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rage-saq posted:Hair of the Dog is just a few blocks down from Cascade and always has awesome taps and awesome food going. Get Flanders Fred if they have it!
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Sep 30, 2012 19:28
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cryme posted:Get Flanders Fred if they have it! I'm looking forward to cracking open a Flanders Fred, I hear its pretty drat good. When I was at HOTD last I had some Michael which was awesome, and Cherry Adam From The Wood that was on tap was also incredible. Also get their brussel sprouts they are amazing. 
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Sep 30, 2012 20:54
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I had a chance to try Flanders Fred on tap on a whim in Chicago monday, it was really good.
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Sep 30, 2012 21:33
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Bell's continues their roll with Bourbon Cherry Stout. Super well executed with sweet, slick bourbon flavor giving way to the tart cherry finish. Its incredibly delicate and restrained for an 11% beer. All stouts day is going to be (even more) awesome this year. Also, come on neighborinos, it's called Fred Flanders.
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Sep 30, 2012 21:48
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Whisker Biscuit posted:Bell's continues their roll with Bourbon Cherry Stout. Super well executed with sweet, slick bourbon flavor giving way to the tart cherry finish. Its incredibly delicate and restrained for an 11% beer. All stouts day is going to be (even more) awesome this year.  regular Cherry stout will not be made this year. Not sure if I'm sad about that.
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Sep 30, 2012 22:03
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Well then they dropped the ball. Big time 
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Sep 30, 2012 22:31
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I'm enjoying a Summit Oktoberfest right now. I've only had the Leinenkugel and Sam Adams offerings of Oktoberfest otherwise, and the summit is my favorite out of those three. It has more of a malty finish and an almost sweet aftertaste. I thought the Leinenkugel Oktoberfest was also a decent offering, if a bit unremarkable. The Sam Adams was my least favorite - it tasted almost like it was watered down and not malty or hoppy. I never counted myself as an Oktoberfest fan, but I can attribute that to not finding one that worked for me. I've also been really enjoying the Schlafly Pumpkin Ale. Holy hell that is one drat good pumpkin beer. It tastes like pumpkin pie with cinnamon, nutmeg, maybe a hint of ginger. Blows Pumpking out of the water. I wish this was distributed up into Chicago, but I'm lucky that my parents live in Champaign and can get it there.
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Sep 30, 2012 23:06
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As it turns out there's both Flanders Fred and Fred Flanders, the latter of which I'm having now.Really kickin' sour.
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Sep 30, 2012 23:40
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Hair of the Dog is on my very short list of breweries to visit one day.
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Sep 30, 2012 23:53
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XxGirlKisserxX posted:Hair of the Dog is on my very short list of breweries to visit one day. It's amazingly not great. If you go to Portland you should definitely hit up a number of places before that. The brussel sprouts ARE good, though.
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Sep 30, 2012 23:55
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americanzero4128 posted:I've also been really enjoying the Schlafly Pumpkin Ale. Holy hell that is one drat good pumpkin beer. It tastes like pumpkin pie with cinnamon, nutmeg, maybe a hint of ginger. Blows Pumpking out of the water. I wish this was distributed up into Chicago, but I'm lucky that my parents live in Champaign and can get it there. you know I'm a Pumpkin Hater, but Schlafly's is not bad. too bad most of their other poo poo is mediocre though
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Oct 1, 2012 00:38
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So the other night a friend decided to layer a Liefmans Raspberry Lambic and a Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout. While I may have chosen a different combination (way too tart for the BCS's body) it did turn out interesting, and I think I need to find a less intense fruit beer to pair with Moo-Hoo. Or something a bit less tart for the BCS, I guess. Also I forgot World Wide Stout was 18%. Well, until I took a whiff. How well does it fare with age on it? I've only had it ~a year old. Kraven Moorhed fucked around with this message at 01:17 on Oct 1, 2012 |
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Oct 1, 2012 01:14
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Now I'm at the Apex and I wish I lived nearby here. Extremely cool atmosphere, amazing tapwall, and a bottle list of Belgians etc. that rivals some of the East Coast joints. (Cantillon Lou Pepe Kriek 2009 for $75  )In that way the place kind of reminds me of Teresa's in suburban Philly, so in that tradition here's a pic of the taplist. (That old school cash register is fully functional too.) 
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Oct 1, 2012 01:23
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If you are in the Chicago area be sure to check out this new brewery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLXjCbFS6kE Also has work started on Stone Breweries hotel yet?
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Oct 1, 2012 01:53
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SUPER HASSLER posted:As it turns out there's both Flanders Fred and Fred Flanders, the latter of which I'm having now.Really kickin' sour. Is the Fred Flanders the one from 2008? Had a 2008 Fred Flanders at an event full of great beers and it was easily one of the best things I had that night.
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Oct 1, 2012 01:56
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Perfectly Cromulent posted:Is the Fred Flanders the one from 2008? Had a 2008 Fred Flanders at an event full of great beers and it was easily one of the best things I had that night. It was on tap so I am guessing not. Still yummy tho.
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Oct 1, 2012 02:44
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Whisker Biscuit posted:Well then they dropped the ball. Big time It's because we (Michigan) have no cherries this year. Or apples for that matters. Economically its quite the disaster! Cherry beers taste like medicine to me anyway so no big loss there imho. But paying $9/gal for locally made cider blows.
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Oct 1, 2012 03:51
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Midorka posted:
Maybe they will. LSS was a one-off beer, then people loved it so much, and now it's year round. What's the difference in their regular IPA and Daytime? In taste I mean, obviously a 1.4 ABV difference. I like the regular IPA better than the Maximus-- Maximus is too bready for an IPA, and it covers up the nice hop bouquet. My favorite of their IPAs was the Holiday Sucks, which tasted like tropical fruit.
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Oct 1, 2012 08:11
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I've never had their IPA, and they have themselves to thank for not putting bottling dates, so I don't know the difference. I like Day Time because it's a very well done low alcohol pale ale with a nice assertive tropical hop profile. I mean, I can only assume they are making nice money off it thanks to the quick turn-over rate and the low cost of ingredients and people buying it for $10 a 6 pack. Make this poo poo year round.
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Oct 1, 2012 08:16
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Midorka posted:I've never had their IPA, and they have themselves to thank for not putting bottling dates, It's on the neck. Julian code.
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Oct 1, 2012 10:59
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Munkaboo posted:It's on the neck. Julian code. Isn't that new? I could have sworn I looked over their bottles and found nothing. Maybe I'm thinking of Green Flash. Either way I've actually avoided both of their IPAs due to lack of easy to read best before date since I lack a smartphone to look it up on the spot and haven't learned it yet.
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Oct 1, 2012 15:03
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Munkaboo posted:It's on the neck. Julian code. I don't know the reason behind it, but I've noticed lots of their bottles don't have the date code. Maybe they only recently started doing it.
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Oct 1, 2012 15:33
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Midorka posted:Isn't that new? I could have sworn I looked over their bottles and found nothing. Maybe I'm thinking of Green Flash. Either way I've actually avoided both of their IPAs due to lack of easy to read best before date since I lack a smartphone to look it up on the spot and haven't learned it yet. Nah they've been doing it for a long time. You don't need a smart phone to look up the code... You can kinda guesstimate based on the first three digits. 247 = 247th day of the year. Divide that by 30 and it equals roughly the beginning of September
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Oct 1, 2012 16:00
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RiggenBlaque posted:I don't know the reason behind it, but I've noticed lots of their bottles don't have the date code. Maybe they only recently started doing it. Yeah I haven't really seen them either, I remember looking at an IPA of theirs recently and wondering where it was. I'll look again tonight, I know my Day Time bottle didn't have one.
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Oct 1, 2012 16:26
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SUPER HASSLER posted:Portland report so far. I know you're probably not in Portland anymore but last time I was there for work I stumbled upon Hop and Vine. I thought it was a pretty nice little bottle shop with an equally as small bar/restaurant. You can buy a bottle and bring it over and they'll chill it for a dollar. Bought a bottle of Parabola in July I think, drank it at the bar and had a hamburger with a fried egg on it. Awesome.
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Oct 1, 2012 20:47
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I had some Parabola and some Double DBA at KnB Wine Cellar's Firestone event. I think I just like the flavor imparted by Firestone's barrel source.
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Oct 1, 2012 20:55
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Any Tri-state area people looking forward to Victory's fall offerings this year? Red Thunder looks pretty interesting and I'm excited to finally give Dark Intrigue a shot. I need to turn 21 so I can just try all this poo poo out on tap. Has anybody had their Festbier?
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Oct 1, 2012 21:21
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SUPER HASSLER posted:It was on tap so I am guessing not. Still yummy tho. The one I had from 2008 was on tap, so maybe. It was damned good.
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Oct 1, 2012 21:34
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Cromlech posted:Has anybody had their Festbier? Festbier is one of the best American craft oktoberfests. Definitely drink it. Spent a couple days up in NYC. Grabbed beers at a couple places - Blind Tiger, Pony Bar, and Filling Station. For the most part, didn't really run into any small batch/rare taps. Unfortunately that Otto in Oak was all gone  Did like that a pint was more along what I was used to in the south ($5-6 ish). Munkaboo had me bring my beers for a cellar clean-out last night and cracked open that Rose De Gambrinus I'd forgotten from that other gargantuan tasting. It was an 08 and easily dethroned Schaerbeekse Kriek as the tartest sour beer I'd ever had.
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Oct 1, 2012 21:44
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air- posted:
It was like a drat liquid warhead. I was sweating from it!
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Oct 1, 2012 22:29
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Wookey Jack 
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Oct 1, 2012 22:47
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Back from Quebec and had an incredible time up there. The micro-brewery scene is hopping, and if I had not wanted to do such lame things as "sightsee" and "take in local culture," I could have easily spent the entire 8 days going from brewery to brewery. Still, I managed to fit in several great spots. Montreal: Reservoir - first place I visited because it was only a few blocks from where my friends and I were staying. Pretty typical brewpub, it was crowded on a Thursday night for their happy hour. This ended just after we got there and it cleared out some at that point. They had 6 or 7 on tap. Good beer but nothing outstanding. My favorite was their stout, Noire A L'Avoine, it was a big, extremely roasty stout. Dieu du Ciel - drat, this lived up to the hype and then some. Went on Friday around 7, afraid it was going to be packed, but there were two tables open and we grabbed one. Peche Mortel was what I was there for, and it was very good. However, two of their other beers absolutely blew Peche away, for me. #2 - Chemin de Croix, which they described as an "Old East India Porter". Basically a really roasty Black IPA or ABA, it reminded me a lot of Duck Rabbit's Hoppy Bunny, except better. And #1 - Corpus Christi, a rye beer, and the absolute best rye beer I've ever had. Rye is one of my favorite styles, so this was an amazing and awesome discovery, and it's probably a good thing that I did not notice it was a rye beer until we'd sampled a bunch of the other beers, because once I got a sip of this, I wasn't drinking anything else for the night. The other beer I remember was their 6ieme Soir, an Imperial Pilsner, mostly because I think making a 8-9% pilsner is stupid and others I've tried were not very good. However, that thing was amazing. Nailed the pilsner crispness and totally hid the 8.5%. I still think it's a stupid style, but it's a style they nailed. Everything was at least very good to excellent, though, and only paled because I was comparing them to a couple of beers I'd put in my top 10 list without hesitation. Vices et Versa - unfortunately went to this after having my mind blown at Dieu du Ciel, so I don't remember a whole lot. It was a nice place, big tap list of all QC beers, crowded but not packed, and we got a table after 15-20 minutes at the bar. I had the Hopfenstark Saison 55, which was good. After that, I sort of lost track and my phone was dying so I didn't record what I had. Nothing was as good as DDC though. The poutine with shredded pork was drat good drunk food, though. Quebec City: Corsaire - Stopped in at around 11:30 AM because we'd caught the ferry over and it was deserted. Bartender was the brewer, and he was a nice guy. Between us we sampled everything he had on tap (around 10 beers) and it was some solid stuff. Had a few standards and a few weird ones (never seen a lingonberry beer before!). The Davy Jones stout and the Frere Kirke session IPA were the best of the bunch, and I got him to make me a Black & Tan using them that was pretty awesome. L'Inox - Very hip bar in the middle of the parliment/financial district, but the beer was disappointing. Transat, their APA, was decent, but the 3 others they had on were very blah. An ESB, witbeer and a pilsner, I believe. They were pretty forgettable. Bateau de Nuit - A little college/dive bar with an awesome bartender and 8 taps of all Quebec microbreweries. Hard to find, but worth it. Sebastian loves his beer and will talk your ear off, and he was really apologetic that he didn't have a cask on that night (a Tuesday). This is about as local as you can get in Quebec City. A group of Seperationist students were holding a rally, singing protest songs, and giving speeches about Quebec becoming their own seperate country. A big group of them ended up talking to us until about 4 AM. I don't think it'll ever happen, but they were some passionate guys and it was fun chatting with them. They were especially interested in the American Civil War and our view of that since we were from the South. It was a really nice tap selection covering a range from pilsners up to stouts. Had a Bromont (a brewery I'd never even heard of in my research on QC breweries) Amiral Nelson (IPA w/ Nelson Sauvin) that was awesome. Sebastian invited us back for an all-IPA event he was having the next night, and I was seriously disappointed we had to get back to Montreal that day. Random other stuff: Boreale IPA - very good citrusy, west-coast style IPA. Boreale Blonde - pretty solid pale ale, went well with several dinners. Boreale Blanche - a good white/wit beer with lots of ginger spice (QC LOVES ginger beers...must have seen 4 or 5 examples) Brasseurs du Monde L'Exploite - thought it was a coffee stout, it was actually a coffee milk stout. I've just never been a big fan of milk stouts, but this was pretty solid. Lot of vanilla and coffee. Les Brasseurs RJ Cheval Blanc - Eh, forgettable. Tasted like a beer. Anyway, if you have the chance, I highly recommend Quebec as a vacation/beer-tour destination! The food is good, the beer is good, and the people were uniformly super friendly. It's a bit expensive, but totally worth it.
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Oct 1, 2012 23:01
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Keep forgetting to post about this one... Anchorage Brewing Company: Bitter Monk, a "Belgian style double IPA with Brettanomyces. This ale is aged in french oak chardonnay barrels. Brewed with Apollo, Citra, and Simcoe hops. Dry hopped in the barrel with Citra hops. Triple fermented- First in the tank with a Belgian yeast, second in french oak chardonnay barrels with brett, and finally in the bottle with a third yeast for natural carbonation." First, this is the second Anchorage beer I've had that tastes like it was blended with rose water, and smells like old lady 'rose' perfume. If that's a byproduct of their yeast, so be it, but I need to identify it in case I ever make something myself and inadvertently use that yeast. Second, Anchorage are the Radiohead of beers - I respect the hell out of what they do, and I know they're good at their craft, but I just don't enjoy it all that much. The taste? Skunked pinot grigio, rosewater, a bit of earthy iron, and mango. The brett wasn't all that aggressive in the bottle, which I think would have helped it along quite a bit. The biggest positive I can say about it was how light and bubbly it was, again, like a skunked champagne (in a good way). The 9% abv was completely buried. The best part though? We have this elevated skylight in our kitchen, and whenever I open corked bottles I put them on a certain spot on our kitchen's island to where, if the cork goes flying, it has the most space to shoot up before hitting anything. Plus, it's fun. Anyway, I uncage it and barely touch the cork to begin working it out when it rockets out of the bottle, taps the skylight at around 15' high, and comes back down where I catch it cleanly. Wish I had that poo poo on film, I did that like a boss. So, in closing, try it if you get a chance; I'm very glad I gave it a whirl and took a risk, as it was definitely unlike anything I've had before. Worth the money for that, I guess.
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Oct 1, 2012 23:11
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Went to the Big E this weekend. Huge regional fair in New England. My ideal time to spend at a fair is, say, an hour. We were there for six, so, you know, I had to start looking for beer. I was impressed by what I found. I mean, you expect the usual Bud Lite / Shock Top offerings, and since this is Massachusetts you know there will be Sam Adams. But one of the local restaurants was serving two different Berkshire Brewing Company beers on tap, and another was serving Sierra Nevada's Fall Tumbler. Then I found the Opa-Opa tent -- a small regional brewery/brewpub that's doing very well for itself. They were showing the Pats game, but I think they would have been doing brisk business without it. It seemed I couldn't walk for a few minutes without seeing someone drinking out of one of their cups. They also had a "Craft Beers of New England" tent, but I think they just had Magic Hat #9, Sam Adams Lager + Octoberfest, and Harpoon IPA. Maybe one other, I forget. The real treat was hidden in the Vermont building -- Long Trail / Otter Creek / Wollaver had a stand set up with 8 taps. I was craving something dark, so I tried their Black IPA. Good stuff. Turns out there were a couple beer gardens hiding in their too. But my paths didn't cross them. I suspect my wife may have had advance warning....
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Oct 2, 2012 01:58
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Cromlech posted:Any Tri-state area people looking forward to Victory's fall offerings this year? Red Thunder looks pretty interesting and I'm excited to finally give Dark Intrigue a shot. I need to turn 21 so I can just try all this poo poo out on tap. Super excited after drinking Otto in Oak, definitely find that. As for Anchorage Brewing their beer The Tide and It's Takers is amazing, the most interesting tripel I've ever had.
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Oct 2, 2012 03:01
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air- posted:Festbier is one of the best American craft oktoberfests. Definitely drink it. This weekend I had three beers. One was Hill Farmstead's Holger Danske, which probably wouldn't have been there if I came in the day after. That was a great choice. It's a stout (I think, a dark beer in any case) that has a whole combination of flavors- smoke, a little bit of hoppiness, a coffee taste, and some others I'm missing. Hill Farmstead is a brewery that deserves the hype. Second was Brooklyn's Post Road Pumpkin and that was awful. It tasted like soap. I asked other people at the bar if they could taste the soapiness and none of them could. Third was a Sierra Nevada 2010 Bigfoot that they had left over from the Sierra Nevada event a couple of nights before. That was very good as well, very malty. Overall, a good night.
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Oct 2, 2012 08:11
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Y-Hat posted:Which Pony Bar- the one in Hell's Kitchen or the one in the Upper East Side? Either way, I don't think that they have rare taps. The one on the Upper East Side is my favorite bar and it's more or less one of the only games in town (or neighborhood, as it were) as far as beer bars go- as opposed to the Village, where you can't throw a rock without hitting one. And believe me, $5-$6 a pint is rare here and you got lucky. For example, Rattle N Hum starts at $7. Had no clue there were even two of them; just heard a ton of good things about the one in Hell's Kitchen.
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Oct 2, 2012 12:43
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wattershed posted:Keep forgetting to post about this one... I really, really like Bitter Monk but it's been so long since I had a bottle I can't recall any specific tasting notes. I don't remember getting any of that stuff you mentioned, though. I have an Oktoberfest thing with a bunch of wine snobs this weekend, maybe I'll take a Bitter Monk rather than the Hottenroth I was planning on. Or both, though I was planning to take more than just sours.
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Oct 2, 2012 15:21
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Bolt Cutter officially announced.
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Oct 2, 2012 22:01
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danbanana posted:Bolt Cutter officially announced. I just saw on the brown paper tickets site that Founders is charging $23 per bottle. Not looking forward to the total shitshow that this release is going to be and I'm dreading Chicago prices on this stuff.
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