this place was kind of boring. a ton of beer but nothing i really couldn't get anywhere else. it seemed like a chain version of a beer geek place.

i've been digging on the cigar city jai alai ipa lately

it's a real step up from the ithaca flower power i was drinking and honestly, really refreshing because it's not super-hopped. more of a malty balance to it and it's really crisp. it's from tampa, if you see it i would highly recommend drinking some

wait why would you do that

Ol Larry. Great name for a beer, even if its average.

desperately trying to get my annual beer budget down to under $3k or whatever godawful figure it currently is. Cans, cheap, not offensive tasting. Shrug. Once in awhile.

Rolling Rock is up there with IC for me in terms of Beers I Never Want To Taste Again.

yeah me too, can't do rolling rock. although in a similar vein, the bar where I was watching the bulls game had $1 Carling Black Label cans, and I hadn't had one in a long time so I had a dozen or so.

See Carling Black Label, from what I remember, was metallic and shitty as hell. These Rolling Rocks cans taste like, almost ... nothing. Certainly nothing offensive. It's like the faint, whispy suggestion of "beer" born along in a body of clean water. Even high life has more flavor than this. I remember having RR bottles in college once in awhile and not really liking or hating them, but I swear this is even more watery than I thought it would be. Like I said, once in awhile it's nice to step back. It feels wierd to absolutely CHUG 3 beers in a row, relatively quickly (hour and a half), and feel nothing.

I'm going Derris tonight. I texted him and Kyle, and since Kyle only responded by asking what brewery this Grand Cru was from, I went with it over a Hennepin Trippel.

Hmmmmmm. Thanks for the fucking warning, CAPTAIN! It's a "sour style" beer, which I had no idea. It's very very acidic and not at all what I was expecting, but also not bad.

I'm going to plug my earphones in and listen to as much of this Top 70 Dylan songs playlist I made as possible.

Updates to come.

This thing is pretty interesting. I wish someone could have split this with me, but it's got some character.

It's very dark, but light/fizzy like a Saison. I'm digging this. It's actually working fine as an after dinner drink. Love the beer snifter.

The Beer Advocate page says that is Flanders Red Ale, and that La Folie from New Belgium/Lips of Faith is a similar style beer.
The Lips of Faith people had some private tapping party in Omaha this week featuring the Abbey Grand Cru, Super Cru and some mystery beer.
How much did that bottle set you back?

Truth, because I was allowed to drink many Beck's NA's out of the bottle on the boat since the risk of them suddenly grabbing hold of me and birthing a "Enough talk, it's smashin' time" session was relatively low. To wit, I had to drive the boat home that day because Captain Derris was "incapacitated"

I purchased a 750ml bottle of Lakefront Rendezvous Bier de garde to enjoy sometime this week, as well as a mix and match six pack of Summer Beers. I'm hoping I don't crack open the Bier de garde after I return home from a night of drinking, since that would be a big mistake.

But whence buying in bulk, and looking for a good beer in a can, there was, and remains a paltry selection. And I was roundly criticized for bringing along Dale's even though 14 Bud Lights usually produced a headache and causes me to have to jump into the creepy 2000 foot depths more than to my liking.

I've been arguing with my daughter for 3 hours about potty-training issues and would kill a man for just 2 sweet drops of Dales right now.

I have another Double to add to my list. This one is the Two Jokers Double Wit from Boulevard.
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/423/49700

Tried Boddington's over the weekend. I've been curious for a while, and now that curiosity was satisfied.
There was a pleasant creaminess that helped to cover up a distinct lack of any flavor, whatsoever. Then, as the beer warmed up in the glass, it opened up into something damn near undrinkable.

D

Well damn.


All I know about anything called "Grand Cru" is that it's a beer/wine/etc compiled of multiple individual good varieties of something. Ie, it's not a particular style, it just means "high quality mashup." The Grand Cru I had in the fridge was from Sierra Nevada, and was made from 3 of their existing beers.

Anything from Flanders tends to stand a good chance of being a sour, too. Flemmish Sour Ale sticks out in my head. I don't really dig the sour stuff. Sorry G.

Totally in the cards back in your drinkin' days.

Did you have a pub draft can? The tallboy...? If so, then that was as good as it gets, pretty much. It is a bland beer, but not unpleasant when it's cold.

definitely bland, but sometimes that creamy texture is what I'm looking for, especially if I've been drinking a lot of intensely flavored beers leading up to it.

Yeah, it was the tallboy -- the one with the little cartridge in it. And yeah, while it was cold, it was okay... but nothing more than okay.

That's about right. Stu is right too, the creamy flavor is what makes it somewhat interesting. Once in awhile I kinda crave one - that and a Wexford, also in the pub draft can. Boddington's, Wexford, and Belhaven St Andrews are some smooth, smooth shit. Sometimes I wanna be romanced.

Recents


Sierra Nevada - Grand Cru

Again, the Grand Cru idea is to take some of your good individual products and mix them up into some sort of wonderful blend, I guess. This one's made from Oak-Aged Bigfoot, Celebration Ale, and their Pale Ale. I've liked others in this big series from SN, but this one was just ok. The alcohol was high, the taste was all over the board, and the beer didn't land anywhere exciting. I could barely taste any oak, there were abundant hops of course, and the malt was just sorta... all over the place. I can't describe it any better than that. It was just ok. The sum was less than the parts. B


Nikenjayamochi Kadoya Honten - Stout

I could not pass this up. I'd been in a little bit of a rut, and while waiting to see an apartment in the South End for rent (it rented out while we were waiting to meet the agent... no dice), we were killing time in Formaggio Kitchen, which stocks a smallish selection of crazy-good shit that few other people have. I can ALWAYS find something in there I haven't tried, and that looks good. I haven't had much japanese beer, and what I've had was rice-y, thin, and kinda boring. So finding a stout made by a former Soy Sauce fermenter sounded like it would be different. In that regard, it fit the bill. This didn't taste like anyone else's stout, that's for sure. It was very, very dry, pitch black, had a huge carbon-dioxide-y head (big bubbles vs nitrogen/tap little bubbles), and was not too thick on the tongue. It was very lightly hopped, and it tasted like it had maybe just one kind/roast of malt - I donno, maybe it didn't, but it wasn't anywhere near as full and complex as the big crazies over here are, which always have a lot of malt types in the mash. There was a faint fruit aroma to it, like plums, and it was as understated / delicate as a decent stout could probably be. It wasn't worth $11 for a 16.9 oz bottle, but it did break up the monotony. B+

I braved a Thunderstorm to try the Lips of Faith Super Cru tonight.I think it was worth the trip, but not overly impressive. The Asian Pear added to the mix and 10% ABV make it worthwhile, but the 2011 Sierra Nevada Summerfest was more impressive.

Lips of Faith Grand Cru:
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/19 ... gh&start=0

Sierra Nevada Summerfest
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/140/3558