A friend from Madison who works in Japan most of the year sent me a message Monday saying "I'll be breezing through town tomorrow, wanna get a beer?" He stopped by last night about 9, and handed me a bottle he brought from Tokyo. It's Westvleteren 8, with a japanese shop sticker on it. He purchased it black market over there and flew it all the way to Boston. That bottle has seen some miles... VERY excited to actually get to try this one for real -- you may recall someone from Germany brought me 2 bottles a year and a half ago, also of Westy 8 as it turns out - but when I threw a belgian beer party and took my eyes off it, someone's girlfriend opened both bottles without knowing what they were, and I got the last inch or so of the second bottle.

I went to a tapping party for Funkwerks Cameo on Friday night. It is another pretty solid Saison from the Colorado brewery, but was still a bit cloudy when I got my glass. I really wish folks would remember to hook specialty kegs up to the tapping lines the morning of the tapping party, so the keg has enough time to settle down again.

The beer is terrible, but I didn't buy this bottle for what was inside.
I just wanted the damn bottle.

Back to this, I asked him the other night, we did a little math and decided he is *only* in the 300-350 gallons per year range right now.

I only brew about 50 gallons of beer a year, but one of the guy with 20+ taps in his house is known to brew 30 to 50 gallons of beer in one day. 100 gallons of beer a year is the legal limit for a single guy like me, 200 gallons is the legal limit for a household in this country, but that law is broken with regularity. Your friend is certainly getting up there for quantity, but I wouldn't say that is a ludicrous amount, especially if each batch is a ten gallon batch.

He does five gallon batches, not ten. (I asked about that as well).

Yeah, I honestly expected more gallonage out of him.

I think I hit MAYBE 60 gallons a year, and not this year for sure. I just don't have the fucking time.

I just did some rudimentary math and if brewing a 5 gallon batch takes about 5 hours........and he's doing 300 gallons a year.......that means he's roughly brewing for the equivalent of about 38 EIGHT hour days. Or almost 8 work weeks.

WTF??

If I do everything really quickly (no interruptions), I can start-to-finish a 5 gallon all grain batch in about 4 hours. If I were doing two at once, I could probably get both done in 7 I guess, since a decent amount of that time is cleanup. Either way, it's a shitton of time.

I made a couple of first visits to a few local breweries over Memorial Day Weekend.

Noble Ale Works (Anaheim, CA):

The only beer I think that I had from them before was Naughty Sauce: a golden milk stout with coffee that is really fantastic and a cult beer around here. That had that on nitro so I couldn't resist getting it again but I also tried samplers of four more.

Earl's Grey Dinghy: It's a bitter beer infused with Earl Grey Tea from a local tea maker. Only 3.5% so a great session beer but packed full of flavor. Wish this were available in bottles or cans. I would drink a lot of it.

Man's Milk: A pretty straightforward but good version of a milk stout. Lots of milk chocolate notes.

Gosebusters: one of the better craft goses that I've had.

Rakau Showers: part of a series of single hopped DIPAs, this one showcasing the New Zealand hop Rakau. Lots of peach and rosemary. delicious.

Strike me impressed. Everything I had was good to great. Lots more I would have liked to have tried if I hadn't needed to drive.

Also hit up El Segundo Brewing on another day. They are a pretty well thought of local brewery known for hoppy beers. I had:

Citra Pale Ale - made with vienna malts. Wow, I usually don't like Pale Ales much but loved this. Very fruity and not too bitter.

Hop Tanker DIPA - a very good DIPA made with Two Row and Vienna Malts and Nelson and Citra Hops.

White Dog Passion Fruit - A Passion Fruit infused version of their white dog IPA which gets its name from their substitution of 50% wheat for barley in the malt bill. Served on cask. Good but not my favorite.

Vanilla Hyperion Double Stout - a very respectable sweet stout with lots of chocolate, coffee and vanilla notes.

Think I had one more but I'm forgetting what it was.

Best of the bottles I've had recently was a Rye Barrel Aged Gentleman's Club which is a collaboration between Cigar City and Widmer's. It's an old ale brewed with oranges and cherries. They were aiming to create a beer version of the old fashioned cocktail and judged on that alone, it was a success. Pretty much hits on all those flavor profiles with the whiskey from the barrel and the oranges and cherries. They made 3 versions - a rye barrel aged, a bourbon barrel aged and a new oak. I bought all three but have only had this one. I liked it. Hell, I liked it alot but I really like old fashioneds so that's hardly a surprise. It was pretty expensive though and I'm not sure I'd buy it again.

I've also drank the rest of the Jai Alai cans I bought and am willing to concede that it is better than I'd remembered which is not to say that I'd choose it over Sculpin but I'd happy buy it again and again.

Re: pales and vienna malts... I need to completely rethink my pale recipe. It is just not right. I've been using Maris and a little light crystal, I think, and I do not ultimately love the resulting thick, sweet malt profile. Maybe I'll aim for 2-row and vienna.

I had a table beer last night from Mystic, a good local upscale. It was a 25.4 corked bottle, I don't think it listed the ABV but their blurb explaining what table beer is for the uninitiated mentioned 2.5 to 4.5 or something like it. I assume it was very low, because I had all 25 ounces, and had no buzz whatsoever. Went on to a leftover Goose Pale that was in the fridge. As to the table beer, I wanted to like it more than I did. Reminded me too much of warm Heinekin. Otherwise I've loved everything from them.

A lot of people have ditched using crystal malt in IPA, it is essentially the West Coast way. I know several folks who pretty much do single malt IPA, but it seems as if the 75% Pale Ale malt, 25% Vienna Malt recipe is fairly popular on the internet as well.

I think I like Mystic more than Night Shift.

And I believe you, Neuro and I are all on the same page there.

Yeah I just feel like they're focusing on quantity over quality right now. Some of their single hop series were good and I liked the JoJo IPA but all of their others since the beginning couple of beers have been lacking. And I'm going on record as saying the Viva Habenera is undrinkable.

Mystic and Trillium have surpassed them at this point.

Night Shift is just more about staking out new unclaimed territory in the Bizarro Provinces. They're not trying to make a better porter than the next guy. Sometimes that's fun, but just as often it's tiring. Porters are fucking good. Habanero beer that scorches your throat is only interesting once, and then just generally not something you crave, you know? But shit, they keep selling it so people must dig it.

Just got to Tampa but I have to wait until Thursday to pound down as many Jai Alai's as my gut will hold.

I had an Eagle Rock Ginger Saison the other night - good stuff.

Anyone ever read this:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/mag/

Worth it?

I have never have but I've thought about it.

The reviews on that site always seem hit and miss; but if you're really that curious, go with the substantially cheaper electronic version (~ $0.99 per issue).

I don't know that there is a source of beer reviews that aren't hit or miss for me at least among ones that ever hit on my taste. The reviews wouldn't really be why I'd consider subscribing though. The reviews are all available for free on their website sortable by style, rating, etc anyway. I was just thinking it might might be interesting to read something with more in-depth coverage of breweries, styles, craft beer news, etc and $10 for a year is pretty cheap.

I did buy a digital back issue chosen at random just to get a sense of what its like. It's about 60 pages long with lots of ad space. There were a few short brewery profiles (all of which are for ones that don't distribute out here so not particularly interesting to me, they weren't in-depth enough though that they would likely have much new for someone familiar with them either). A couple of pages of industry news which was pretty superficial and not very interesting. One homebrew recipe. A couple of food recipes, one containing beer in it and the others presumably ones for food that one might like to eat with beer. A short interview with Societe's brewer/co-owner (somewhat interesting to me but pretty short and superficial). A beer related travel guide to Indianapolis (no plans to go there). A profile of a St. Louis (if memory serves) brewpub. A review of a beer related book. A couple of random articles that I wasn't interested. A review section with about 10-15 reviews, only two of which are probably things I could buy out here.

So at least based on that one issue, not really all that useful to me. I guess that's the problem with a magazine on craft beer -- its very regional and if they try to be national, its not all that useful and if they are too regional, there probably isn't a large enough audience to justify the magazine. It doesn't take much to justify spending $10 though so if anyone has more exposure to it and thinks its pretty good or that you'd find enough of interest across a year to justify maybe I'd still consider subscribing. There's a free monthly newspaper on craft beer that some of the beer shops have out here that is more focused on west coast brewers. I should probably just stick to reading that.

I think I've read an issue of BA maybe once. It was alright but the Alstrom brothers who run it are annoying as fuck. There was a free craft beer paper back in ma that I read more often.

Alstrom's are the fucking worst... especially Todd's bitch wife Candace.

I look at Rate Beer and Beer Advocate to see if anyone is tasting the same sort of stuff/flaws I am getting from a beer, but it should never be used as the gospel of craft beer. There are far too many big beer drinking fools out there that are comparing apples to orange when it comes to their reviews, and they rarely judge anything to style because of it. There are also quite a few people out there that believe certain breweries can do no wrong, and they simply cannot write an unbiased beer review.