Real Beer Advocates, Unite............

[Scourge]

I tried Ayinger Weizen-bock which was also excellent.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/39/37192

I need to find some of this.

[bitWISE]

Never....NEVER....order a beer of the type 'gueze' or at least avoid 3 Fonteinen Gueze. Wow. Everyone at the table undoubtedly ranked it the worst beer they ever tried. Somehow it smelled even worst than it tasted too. The way they make a gueze is to take a 1 year old lambic and mix it with a 2/3 year old lambic and then preferment the whole thing for another year in the bottle. It was a bit like drinking champaign out of a dumpster of rotting fruit/vegetables behind a five-star restaurant.

Bells Kalamazoo Stout and Ithaca Nut Brown Ale were both decent and unremarkable.

[MKJ]

"gueze"

"champaign"

[Whiskey 7]

My mate likes this stuff. I bought some to share with him but he didn't show, now all mine



....not a bad drop at all

[Ryoki]

3 Fonteinen Gueze.

Geuze, goddamnit! Don't be messing with my language, you make it sound like a french word

[MKJ]

ironically, he made a french word look like an english word

[werldhed]

I tried a couple new brews on different occasions recently...

Last week I traveled up to northern MN to brew some beer with my father-in-law and some of his buddies. One guy is a retired university prof that set up a brewery in his basement and now teaches homebrewing in the community education program.
Our goal was to make a kölsch using two different recipes. It'll be a couple weeks before it's done, and I don't know when I'll be up north again to try it out, but I expect that it will turn out...

Anyway, brewerman had a lot of random homemade beers that we were trying out. Some were really good, some not so much. He had put two IPA-like beers in kegs, and invited us to "tap that shit." (I may be paraphrasing that quote) He likes ultra-hoppy beer, so one of the IPAs was excessively hopped, but the other was unremarkable. I found my preference was to mix the two together to make a pretty good drink.

None of that matters to any of you, of course. But throughout the afternoon, I also had a Goose Island Nut Brown Ale which was fantastic. I think they are becoming one of my favorite breweries. I know some other folks here like their stuff.


This past Friday, I went out to lunch with some coworkers and had Surly Cynic. It was underwhelming. Anyone else had any of their stuff? Everyone around here absolutely raves about all of Surly's beer, but I find them overrated.

That said, the Cynic was not as bad as the Abita Turbodog Brown Ale I had next. Flat, flavorless, no personality whatsoever. I like brown ales, but this was just shit.

So this weekend I was craving some really good beer, that I knew wouldn't let me down... and I uncorked the Chimay Gran Reserve I've had in the cellar for the last year or so. Fabulous.

[bitWISE]

3 Fonteinen Gueze.

Geuze, goddamnit! Don't be messing with my language, you make it sound like a french word

Sorry. That's how they misspelled it in the database of beers I've had.

[Ryoki]

You're forgiven my friend, just don't let it happen again.

[bitWISE]

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/637/2430

Amazing. Tastes like a smooth quadrupel but with a slight hoppy bite. Pretty light too.

[l0g1c]

Had one of these lately. A Russian Imperial Stout brewed by Norwegians It was quite tasty.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/15711/37298

HaandBryggeriet - Dark Force

[werldhed]

Unibroue Trois Pistoles
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/22/30

Went out for a bite to eat with my father-in-law and had one of these. Very good. Had a lot of heavy dried or stewed fruit flavors (like fruit soup if anyone knows what that is) mixed with the smells and tastes of a bbq. Great stuff.

The dad-in-law ordered all three of the bar's sampler flights, which was a total of 10 beers. I'm not going to bother naming them all. My wife drank two of the three belgium samples before I could even try them.

Sister-in-law got a 32 oz glass of Grain Belt Premium. The glass was about a foot tall. Fucking


Later, we went to a Twins game and I had a a Summit EPA. Always a great standard. Shitty game, though.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

All of Unibroue's beers are excellent.

[^misantropia^]

Brigand. Presumably the corniest label ever but tastes great. At 9% it's pretty head strong, three is too much (as I found out =).

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/212/668

[Zyte]

^never heard of it. And yeah that label!! Sippin on a Westmalle double myself:

[menkent]

Mendocino "White Hawk Select IPA" - was pretty good, if you like hoppy IPAs. Maybe not as good as Stone, but less bitter than the Dogfish 60min can be... though I'd have to try a few head to head for a real ranking.

[werldhed]

That Brigand label is awesome.


Had a Goose Island Stockyard Oatmeal Stout.
It was the first thing I tasted after 6 days in the Boundary Waters wilderness. Man, it was good. I haven't had a bad Goose Island brew yet.
After tasting it, I said, "Wow, there's a lot of chocolate and coffee taste in that."

Then I read the label and it said the same thing. I'm such a genius.



I also had an IPA and a rye ale at the Boathouse brewpub in Ely, MN. They weren't bad, but forgettable.

[Scourge]

Drinking some Shiner Frost. I've had better, but it goes down well and is a pretty decent lager. I like some of their other offers better.

[menkent]

i'm just snobbish enough that i refuse to drink that on grounds of a stupid umlaut. for a brewery that prides itself on its texas-german heritage that's pretty lame.

[Big Kahuna Burger]

Have you guys aged any of your beer? I drank a 120 minute DFH IPA that was aged for 2 years and it was seriously mindblowing. Like, made a non-aged 120 minute look like a piece of shit. I don't know if I have the patience to age my beer.

But check out:
Lagunitas Hop Stoopid (CA)
Ale Asylum Mercy (WI)
Ale Asylum Hopalicious (WI)

Anyone here ever have Pliny the Elder? I need to find it.

[morguen87]

i used to live about 30 mins from lagunitas brewing company...iirc they got busted for handing out and smoking weed during their tastings. It's decent, most of it is too hoppy/citrusy - I remember the hop stoopid almost tasting fruity, but it's all got pretty high alcohol content. Honestly lagunitas has turned into the go to brand for hipsters when they're not ironically drinking pbr. Maybe living so close to the brewing company before and now constantly having to hear "have you heard of lagunitas?" like one sip is gonna make my mind explode just has me jaded.

edit: lol sorry for the rant. To contribute, the best beer I ever had was at a local bar, Russian River Brewing Co. in Santa Rosa, California (where I used to live, 20-30 mins from where Lagunitas is made). It's called Russian River Consecration, it's a sour ale that they make it old wine barrels. If you've never tried sour ale before though, be warned it's mostly a love or a hate thing. Unfortunately I don't know of any place to buy it other than that particular bar, out of curiosity just now I looked it up online and according to this site it's #2 sour ale in the world.
http://www.ratebeer.com/Ratings/TopBeer ... StyleID=52

edit 2: here are the distributors: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/distribution/94349/

[morguen87]

...Anyone here ever have Pliny the Elder? I need to find it.

lol holy shit, my mind kinda went blank after I read the hop stoopid so I just finished reading your post now. They brew this beer in the same exact little local bar I mentioned in the above post. Small world.
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/863
I don't know of anywhere else to buy it unfortunately. lol, I lived 10 minutes away from there, I worked only 2 minutes away, I'm starting to miss it.

[RLucky82]

im 7 pages late to the game but this is some kick ass stuff ^^^


and this is my all time favorite!
[lvlshot]http://www.greatlakesbrewing.com/media/beer_profiles/Grassroots_BottleGlass%20copy.jpg[/lvlshot]

[Big Kahuna Burger]

Toured Sam Adams and Harpoon this weekend.

[lvlshot]http://i.imgur.com/TPDea.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]http://i.imgur.com/6DZ76.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]http://i.imgur.com/hBJqm.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]http://i.imgur.com/kOKET.jpg[/lvlshot]

[lvlshot]http://i.imgur.com/mHjlL.jpg[/lvlshot]

[werldhed]

Went to a bar with my wife's coworkers last night. Happy Hour was 1/2 off all drinks, so I had a manhattan. Went to order a beer after that, but the bitchy waitress wouldn't let me get in on the special because it was 7:02 and Happy Hour ended at 7:00.

Instead, after 7:00, the special was 1/2 priced pitchers of Miller Lite. Jesus CHRIST that shit is awful.