Picked up a sixer of cans of Wesbrook's Gose over the weekend. This was my first experience with a Gose and I would describe the taste as "a sour beer mixed with seawater". I quite enjoyed the one I had though I'm not sure its something I could sit around and knock back several of.

Not my picture:

I just typed up a much longer post with pictures about a trip to a couple of local breweries but i can't get it to post because of "too few characters"

so I'll summarize

Strand Brewing Company = really good

Monkish Brewing = not bad

Apparently the pics were the problems so w/o pics:

We got fogged in on a trip to the beach this weekend and decided to pull an audible and visit a couple of nearby breweries instead.

The first stop was at Monkish Brewing, a 1.5 year old craft brewery which specializes in Belgian beer styles

Fem G and I split a sampler of 4 oz tasters of:

CRUX || Belgian-style single ale spiced with elderflowers || 5.4% ABV

I liked this one fine enough but didn't find it very remarkable. I'm not sure I really had enough of it to fairly judge it. Susie liked it more than most of the others so I let her have most of it.

MORIA || Black Belgianish single with sweet orange peels || 5.0% ABV

Didn't really get much of the orange peel but there was some nice roasty cocoa notes in the base beer. I liked it but didn't love it.

FLORAISON || "dry-flowered" saison w/ hibiscus & chamomile || 6.4% ABV

I love Saisons but this one seemed a little boring at least at first. I'm used to a bright and refreshing quality to Saisons that this one seemed to lack. I started to grow on me toward the end though. The floral notes were pretty subtle and probably would have shown better in a larger pour.

SEME DELLA VITA || Belgian Tripel w/ pistacho & vanilla || 9.8% ABV
Probably the best of the four or at least showed the best in a 4 oz sample. I didn't really love this one either.
Overall, everything was at least decent but nothing really stood out. I don't think I'm really in a hurry to go back or seek out more of their beers. That said, they have a decent reputation, and judging a brewery on one set of sampler pours is probably akin to judging an album on one listen. They were pretty subtle beers and the floraison especially would have probably benefited from having a full glass of it.

Next and last stop was Strand Brewing Company

These guys have been around about 4 years, have been bottling longer (Monkish just started bottling and only bottle 1 of the beers), and have distribution in SF and SD as well as LA.

Still, I'd only had one of their beers, a Berliner Weiss, which I think is outstanding. They didn't offer samplers but were very nice and gave us about 4 oz pours of whatever we wanted to try for free. I didn't feel right trying too many that way but we did try:

Atticus IPA

I'm not a big IPA fan but I was pretty impressed. Not a hop bomb at all or overly bitter, just a nice refreshing beer with nice citrus, pine and floral notes. This is easily one of the better local IPAs I've had.

Batch 100 Stout

Another winner. Again, not trying to make the most powerful beer (but it's plenty strong at 8.6% -- just not that high for a stout)...but it's very flavorful with rich roasted malts with subtle hints of chocolate, coffee and vanilla. It's not a coffee beer though. Apparently they make a coffee version but had run out of it.

Beach House Amber Ale

Probably my least favorite beer but it was still above average. Fem G liked it more than I did and he poured her another half glass for free.

Un-named Belgian Wit Beer

I really liked this one and ended up buying a full glass of it. I don't remember what he said they flavored it with and can't find any info on it online. I think it was something they were experimenting with rather than it being an official offering. It was damn good though.

I mentioned to him that I really liked their Berliner Weiss (which is now out of season) and he went upstairs and found in their office a bottle of their Berliner Weiss infused with cherry blossom which I bought but haven't tried yet. These guys are probably my new favorite local brewery. I doubt anyone who reads this thread is in their distribution area but if you get a chance to try their beers, do it.

Shit that sounds cool. VERY nice of him to grab that cherry'd sour for you.

Grassroots/Anchorage Artic Saison



(Stolen image)

I'll pretty much try any saison brett and generally have favorable feelings for the Anchorage beers I've had in the past so I picked one of these up a month or so ago and just got around to drinking it last night. I'd never heard of Grassroots Brewing company before but found out today that they are the collaboration label of Hill Farmstead that Squirg raves about, and this beer is a collaboration between Shaun Hill and the brewer at Anchorage who apparently is originally from and/or has family in VT. If I'd known that, it would have never lasted in the refrigerator for that long.

As far as the beer goes, it was very good. Without a doubt, I still prefer Logsdon Seizon Bretta but that's hardly a criticism. This was certainly much better than Boulevard's Saison Brett and roughly on par with the great saisons from Oklahoma's Prairie Artisan Ales. I'd definitely recommend it and buy more.

Having this also reinforced my opinion from the weekend that Monkish's Floraison was respectable but nothing all that special.

No pics yet but the Heady Topper eagle has landed.

Courtesy of Squirg.

Speaking of the Alchamist:



And Prohibition Pig is going to start brewing a few of their own, as well.

Southern Vermont really has to step it up.

Went to an LA Times sponsored craft beer tasting last night with All you can eat/drink for 3 hours. Breweries represented included Firestone Walker, New Belgium, Golden Road, Hangar 24, Widmer, and Karl Strauss.

My favorite beers of the evening were:

Hangar 24's Gourdgeous - a pumpkin porter
New Belgium's Berliner Weiss w/ yuzu fruit

Also good were:

Golden Road's Berliner Weiss
Karl Strauss' Wreck Alley Imperial Stout
New Belgium's Coconut Curry Hefeweizen

I wandered up the street afterward to a bottle shop and picked up a bottle each of:

Ale Industries' Rye'd Piper
Hangar 24's Gourdgeous
Strand Brewery's Musashi (a Black IPA)

That's a lot of beer drinking for me in a pretty short period of time. Now I probably won't have another beer for a couple of weeks.

Oh wow. I had no idea. If you liked it, that's high praise.

And hey now, Cigar City Jai Alai cans have landed in the ATL or at least they have at my local store.

I smell a taste-off.

Based on this news, I went by Hop City at lunch and they told me they got in 10 cases last Friday and they were gone in about 40 minutes.

They expect limited quantities with shipments coming in around every 7-10 weeks. Booooooo.

Picked up a bottle of Terrapin's So Fresh, and So Green, Green instead. All centennial hopped IPA.

All Centennial... crucial part of the 2 Hearted formula. Cascade on steroids.

Oh damn, I got the only sixer left at GAWOB. If its going to be coming in periodically though, that's good.

Now if we could just get Good People over here we'd be set.

And The Alchemist just sold out of all their growlers.

Jesus. So the growlers are only their Red Ale, right?

Triumph the Insult Comic Dog visits the American Beer Festival:

http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2 ... ign=131023

Perfect.

Holy shit it's good. The suggested beer names... "Gay After 3 Beers" Porter...

I had some of this recently in Charleston and again last weekend tailgating before the Panthers game (just one, though). Gose is a new style of beer for me and I am definitely not interested in drinking more than one at a time but I would definitely try more. I also saw the other day that Highland brewed a gose beer earlier this fall.

The Marketplace Morning Report had a short segment this morning on Vermont being the per capita beer capital of the US and name dropped Heady Topper and Alchemist.

Edit: Whoops, realized Heady Topper is made by Alchemist so of course they name dropped it.

Jeeesus. We don't need more people horning in on Topper. Shit's already scarce.

I consumed the 10 Barrel/Bluejacket/Stone collaboration Suede Imperial Porter tonight. It was a damn fine beer, but I think the Avocado Honey was only used to up the ABV content.

Got a note on this release, sounds interesting...

Let us know how these are when you get around to trying them. My bottle shop has Gillian in stock but I haven't been able to get myself to pull the trigger. $30 is pretty steep.

Will do although I may sit on both for at least a year.

I just returned from a trip to Jackson Hole where I got to try those award-winning IPAs they're doing at Thai Me Up. 2x4 is the doo doo brown... (possibly only Abner and Ephraim from H-F are better DIPAs) and got to sample 5oz of Melvin directly from the fermenter. Don't know if it's better than Zombie Dust but it's close.

Hit Snake River for fresh Pako's IPA too. That beer is all day. Jackson has some stuff going on over there!

Well forget about ever getting Heady Topper again.

http://www.alchemistbeer.com/a-difficult-decision/