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Julio Cesar Fatass posted:The talk about Hopslam and other super IPAs aging really quickly has me curious as to how long an IPA can sit before it legitimately loses its hop and citrus character. Is there a rule of thumb? Good job on the OP, although I wish we could not classify PBR, Budweiser etc. as pilsners. It's a nerdy distinction, but I prefer the term "American adjunct lagers," which frankly describes what they are quite accurately since they have large proportions of corn/rice to reduce the body and taste to somewhere around nothing. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 22:35 on Mar 2, 2012 |
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Mar 2, 2012 22:24
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Kudosx posted:One reason I'm glad I don't live in California: traffic. 
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Mar 4, 2012 21:00
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Midorka posted:You do realize stating your opinion as a fact makes you look like an elitist jerk don't you? If you don't like being called out on it, don't be a complete elitist jerk next time. It seems you're smart enough to accept that people can have differing opinions, how about acting like it. I had a Red Chair IPA and I'm totally confused. It tastes extremely malt-forward with barely any hops at all. It's like a strong amber/red ale as opposed to an IPA. Is it just the ABV that's causing them to classify it as an IPA?
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Mar 5, 2012 10:55
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Munkaboo posted:Any of you ever heard of Brewhop in San Diego? Basically a brewery your that will take you around for 5 hours to any SD brewery. Green Flash and Ballast Point are both nearby there if you want to stick to that area, but if you want to get really obscure, there's a nanobrewery near Alesmith called Hess Brewing that does a few interesting things. There's also Iron Fist brewing relatively near Port and Stone, so you could just start all the way east and move west to the coast and end up at Pizza Port Carlsbad and have more time drinking and less time traveling.
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Mar 5, 2012 22:39
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Munkaboo posted:Carlsbad is a bit out of the way to end, I'd prefer to be closer to our hotel in the Gaslamp district. But point taken on Alesmith, I'll bring it up with the tour lady. Ballast Point will always have at least 3 special beers that aren't bottled/distributed much or are seasonals if that's something you find interesting. Don't ever get roped into going to the Home Brew Mart location though, they have a lease on there that won't let them sell pints. They have more weird/limited brews, but you can't buy anything but a taster and can only buy one of each variety per day (really). But yeah, it really sucks that Alpine is so far out there. It's definitely one of the best places and have a ton of stuff, although for the most part you just hang out in the attached bar next door (which does mean you get to sit down).
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Mar 5, 2012 22:59
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I had Younger and enjoyed it, but there's nothing about it that makes any of the event surrounding it worth it.
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Mar 6, 2012 00:27
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Munkaboo posted:Interesting, the tour guide said we should go there since they (the tour company) do unlimited tastings. Alpine is awesome but what wattershed says is totally true. It's in the middle of nowhere, and you really have to go into the pub to get anything and it's a tiny little place. The brewery itself looks a bit like an old building at a summer camp. wattershed posted:Alpine is REALLY out in the middle of nowhere. LA/Port isn't exactly city center, but compartively speaking it's not too bad. Alpine's extremely small (I don't think they let parties bigger than six in their pub) and I can't imagine you'd leave there thinking "hey I'm really glad we made the trip out here." Stone's grounds are very pretty, and it's a nice building on the whole - if you can work that one in I'd do it. LA/Port, I've done that tour and it's nothing special at all, you'll be in a warehouse district with the warehouse door rolled up and a dank tasting bar that on weekends gets cramped. Yes, beer selection is decent, but I'm not sure how much value there is in that situation. Perhaps they've improved the tour, but last time around I was nonplussed. Drunk off their great tap selection, but nonplussed.
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Mar 6, 2012 02:31
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bananasinpajamas posted:Back in the day I probably would've drank it no matter what, but if he can't drink it at all, what's the point? It's a waste of money no matter what, why punish yourself further
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Mar 7, 2012 22:52
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Vaguido posted:Just got back from Founders. I thought I was insane for getting there at 5am, but the line for KBS had already wrapped around the building, roughly ending where I was at the end of the line for Canadian Breakfast Stout last year, and I had gotten there at 9:30 that time. I had heard people saying they were planning on getting there at 6. I figured they meant am, but apparently people drove to the brewery after clocking out of work for the day.
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Mar 11, 2012 01:36
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Docjowles posted:I don't think there's been much New Belgium hate at all, other than universal agreement that Fat Tire sucks. I guess since that's their flagship, that reflects kind of poorly on them. But it funds La Folie, Le Terroir ( ...I like Fat Tire. I mean, it's not the best beer ever, but it's certainly not worthy of hate.
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Mar 12, 2012 00:08
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) and all sorts of great Lips of Faith experiments.
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CalvinDooglas posted:I don't get why it's highly regarded at all. I gave Midorka a hard time about the same thing with his expensive lambic, but the 120 Min is one of those beers that people will just suck up and finish, even if they know it sucks. Nobody wants to be the guy that doesn't "get" an expensive, hyped beer. Even when it's objectively terrible people will say "hmm yes I can see the appeal" instead of saying what they really think. I unironically like Samuel Adams (the regular Boston Lager) too. I haven't had 120 minute, but mostly because I'm not going to go look for it when I don't even like 90 Minute all that much. (I don't *hate* 90m, I just don't really care for it)
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Mar 12, 2012 00:57
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Docjowles posted:I meet people regularly to whom Fat Tire is literally the name of the brewery. If I ask if they mean New Belgium, they're like, "who?". I'm sure there are many thousands of people in Boston who'd be surprised to learn there are Sam Adams beers outside of "Sam", "Sam Lite", "Sam Summer" and maybe Oktoberfest. I think it might be the Beer Geek Blinder thing again. We know New Belgium puts out a shitload of beers, but the one tap they get at Applebees or whatever the gently caress is Fat Tire, not La Folie or Ranger or Tripel. The Applebee's and On the Border here have Ranger.
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Mar 12, 2012 04:03
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Docjowles posted:I bought a sixpack of Bigfoot Barleywine to cellar, and cracked one open to get a feel for it fresh. This...was a mistake. I'm sure it will be great after a year or two but god drat, right now it is intense. Somehow way too bitter and way too sweet at the same time, big syrupy body. At 9.6% it leaves noticeable legs on the glass. I've had some barleywines I enjoy fresh but so far this one is not doing it for me. So how long should I sit on this Sucaba? I'm not much of a Barleywine honk, but I bought one anyways since "ooooh box"
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Mar 13, 2012 01:17
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deadwing posted:I've never bought a growler that hasn't been sealed in some sort of way. I'm pretty sure there's only six or eight states that allow open containers in cars, so the vast majority of places nation-wide will seal their growlers. I'm completely shocked if there are any states that allow open containers.
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Mar 13, 2012 03:19
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Phanatic posted:Never been to Vegas or New Orleans? In cars? That seems off/crazy, at least from my Western state perspective.
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Mar 13, 2012 04:11
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Y-Hat posted:Wasn't Wyoming the last state in the country to raise the drinking age to 21 because it doesn't have that much federal highway funding? I do know it's the home state of Dick Cheney so that's a strike against it. I believe that was South Dakota. There was a famous case we studied in law school called South Dakota v. Dole from the late 80s in which they were challenging the right of the Feds to withhold their tax dollars to bribe them into making the drinking age 21.
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Mar 13, 2012 06:20
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Vertigo posted:So... Ballast Point people...
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Mar 13, 2012 19:19
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If you can't find Sculpin now, you'll find it soon enough. They're going through another big expansion (BP won the World Beer Cup as "Small Brewer of the Year," but don't qualify in that category anymore because of the previous expansion) and they just added a bunch of huge fermenters. In fact, I saw some pictures on their feed showing pallets of Sculpin headed for both Texas and Ohio, two markets they apparently weren't in before.
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Mar 13, 2012 20:35
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RiggenBlaque posted:I managed to snag a bottle of Sculpin IPA from the local bar that carries beers that don't get distributed to my area. I'm hoping it's not too old, but I can't translate what I'm assuming is this bullshit date code: That first 6 in the first set of numbers is an "S," it's Sculpin Batch 122 (i.e. SC122), the second date is a "drink by" date coded as 06-18-12. Ballast Point works off of a 6 month date freshness cycle, so it's a little under 2 months from bottling. It seems about average for how fresh we get stuff here that comes from say, Victory or any other East Coast brewery. In San Diego news, Hess Brewing, a "nanobrewery" that operates out of a tiny, garage like space, is moving to North Park and starting a canning operation. We're going to have two canned craft beer places after Pizza Port opens its cannery next year. Also, about 4 new breweries opened this month. You would think you'd hit market saturation at some point. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Mar 14, 2012 |
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Mar 14, 2012 23:28
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wattershed posted:This list is ridiculous: http://www.westcoastersd.com/sd-brewing-industry-watch-2012/ It's totally true that we have plenty of wannabees that don't produce anything of note, like Mission Brewery, which only exists so some guy can relive his fantasy of owning the old pre-prohibition Mission Brewery. I'm not a huge fan of Lightning either. It's very expensive and all just ho-hum lagers. I appreciate that they're trying to do something different, but it's not like it's amazing stuff; Iron Fist is kind of like that too, just way too expensive. That's kind of a problem for me; a lot of these places I'd like to try are either in the sticks or all their stuff is way too expensive for super new breweries of no particular repute. I had to laugh when I visited Hess and was looking at their growlers and the glass itself was like 20 bucks. I couldn't believe a place operating out of a car repair garage had the stones to do that. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Mar 15, 2012 |
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Mar 15, 2012 07:41
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thesteelhellion posted:Wouldn't they lower the price instead of raising it if it doesn't sell? "Hey, I sold 50 Bud Lights for $3 and 25 Mission IPAs for $3. I would make the same amount of money if I doubled the price to the made the Mission IPAs to $6" 
Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 08:38 on Mar 16, 2012 |
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Mar 16, 2012 08:33
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The Dregs posted:Went on my first brewery tour today (if you could call it that) Red Hare in Marietta. You get 4 tickets just for walking through the door, which are good for 4 five oz. samples. We bought pint glass souvenirs and found out that if you used them, five oz. magically became 10 oz. Only one ticket could be used for the red IPA-I guess it is either expensive or really popular.
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Mar 18, 2012 02:11
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rage-saq posted:I did keep it in my fridge at 37f the whole time though, so its fairly favorable aging circumstances. I consider it a date study as to why all beers (especially IPAs) should be date stamped with when they were brewed in a way thats easy for consumers to read. I think it's fairly obvious why most Breweries don't use a brewed or bottled date vs. a "best by" date: because the bottling/brew date means nothing to retailers that just keep them on the shelves until they go away and/or 90% of the buyers have no real knowledge-base to understand when a beer is too old vs. old enough. Besides, the beer geek community itself is rapidly becoming unreasonable and refusing to drink beer that came out of the fermenter more than a week before drinking.
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Mar 18, 2012 09:04
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Kudosx posted:I live in OH and we have some of the lowest living costs in the country and the cheapest *good* beer I can find is $9/6 pack.
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Mar 21, 2012 19:26
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Kudosx posted:I've still never drank a barleywine. Is there any barleywine that there is a consensus is good fresh?
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Mar 23, 2012 05:33
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Docjowles posted:
I've never understood the appeal of the purity law in modern times, really. Good beer is good beer, and people are willing to pay for it.
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Mar 26, 2012 07:38
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wattershed posted:Terrible justification, but try to think of it like this... I might literally fight someone who stole half of my beer cellar and tried to pull off a "I figured it was okay," excuse. Where the gently caress does that work? I don't even steal my roommate's basic, replaceable food without asking. The fact he "knew some guys at FW" makes it even worse, since he is more likely to actually understand what he did.
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Mar 28, 2012 21:05
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FreelanceSocialist posted:In OH you should be able to track down some good stouts. Bell's Kalamazoo and Sierra Nevada's Stout are both excellent and usually widely-available. For imperial stouts, North Coast's Old Rasputin is the bottled heavywieght of the category, but also look for Victory's Storm King and Stone's Imperial Russian. If none of those do it for you then, nope, you don't like stouts.
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Apr 2, 2012 07:17
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Had some Hoptimum last night and it was not bad, but I think must have burned myself out on IPAs before IPA season even started. It wasn't really doing much for me. I'm not even sure why.
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Apr 8, 2012 19:09
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I think I just hate Barleywines. I've disliked all of the ones I've had.
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Apr 12, 2012 08:24
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Kudosx posted:Did you try a new one tonight, and still hated it? I'm curious what brought this up... I tried to siphon through the past few pages to see what you might be referencing, but the only thing I could think of is the FW discussion.
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Apr 12, 2012 21:14
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bartolimu posted:I cracked a new-batch Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme this evening. There's quite a lot of woody barrel character, the cherries come through pretty well, and there's moderate but not overwhelming sourness and funk. More time in the bottle will only do good things to it. If I had to find something to complain about, it would be the very low carbonation (cork came out without even a little hiss, no head, barely any fizzing of any kind), but that's not really a dealbreaker in this kind beer. This years, like most years, has pretty much no carbonation. It's a Cuvee de Tomme thing. When I had it this year it really had a strong tartness and cherry cordial-like flavor. I found it made an excellent dessert-beer and paired well with some dark chocolate.
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Apr 16, 2012 06:01
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Oh good Stone IRS is back, although it couldn't have killed them ironically release it tomorrow. (the actual tax deadline?) They've got a little blog up on all the  they went to to name it "Imperial Russian Stout," but I'm not *entirely* sure of why they would go to all that effort. I have a sneaking suspicion there isn't really a difference Imperial Stout and "Russian Imperial Stout"
Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 20:02 on Apr 16, 2012 |
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Apr 16, 2012 19:58
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wattershed posted:http://beerstreetjournal.com/goose-island-brewings-bourbon-county-to-be-year-round/ The distribution we get of Goose Island in Southern California is pretty pitiful. We have a distributor, but I rarely see anything other than a random bottle of Pepe Nero here and there. Sirotan posted:Has anyone ever had a particularly good and memorable collaboration beer? I'm reading about Founder's first collab, which is with Green Flash, and I'm filled with 'meh'. What few collab beers I can even remember having, none of them were particularly great. I've still got a bottle of a Jolly Pumpkin beer called Collababiere, which was with Nøgne Ø and Stone, and it's probably one of the worst JP beers I've had. Angry Grimace fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Apr 16, 2012 |
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Apr 16, 2012 22:31
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internet celebrity posted:I found some Stone IRS for 6.50/bomber at World Market and I grabbed 4 because that price is insane. Was it marked wrong or is this just a gem of a cheap beer? They make a lot of Stone IRS when they make it. It shouldn't be either rare or expensive.
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Apr 20, 2012 01:36
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RiggenBlaque posted:Yeah, I thought I was being crazy, but those Stone bombers aren't very expensive. I saw their smoked porter for $4.50 today and Ruination was $6.50. That being said, I still don't buy any of their beers just because I've never really had anything from them I thought was worth buying twice. I got 2 bombers of IRS and I think they were 6 or 7 bucks a piece. Hell, Sculpin bombers are like 8 bucks.
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Apr 21, 2012 23:14
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There are some really awesome events going down in San Diego during the World Beer Cup this year. I'm quite interested in the Founder's event they're doing at Hamilton's, but of course, I have plans after 8 that night AND it's probably going to be nuts to butts the whole night.  quote:Firkin Friday w/ Founders & Green Flash What's interesting about this one is that we don't actually have Founders in California, so pretty much all of that would be new stuff.
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Apr 26, 2012 23:52
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wattershed posted:From one of the new San Diego breweries coming this year, their stainless steel flip top growler:
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Apr 28, 2012 01:34
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wattershed posted:Ah, but I can take the Societe growler to my weekly softball game since it's not glass! When we play doubleheaders in our beer league, and sometimes there's an hour between games, it gives us plenty of time to get slightly lovely, but even then I have a hard time drinking terrible beer. Ex Umbris is pretty decent, Amplus is quite good, sorta reminds me of a cheaper, easier to get Pliny the Younger, although not quite as good.
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Apr 28, 2012 07:04
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Paul Proteus posted:Funky is 100% right. Most barrel-aged beers I've tried just taste like the brewer poured some liquor in the beer.
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May 1, 2012 18:39
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