Whatcha drinking?

Daehawk · Post by **Daehawk** » Sat Mar 02, 2019 4:36 pm

Im a simple man. I got this to help with my now severe kidney stone pain and the pain of missing my wife.

Alefroth · Post by **Alefroth** » Sun Mar 03, 2019 1:56 am

Seems like a solid choice.

Post by **ImLawBoy** » Mon Mar 04, 2019 2:06 am

mori wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2019 12:13 pm I just drank a similar beer.

But this was not aged on oak, only fermented on oak. So it kept its fresh hoppy goodness. I really enjoyed this one. Just a hint of vanilla from the oak gave it a orange cream soda flavor.

I had that not too long ago and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Post by **ImLawBoy** » Mon Mar 04, 2019 2:06 am

mori wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2019 12:13 pm I just drank a similar beer.

But this was not aged on oak, only fermented on oak. So it kept its fresh hoppy goodness. I really enjoyed this one. Just a hint of vanilla from the oak gave it a orange cream soda flavor.

I had that not too long ago and I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Jaymann · Post by **Jaymann** » Mon Mar 04, 2019 10:52 am

Two fisted enjoyment!

pr0ner · Post by **pr0ner** » Mon Mar 04, 2019 11:20 am

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2019 3:44 am Honestly, it's very drinkable. And one bomber, at 13%, which is certainly at Jeff V levels, got me well on my way.

A whole bomber at 13% should get anyone on their way. Glad to hear it was good beer!

In other news, I drank some Hopslam on Saturday and it made me very happy.

mori · Post by **mori** » Sat Mar 09, 2019 4:04 pm

A mead from B. Nektar Meadery named after the TV show. B. Nektar always produces interesting beverages and this is no different. Nice apple cider flavor compliments the base mead. I like it but not as much as their Tuco-Style Freakout which was an agave and lime mead.

pr0ner · Post by **pr0ner** » Tue Mar 19, 2019 4:48 pm

Found some!

disarm · Post by **disarm** » Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:05 pm

Start of spring means the latest release of one of my favorite stouts!

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Wed Mar 20, 2019 1:09 am

Speaking of stouts:

You'd think that sounds good. It checks all the St Patricks Day boxes. But this beer is trying too hard. Irish cream + whiskey casks do not play nice together in a beer...just too much going on, and not harmoniously.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Wed Mar 20, 2019 9:56 am

disarm wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:05 pm Start of spring means the latest release of one of my favorite stouts!

Saw that at my local Buc-ee's on Monday, thought about it, and passed it up. Your recommendation may make me go back for it.

disarm · Post by **disarm** » Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:42 am

I would definitely recommended going back, but depending on the store, you might be too late...once a year limited release, so people tend to snatch it up pretty quickly.

Alefroth · Post by **Alefroth** » Wed Mar 20, 2019 1:42 pm

Kraken wrote: ↑Wed Mar 20, 2019 1:09 am Speaking of stouts:

You'd think that sounds good. It checks all the St Patricks Day boxes. But this beer is trying too hard. Irish cream + whiskey casks do not play nice together in a beer...just too much going on, and not harmoniously.

That did sound good. I didn't think it literally meant Irish Cream though. Now it sounds gross.

Scuzz · Post by **Scuzz** » Wed Mar 20, 2019 1:45 pm

For awhile my local grocery carried several Founders beers but the only one I see there now is the session IPA.

Z-Corn · Post by **Z-Corn** » Wed Mar 20, 2019 3:59 pm

disarm wrote: ↑Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:42 am I would definitely recommended going back, but depending on the store, you might be too late...once a year limited release, so people tend to snatch it up pretty quickly.

Yep, people go crazy every year when it's released. You have to buy advance tickets for $72 and pickup is one weekend March 8th through 10th.

Your $72 gets you:

What does a ticket get me?
A single ticket includes (3) 4-packs of 12oz bottles AND (1) voucher for an 8oz pour of 2019 KBS to be used in either taprooms (Grand Rapids or Detroit) until end of business day on Sunday, March 31.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Wed Mar 20, 2019 5:10 pm

Z-Corn wrote: ↑Wed Mar 20, 2019 3:59 pm Your $72 gets you:

What does a ticket get me?
A single ticket includes (3) 4-packs of 12oz bottles AND (1) voucher for an 8oz pour of 2019 KBS to be used in either taprooms (Grand Rapids or Detroit) until end of business day on Sunday, March 31.

Sounds like a party. A 4-pack was $24 at Binny's, so it sounds like you get a free shot at the taproom (assuming you have plans to go there). If you don't need that much of it, just go a third-party outlet.

Last year, Meijer sent me an email when they planned to have it, but when I went to the store the day it was supposed to be released, there was no evidence any were ever put out. Binny's had a few pallets of it on the floor Saturday, though.

mori · Post by **mori** » Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:24 pm

re: KBS. I had a pour at a local bar this last weekend. It is good fresh. But let it sit around and let the coffee fade, it becomes very sweet and unbalanced. I passed on buying any from the store. It hangs around these parts now where it was almost impossible to get a few years ago. Before that it was relatively easy to get. A real ebb and flow of popularity.

disarm · Post by **disarm** » Thu Mar 21, 2019 12:13 am

mori wrote:re: KBS. I had a pour at a local bar this last weekend. It is good fresh. But let it sit around and let the coffee fade, it becomes very sweet and unbalanced.

I'll agree with this. The flavor definitely changes over time, with the sweet chocolate taking over for coffee. I've had it ranging from fresh draft, to a bottle that's aged for a year, and I definitely prefer the fresher flavor profile. I've also found that my enjoyment is temperature dependent as well. Drink it too cold, and you miss a lot of what makes it a great beer...chocolate and coffee give way to sweetness and booze. When it's less cold, you get a much more balanced beer that hides its 12% ABV pretty well.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Fri Mar 22, 2019 8:43 pm

Part of a 12 pack from Shiner that also contains Morello Dark Cherry black lager and Candied Pecan Porter.

EvilHomer3k · Post by **EvilHomer3k** » Fri Mar 22, 2019 9:26 pm

mori wrote: ↑Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:24 pm re: KBS. I had a pour at a local bar this last weekend. It is good fresh. But let it sit around and let the coffee fade, it becomes very sweet and unbalanced. I passed on buying any from the store. It hangs around these parts now where it was almost impossible to get a few years ago. Before that it was relatively easy to get. A real ebb and flow of popularity.

Part of the reason it's easier to get is that so many other breweries are doing the imperial coffee chocolate barrel aged stout. Many of them at least as good as Founders. Hopslam is no different lots of places doing very similar beer so it's not hard to find any more (in season anyway).

My local grocery store, on top of having both hopslam and KBS found a couple of 4 packs of King Sue from Toppling Goliath. I got some when it first came out this year and they must have had some stashed away somewhere because they've been out for a long time. Squee!

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Fri Mar 22, 2019 9:38 pm

Bought this instead of the zinfandel accidentally. It's still good. I like cabs.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Fri Mar 22, 2019 10:02 pm

Moving on...

disarm · Post by **disarm** » Fri Mar 22, 2019 10:22 pm

Tonight...another great IPA from The Alchemist

Rumpy · Post by **Rumpy** » Sat Mar 23, 2019 12:54 am

disarm wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:05 pm Start of spring means the latest release of one of my favorite stouts!

Speaking of Founders, I have a CBS I've yet to try. They're dang expensive here at $8 a small bottle. I think my favourite Founders is the Backwoods Bastard.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sat Mar 23, 2019 1:22 am

Rumpy wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2019 12:54 am
disarm wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:05 pm Start of spring means the latest release of one of my favorite stouts!
Speaking of Founders, I have a CBS I've yet to try. They're dang expensive here at $8 a small bottle. I think my favourite Founders is the Backwoods Bastard.

I have a Backwoods Bastard T-shirt. It looks like dbt1949.

mori · Post by **mori** » Sat Mar 23, 2019 11:04 am

Rumpy wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2019 12:54 am
disarm wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:05 pm Start of spring means the latest release of one of my favorite stouts!
Speaking of Founders, I have a CBS I've yet to try. They're dang expensive here at $8 a small bottle. I think my favourite Founders is the Backwoods Bastard.

Backwoods Bastard is my favorite Founders beer as well. CBS is very overrated IMHO.

mori · Post by **mori** » Sat Mar 23, 2019 11:07 am

EvilHomer3k wrote: ↑Fri Mar 22, 2019 9:26 pm
mori wrote: ↑Wed Mar 20, 2019 10:24 pm re: KBS. I had a pour at a local bar this last weekend. It is good fresh. But let it sit around and let the coffee fade, it becomes very sweet and unbalanced. I passed on buying any from the store. It hangs around these parts now where it was almost impossible to get a few years ago. Before that it was relatively easy to get. A real ebb and flow of popularity.
Part of the reason it's easier to get is that so many other breweries are doing the imperial coffee chocolate barrel aged stout. Many of them at least as good as Founders. Hopslam is no different lots of places doing very similar beer so it's not hard to find any more (in season anyway).

My local grocery store, on top of having both hopslam and KBS found a couple of 4 packs of King Sue from Toppling Goliath. I got some when it first came out this year and they must have had some stashed away somewhere because they've been out for a long time. Squee!

I think there was a fresh batch of King Sue released a couple weeks ago. Stores around here at it back on the shelves recently.

Rumpy · Post by **Rumpy** » Sat Mar 23, 2019 1:26 pm

Kraken wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2019 1:22 am
Rumpy wrote: ↑Sat Mar 23, 2019 12:54 am
disarm wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:05 pm Start of spring means the latest release of one of my favorite stouts!
Speaking of Founders, I have a CBS I've yet to try. They're dang expensive here at $8 a small bottle. I think my favourite Founders is the Backwoods Bastard.
I have a Backwoods Bastard T-shirt. It looks like dbt1949.

Heh, he does bear a resemblence. Maybe he should offer to become their official spokesman

disarm · Post by **disarm** » Sat Mar 23, 2019 1:54 pm

Rumpy wrote:
disarm wrote: ↑Tue Mar 19, 2019 11:05 pm Start of spring means the latest release of one of my favorite stouts!
Speaking of Founders, I have a CBS I've yet to try. They're dang expensive here at $8 a small bottle. I think my favourite Founders is the Backwoods Bastard.

I had CBS on draft a couple weeks ago. It seemed like a sweeter version of KBS to me...solid, but not nearly as good as the KBS from which it's derived. I thought the sweet was just a little too much.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Mar 24, 2019 1:41 am

How could anyone not buy that? Stranger Than Fiction is a pretty good porter, but it doesn't knock Mayflower off its perch.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Mon Mar 25, 2019 4:51 pm

Octosloth? Slothopus? Drazzil? Which is it, man?!

em2nought · Post by **em2nought** » Sat Mar 30, 2019 5:32 pm

So in addition to PG Tips for awesome tea and Bigelow Lemon Ginger(my water substitute), I'm thinking about throwing a cheap Argentinean high altitude Malbec https://www.reversewinesnob.com/norton-coleccion-malbec into the mix. Supposedly something about needing no pesticides at altitudes and extreme UV exposure at altitude leading to 10x the antioxidants in the grapes.

Yada, yada, yada, California wines all having traces of "Round Up" in them.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Fri Apr 05, 2019 10:27 pm

oct.co: What Happens When Beer Drinkers Don’t Respect the Past?

Rumpy · Post by **Rumpy** » Sat Apr 06, 2019 5:19 pm

Interesting article. As a Canadian in Ontario, the experience has been decidedly different. For a long as I can remember, distribution was controlled by the government. Didn't matter where you went to eat, big or small, you'd always have either one of two choices; either Labatt brand or Molson brand beers. Annoying for when you want something different. I was always amazed when I'd take trips to Vermont and see how restauraunts would support craft breweries. It was almost like a different world. So, in the province we have our liquor store and a beer store. The beer store, controlled by Molson, Labatt, AnnBev and (Sanpo?), a bit like a mainstream store that would be dominated by beers from these big juggernauts. The liquor store which carries wine, beer and hard liquor would often have more of an offbeat collection, either by import or from other provinces. If you were a craft brewer, and there were few at one point, it was hard to get shelf space in the store and their rules made it only harder by being unfriendly to craft brewers. Then something changed within the 10 years or so, and the province saw an explosion of craft brewers and the government was forced to change the rules for the liquor store to make it easier on craft breweries to be featured, and with that also came the distribution of craft beers to restauraunts. So, for someone like me, whenever I hear about the juggernauts, I don't really have sympathy for them, especially when they keep buying up craft breweries and then try to pretend they're still independent. It's not that I don't have respect for the elders, but that when that's all you've had for so long, you want to see so much more, and want to see the variety celebrated. In Ontario, we still lag behind to the point that celebrated beers, sometimes even from south of the border, appear on our shelves years after the hype for them has died down.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sat Apr 06, 2019 9:07 pm

The craft beer industry is a good argument for capitalism...but not so unfettered that all competitors can be assimilated. When I came of age the best choices were Pabst and Stroh's. Snobs brought Coors back from out west. Sam Adams came as a revelation. If Miller-Coors InBev was Facebook, we never would have tasted it.

Best beer name at today's spring tasting: Weird & Gilly. Please tell me you get the reference.

Spoiler:

If you still don't get it, you are dead to me. (Unfortunately, the name was attached to a mediocre beer that I did not buy.)

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Sun Apr 07, 2019 10:18 am

Before Sam Adams went national and started the American beer revolution, if you wanted something different in a beer, you needed to embrace imports. In the early 80's, Whatney's Red Barrel was my favorite and had decent distribution. My local watering hole claimed the "world's largest beer selection" -- more than 500 on any given day with a churn of 20-30 per week. There was always something new to try. When the microbrew movement started to rise, that place tried their own with mixed results -- but it became so pervasive that it was merely a sidestep to domestic beer goodness and that amplified the downside of imports that spend months in the cargo hold of a ship.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Apr 07, 2019 11:28 am

One of my high school friends was a Danish exchange student who turned us all on to Tuborg. It wasn't especially good (competed with Heineken, IIRC), but...the Golden Beer of Danish Kings was expensive enough to have some snob appeal.

That's another huge, and largely unremarked, change in the industry: Beer is so local now that at yesterday's tasting I only half-jokingly called Mayflower, a beer from Plymouth, an import. With so many excellent homegrown craft options, I can't imagine that very many people still buy imports from Europe or Asia. Back in the day I used to like Molson Brador and Moosehead (although the latter was often skunked by the curse of the green bottle.)

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Sun Apr 07, 2019 12:46 pm

I remember Tuborg being readily available in my mid-teens and a fixture at most of our parties. We used to smuggle it into Cubs games. Foreign crap macro-brands were no better than the domestic ones back in the day.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Sun Apr 07, 2019 4:02 pm

First up on National Beer Day home indulgence is Party Wolf from Greenbush Brewing Co., Sawyer, MI. My favorite Michigan brewery delivers another winner - good thing too since I invested in a 6 pack. Very smooth, rich flavor reminiscent of a DIPA, but at 7.5% ABV, a much lower booze factor. Still, it's better than my beloved 6.9% Star Chicken Shotgun from the same brewer, and at $9/6, I'm not complaining.

Jeff V · Post by **Jeff V** » Sun Apr 07, 2019 5:10 pm

Second up: 400 Divine Rabbits Ale w/Agave Nectar by Greenbush Brewery. Didn't like this quite as much as Party Wolf, probably because I'm dealing with a legal issue and at only 6.3% ABV it's not keeping up with my anger and frustration. Flavor is good though and it'd be a good match with Mexican food.