The Beer Thread

Jaguar wrote:

Drank a Young's Double Chocolate Stout a couple nights ago. That was nice though I think I'd prefer it with a tad bit of sweetness.

I had a Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti (Imperial Stout) from Great Divide last night.  Well, I had half of a glass until our puppy decided she wanted to knock it over.

It had the sweetness that you were probably looking for.  It was a little much for me, as it covered up a lot of the roasty flavors/smells I like in big stouts.  I usually fall back to comparing everything to dogfish head beers, and in this regard it was Palo Santo Marron, but with a bit less coffee taste and a decent amount more caramel sweetness.  All in all, a very good beer, but at $9 a bottle (Perfect Pour) the Stone 15th is much more up my alley.

imbecile wrote:
I had a Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti (Imperial Stout) from Great Divide last night.  Well, I had half of a glass until our puppy decided she wanted to knock it over.

That sounds good and I'll keep it in mind if I see it around. I get what you say about it hiding the other flavors. Don't really want those hidden either. Then again, won't know until I try one.

Sorry about the half loss. Reminds me of a story that my mother told me. There was some guy who lived here who had a dog that died of cirrhosis of the liver. Every night, the two of them would sit around drinking their six packs. This dog loved beer! Drank a six pack every night.

Had the Abita Purple Haze last night. Loved the color. The beer was nice too and easy to drink. A nice choice for when I want a more traditional and lighter tasting beer.

Jaguar wrote:
I prefer a thick creamy and sweet stout when going dark. Which would you suggest? I've had a few others but tend to go back to Guinness providing it's on draft. The cans and bottles are barely even worth cooking with. Shame they can't properly preserve that quality in a packaged good.

jag - get thee to bell's special double cream stout.  VERY smooth and creamy, low on the smoke/burnt flavors.  i question their claim that it doesn't contain any actual cream ;D  

i'm not the biggest fans of stouts, but this one gets a thumbs up.

sweetcell wrote:

Jaguar wrote:
I prefer a thick creamy and sweet stout when going dark. Which would you suggest? I've had a few others but tend to go back to Guinness providing it's on draft. The cans and bottles are barely even worth cooking with. Shame they can't properly preserve that quality in a packaged good.

jag - get thee to bell's special double cream stout.  VERY smooth and creamy, low on the smoke/burnt flavors.  i question their claim that it doesn't contain any actual cream ;D  

i'm not the biggest fans of stouts, but this one gets a thumbs up.

Will do, if I can find one. I need to get up to Delaware at some point and suspect I might have a better chance of finding some of the harder to find selections there.

Actually, I don't mind the smokey flavors at all. It was just that the Clutch beer taste liked it was brewed with excessive burnt scrapings from an old and well used oven. You know, the real kind of 'cake' that Maria Antoinette was talking about when she spoke her infamous quote. In fact, I think that Clutch beer should be the official beer of the OWS movement. Let them drink cake on the Prison Planet!

anything involving clutch . . . is doomed to be horrible.  it's ok to admit this.  have a allagash white, like i am, and relax in the thought of it.

Picking up my second bottle of Founders CBS this weekend, to cellar next to the seven bottles of 2011 KBS we still have. Hope they get better with age(?) Also hoping to pick up a four pack of Goose Island Bourbon County Stout when I'm in Chicago next month. Much to my wife's dismay. We're going to have to actually start drinking this stuff at some point.  ;D

care to share where you've getting the CBS from?  (either here, or a PM would be fine ;D)

i've never tried it yet, and what with all the hype i'm quite curious.

anyone else have a lead on the stuff?  is it even available in MD?  i'm in VA for work quite often these days, so i'm hopefully this increased reach will help me score some.

Beer tasting party at the Ford's???

James wrote:
We're going to have to actually start drinking this stuff at some point.  ;D

We have had a beer tasting party the last two Octobers where everyone (including us) brought their favorite craft beers and we provided food and sample size cups. Just too busy to do it this year, with marathons, work, kid issues, travel, etc. Maybe in the Spring.

One result was that we found that a number of people tended to opt for quantity over quality (even though we said don't bring any more than you yourself would drink), leaving us with a fridge full of mediocre beer. Not that that's a horrible thing.  ;D

And for the record, I just read it's better to drink the CBS fresh, as otherwise it will lose its maple flavor, and end up tasting like aged KBS. Not that that's a horrible thing.

nkotb wrote:
Beer tasting party at the Ford's???

James wrote:
We're going to have to actually start drinking this stuff at some point.  ;D

Rhett, I think beers need to be consumed early on unlike most wines and liquors. I know I've had some nasty beers due to my habit of purchasing and then letting the stuff sit around too long. Of course, I've had some very pleasant surprises by doing this with some of my wines and liquors. Totally took the edge off a nice bottle of good rum I bought many years ago in Barbados. Finally opened it the other week and that stuff has mellowed to an incredible degree with no loss of any of the goodness. Very different than how it tasted in Barbados. Beer is more like good fresh produce. Consume it while it's fresh and before it turns on you.

Actually, not true.

Wine is not the only drink that can be aged for maturation. Many beers benefit from extended aging. We're not talking about your average beer with a mere shelf life of 3-6 months, tops – before quality begins to degrade. We're talking about beers that beg for maturation and strict storage like vintage beers, barleywines, imperial stouts, Belgian strong ales, lambics, old ales and so on. Ideally, any type of beer that can be laid-down for a year or two, or even more, in order to build a slew of complexities and thus further its character in a positive way…..



….Cool. Now that you have an idea as to what to cellar and how, what can you expect a year or more down the road when you've patiently waiting to crack open your aging beers? The answer = who knows? There are way too many variables that come to play, on top of the variations within the different styles. Some beers age very well, others don't. Some beers need only a year, while others can age for 25+ years. And, many breweries have no idea what their beer will taste like years down the road, while others can make pretty damn good predictions. It's all part of the fun. Full article at…
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/101/store

Jaguar wrote:
Rhett, I think beers need to be consumed early on unlike most wines and liquors. I know I've had some nasty beers due to my habit of purchasing and then letting the stuff sit around too long. Of course, I've had some very pleasant surprises by doing this with some of my wines and liquors. Totally took the edge off a nice bottle of good rum I bought many years ago in Barbados. Finally opened it the other week and that stuff has mellowed to an incredible degree with no loss of any of the goodness. Very different than how it tasted in Barbados. Beer is more like good fresh produce. Consume it while it's fresh and before it turns on you.

Interesting. Thanks for posting that. My 'aged' ones have never turned out well. In fact, a couple years ago I had some sort of Rogue Juniper beer that I let sit around for about a year that literally made me kind of sick. In this case, it wasn't the hops. Seemed to have something to do with some of the natural ingredients going bad over time more than anything.

Best bets for aging beers are those that are bottle conditioned, that is, a bit of yeast is added to the bottle to finish off the fermentation process.  I have a couple bottles of Allagash Curieux gathering dust in the basement….

i have 10 bottles (out of the original 12) of dominion's millenium barleywine gathering dust in the basement, i'm going to give them at least a year.  http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/402/18965

Yeah, that one definitely would not work. Not with only 5.3abv.

Generally, I wouldn't cellar anything under 8.0abv, nor would I cellar any kind of ipa.

And my "cellar" is really just my finished basement. And it's only a few degrees colder than the upstairs, which means it's not nearly in the 45-55 degree cellaring range, especially in the summer. So maybe I shouldn't be "cellaring" at all in my house.

Jaguar wrote:
Interesting. Thanks for posting that. My 'aged' ones have never turned out well. In fact, a couple years ago I had some sort of Rogue Juniper beer that I let sit around for about a year that literally made me kind of sick. In this case, it wasn't the hops. Seemed to have something to do with some of the natural ingredients going bad over time more than anything.

With Thanksgiving coming up, thought I'd share this one

http://drinks.seriouseats.com/2009/11/beer-pairings-with-thanksgiving-food-desserts-pies.html

Now I know what to do with my bottle of Abyss.

if you read my article i posted about the head of founders . . . he admited that next year, with the new brewery up and producing, all these beers hard to find this season will be everywhere next year.  i just hope that backwoods bastard isn't going to become a fiasco.

if anyone is headed down to ashville for Moogfest keep your eyes open for Asheville Brewing Company's Moog Filtered Ale, a small batch re-issued especially for the festival. http://www.moogfoundation.org/tag/moog-filtered-ale/

Am looking forward to this in a few weeks…

http://www.3floyds.com/2011/09/14/anniversary-party-announcement/

Did you move to Indiana? I'll be hitting their brewpub around Thanksgiving. Perfect escape from the in-laws.

dave24 wrote:
Am looking forward to this in a few weeks…

http://www.3floyds.com/2011/09/14/anniversary-party-announcement/