Rosa, that I know nothing about but presumably also has lots of their beer)

- Lagunitas is in Petaluma (a little south of anywhere you'd go wine tasting but not far out of the way), they have a huge outdoor area for beer + food and is a pretty fun visit.

I'm hardly a wine expert, but as a general recommendation, unless you are a fancy person who likes drinking fancy person wine (not that there's anything wrong with that): Sonoma County has great wine and is half as pretentious/expensive as Napa, spend your time there.

I was in Healdsburg for a wedding. I had no idea Bear Republic was there, was just bopping along in the downtown business area and saw tanks through a window. "Hmm, must be a brewery!" I thought.

The tasting room is pretty good size, some outdoor seating, some food.

I would advise against taking malice’s advice. He will send you to super elite wineries and you will have a new hobby and be considerably poorer.

In Seattle for work right now and have had some good beer experiences so far. The first night I was here, went to Brouwer's Cafe for dinner. This place was great - a ton of taps and a wall of refrigerated bottles. It seemed like there were a lot of pretty appealing bottles (e.g., barrel-aged Firestone Walker stuff), but killing a 22 oz barrel aged stout in front of my peers seemed questionable. So I just had their house IPA, Reuben’s Brews Triumvirate IPA, which was fine, and then Boneyard's Hop Venom DIPA. The Hop Venom was really good. (After I made this order, the waiter said, "F*ck yeah", which confirmed that I had made an elite choice.)

Food was excellent, too:
(I incurred the additional charge.)

Then last night, went to a bottle shop/bar close to the hotel called Teku Tavern. This place was great, too. A huge number of tabs and, again, a big wall of refrigerated bottles. I got a flight:



First was Holy Mountain Demonteller. Locals had been recommending Holy Mountain, and this was the only one they had on tap. It's a Saison, but at only ~5%, it was a really light one. I loved it. I could imagine crushing this all day. Next was a kriek by pFriem, which was pretty good, but didn't compare to Belgian krieks. Maybe a better way of saying it is that it was noticeably different from Belgian krieks, not necessarily worse. Block 15's Fresh Pow was next. This was fine. Given the number of alternatives, I probably wouldn't get it again. Finally, KBS because I love KBS.

Anyway, this place was, on a Friday night, the perfect level of crowded. There was a table available for us and plenty of room to walk around. I did scope out the refrigerated bottles and ended up buying one:



At $50, this is obviously not going to be worth it, but I've been curious about it for a while. Hopefully it makes it back to Ohio safely.

i'm a big Boneyard fan and that Hop Venom DIPA is one of their best. as far as i know they still aren't canning or bottling their beer, so finding it on tap is your only option. RPM, Notorious, non-double Hop Venom, and Suge Knite are also very good if you can track them down.

Stoofvlees is elite. I've eaten that dish way too many times. If you have some extra time at night go up to cap hill and hit up stumbling monk.

Also, Armoured Fist is one of the best CDAs you will find and Bone-A-Fide is an excellent West Coast Pale. Basically, their whole line-up is pretty good.

Anyone do beer trades in this thread? I live in Saint Louis, and we have a ton of elite breweries here.

Always looking to trade, or meet to share beers.

Mostly big stouts and sours for me.

Almost time for 4 Hands Madagascar release, elite level if you 've never had it:

https://drink314.com/2019/01/4-hands...ascar-release/

I do a lot of trading, and have been trying to cut back some recently. Done a few small trades with people ITT over the years. Side Project is one of my favorite breweries, and i've been lucky enough to have a decent amount of their stuff over the years. Actually, I'm trying to find a trade for 2018 Maman right now.

Love Madagascar. Looks like way more variants than usual this year.

I dont have any Maman at all at the moment, unfortunately.

Last years Madagascar's were good too. Well, the Port one wasnt my thing, but some people liked it. I am looking forward to the Maple this year.

Really liked the BCBS Orange this year. Wish I knew anywhere to find it anymore.

Any love for sours in this thread?

Sours are mostly what we drink in our house. Besides Stouts. We don't do IPA's at all.

Saisons > sours.

Gueuze > Saisons > sours