Yail Bloor Wrote:
You'll still be hammered.
So Fem G stepped up and volunteered to drive so yep, that's pretty accurate although she says that she thought I was a lot more drunk the night before when she picked me up after Whiskylive.
So the good news is I was able to try A LOT. I think I probably tried close to 40 beers although some of those were a few sips off of a beer she got or another friend who I bumped into had. The bad news is she wanted to go to the gym first and I told her it was ok if she was 15 -30 minutes late getting back. Give a girl an extra 15-30 minutes and it quickly becomes an hour. So we ended up almost an hour late and by the time we got there, Westvleteren and Sante Adairius were completely out of beer. A few other things I was excited to try were gone too. Other breweries staged their offerings so at random times they'd bring out the rarities and if you didn't know to be in line, you missed out. I was in a long line to try some Crooked Stave sours and they ran out of the special bottles right before I made it to the counter. Still a great event though and I was grateful to not have to drive.
Here's what I remember having:
Allagash Nancy (A Sour Ale with Cherries & Brett)
Allagash Interlude (Farmhouse Ale aged in Wine Barrels)
Anchorage Time Waits for No Man (Stout aged in a Laphroaig Cask)
Arizona Wilderness Old Brood (Quad w/ Brett aged in red wine barrels)
Arizona Wilderness Hellsgate (Imperial Smoked Saison Aged in a Tequila Barrel)
Artisan Beverage Cooperative Ginger Libation
Blaugies Biere Darbyste (Farmhouse Ale with Fig Juice)
Bluejacket Figure 8 (Scotch Ale w/ Figs, Cinnnamon, Nutmeg & Brown Sugar Aged in Old Scout Bourbon Barrels)
Bottle Logic Passionate Dragon (Collab w/ Arizona Wilderness - Saison w/ Dragonfruit, Passionfruit & Bay Leaf)
Brekeriet Cassis (Sour Ale w/ Black Currants & Brett)
Brekeriet Brillant (Saison Brett)
Brewfist Spaceman IPA
Bruery Mash & Coconut (Barley Wine w/ Toasted Coconut)
Cellarmaker Imperial Coffee and Cigarettes (Smoked Coffee Porter)
Fyne Ales Fynebank (Collab w/ Springbank Distillery on a Peat Smoked Golden Ale)
Hair of the Dog Pannepooch Reserva (quad)
Hill Farmstead Arther (Saison)
Magic Rock Salty Kiss (Gose w/ Gooseberries, Sea Buckthorn & Sea Salt)
Oxbow Aboreal (Sour Ale)
Prairie Brouwerij Okie (Sour Amber Ale aged in Wine Barrels)
Saint Somewhere Cynthiana (Farmhouse Ale)
Shiga Kogen Adamu (with Hair of the Dog)
Side Project Saison du Ble
Struise Black Damnation (Forget which one)
Telegraph Saison Old Fashioned (Saison w/ Orange Peel Aged in a Bourbon Barrel)
The Rare Barrel Map of the Sun (Golden Sour with Apricots)
Toccalmatto B Space Invader (Black IPA) & Zona Cesarini (IPA)
Tree House Julius (IPA w/ a 100 pt score on Rate Beer)
Almost everything was really good. The standouts of the day were probably the Fynebank Ale, the Treehouse Julius, the Italian IPAs from both Brewfist and Toccalmatto, and the beers from Brekeriet. There were a ton of great saisons, farmhouse ales, and sours though. I had a bunch in those styles that I hadn't planned to try and don't really remember half of the ones I tried. Just hard to stand out for that style when there was so many great ones.
Squirg - you should be all over Tree House. Julius is really a world class IPA. I also really liked Oxbow from Maine.
Arizona Wilderness kinda reminded me of the Bruery a bit stylistically. Out there and always interesting but more interesting than truly great. I tried everything the Bruery had (which was mostly stuff that wasn't on their pour list) and I thought they were all really good in 2 oz pours but some of them would become much too sweet or strange if I had to have a full beer of it. I think they had about 6 beers but the mash and coconut is the only one I remember by name.
My least favorite beers of the day were the quads and stouts. I tend to not like the big boozy, really sweet style desert stouts and quads until they get a little bottle age on them. I suspect a bunch of the ones I had would be great in a few years.
If anyone has any questions on the beers above, I could probably provide a little more information but I didn't really take any notes.