Oak Aged Bretta - I was surprised how little oak it had. There's some, but it was very similar to the standard version. They had a light touch with it.

I'm gonna try it tonight and since I had no self control and drank that Heady Topper awhile ago I'm going to match it up with a Sixpoint Resin. A bit higher abv though.

Well done Cap. Sounds like an awesome trip.

What did you think of the Logsdon stuff?

I'm planning on going to a double tapping party for the New Belgium Lips of Faith Series tomorrow. These are the two beers they are tapping tomorrow:

Pluot: Ale brewed with Pluot Juice. "Hook up a plum with an apricot and they’ll make you a pluot. This sweet hybrid fruit is as refreshing as it is strange, and it’s the perfect starting point for our new Lips of Faith beer. Pluot Ale pours a bright, light golden. The aroma is full of fruit tones and distinct esters from blending the funky brettanomyces and our house Belgian ale yeast. The flavor carries the same weight, adding a spicy, vinous subtlety to stand up against the malt backbone. To build a beer around this worldly fruit is purely Belgian in imagination. Pour some Pluot and enjoy!"

Paardebloem-: Ale brewed with Peach Juice, grains of paradise and dandelion greens that is blended with wood aged beers. "Using dandelion greens to bitter a Belgian-style ale blossomed from our brewers collaborating with Red Rock Brewing. These being our sixth interpretation together since 2008, expect a wonderfully complex ale fermented with wild Belgian yeast and blended with just a touch of wood-aged beer. Bitterness imparted from dandelion greens and grains of paradise will have you blowing wishes for sips."

I was really impressed by the Paardebloem, but the Pluot was merely a refreshing and fruity summer ale on a muggy evening.
The highlight of my evening clearly had to be the Hofstetten Kubelbier I had shortly afterward, which is decent Kellerbier.

Dandelion greens... That shit comes in my produce share some weeks, and I'm always like "the fucking yard and the park are full of that, with the fucksake did you grow it. Also it is bitter and awful, so like 2x." But you say it was good?

Yeah, they used it like hops as a bittering agent. The beer is a Belgian Golden Strong by classification.

Here's the official New Belgium description and stats on the beer:
http://www.newbelgium.com/beer/detail.a ... a945dc0ae8

i had some Sun King Osiris while I was in Indianapolis, that shit was GOOD. well the first four were, the 5th might have been overdoing it.

also just hit Devil's Backbone and Blue Mountain Brewery up here on the Blue ridge Trail:
Blue Mountian was hyping their sour beer while I was there, but it paled in comparison to the scenery (both mountains and sundresses). Lovely outdoor drinking area, and it's around 10 degrees cooler there than it was here, so all in all it was a pleasant journey.

10 degrees cooler sounds nice no matter the scenery.

Getting to be that time, yeah. Starting to hit 80 here. So happy not to have GA weather right now.

Whatever Masshole. Enjoy the pollen.

Some recents:



Boulevard Smokestack Series - Saison Brett

As some have mentioned here, this probably would've been a tad better with aging. As it is, it's merely good. Nice and light touch that is perfect for a summer night. Not world class but pretty well done. I'd buy it all the time if they produced it year round and could get it to about $8-$9.



Stift Engelszell - Gregorious

Belgian Strong Dark Ale. The most recent, and 8th monastery, to receive the official "Trappist Beer' designation. It is the only one in Austria and received it's official title in May of last year. Still very small (53,000 gal) vs somebody like La Trappe (3.8 million gallons) but it was pretty good. For me, it still fell short of St. Bernardus and Rochefort. It's somewhere in line with Westmalle's flavor IMO which I'm not a huge fan of. The others just seem to be much more complex and rich. Still, pretty cool to get to try one.

Also:



Monday Night Brewing - Blind Pirate

I'm really really pulling for these guys but, outside of their Scotch Ale which is solid, they're stuff has just been mostly okay with me.

This wasn't much different. It's a double IPA at 8.2% but very much an "east coast" version. Very subtle and balanced but don't go in with expectations of a West Coast piney hop bomb (which I favor). It's much more toned down and malty. I suppose I should give it some props because the booze was very well hidden.

Still, I just want.......more from these guys I guess.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/1 ... de=2580653

If this list was posted already, I apologize.
It is the Top 50 craft beers for 2013 according to Zymurgy.
I'm a little disappointed by it. I don't disagree with most of the inclusions, but I'd like to see a little more diversity.
I think Sierra Nevada makes some remarkable products, but I'm not sure that either them or Stone deserve to have two beers ranked in the top 10/11, nor does Bells for that matter. I would have liked to see a broader range of breweries included, especially since there are a lot of small breweries that continue to take home more than one GABF gold medals that should be recognized by Zymurgy in this type of list.

Sierra Pale doesn't belong that high on the list, no. Ruthless Rye I agree with and Celebration is also fantastic, so as long as you aren't handicapping them BECAUSE of their ubiquity then those aren't crazily out of place where they are listed. Sierra Pale is a great beer, so I would've had it here but not above Heady Topper. That's just stupid. Very happy to see Two Hearted at #2 and Pliny at #1, those were very good choices for those spots on this kind of list - a list of things that are available all year in more than just one tiny hidden brewpub. Pliny and Heady and Sculpin can be hard to find, but it can be done.

You can't really interpret that zymurgy list as being ranked in the way that a curated list is. Their methodology was simply to ask their readers what their favorite beer is and then rank them according to frequency of choice. It's a lowest common denominator method that rewards the biggest cult beers that are actually not that hard to find and bigger brewers with strong distribution, hence all the Sierra Nevada beers and Pliny the Elder appearing higher than Pliny the Younger. No one is really saying #3 is better than #39, just that it is more popular which may be an effect of supply as much as relative quality.

Not really a very interesting list unless you were curious about what beers are most commonly drank by homebrewers (who may or may not be craft beer fans).

allagash white should be on that list.

A coworker of my wife's brought her husband to the annual company picnic dealy at the boss's beach house on the south coast last year. He mentioned that they homebrew, so we began talking about beer and I was surprised to hear that they drink very regular sixpacky stuff, and brew very plain styles, all exclusively with extract. So yeah, some homebrewers are wierdly unengaged with the high end of the market.

Case in point. This was given to me as a Christmas present:



I think it actually came with a recipe for "American Light Ale".

I'd imagine that there are a lot too that have been homebrewing for a long time and mostly drink their own beer and make no attempt to stay on top of the gazillion new craft breweries and all their special releases even if they do have generally good taste.

This. I've heard from my neighbor that we always mention who is big into brewing that our "local" (it's in the next town over) homebrew store does a booming business with people just like the ones you are describing.

I guess it would be similar to growing your own vegetables or whatever.

I got this issue of Zymurgy in the mail today, and each AHA member who took part in the poll was allowed to pick 20 beers. Pliny the Elder has won this poll five years in a row, and Two Hearted tends to finish second. The article sort of hints that it is individuals who actively seek out most of the beers listed in beer trades that are taking part in this sort of exercise, and I'm sure that a lot of them attend that GABF every year and flock to these breweries' booths when they go there.
I sort of wonder how much of it is picking the expected winners and usual suspects, and what would happen if most of these beers were readily available in most markets for regular consumption.
For what it is worth, most of the home brewers I know brew the same beers on a regular basis and many of them are clones of these beers. They also tend to brew for events and contests, and to share with other people. They might drink their own beer to rewind or while they are working on something at home, but they all tend to use untappd and research beers on Beer Advocate/ ratebeer no matter what age they are. Most of them actively seek out or travel to get these beers whenever possible, and only drink at local breweries when they are getting a good deal.
Keep in mind,The average age of the homebrewers/beer judges I know has to be near 50 and most of these people have been brewing for a decade or more, but I might be atypical too since I am actively involved in AHA endeavors.

I got a bottle of this benno Trappist stuff in my fridge, will likely drink it when the game gets out of hand tonight

i picked this up a week or so ago. it's pretty excellent and tastes just like a green flash ipa, which is good because it's about a dollar or two less and you get 2 more beers.

Of course you did. Very cool, never heard of it.