Mission Brewery (DownTown San Diego) Dark Seas Stout,
and Cypress Grove Midnight Moon.

i take my beers big dumb and ugly. fosters in the big can. it's australian for stiff. i never reconsider a stickler for formalism. but sometimes you just need to take a stand or else your lost fucked and worst off all without a decent beer in your pants gut.

Fixed it for you.

Actually the Foster Brothers were two Californians who came to Australia in the 1890's and developed a way of chilling the fermenters to make German style lagers possible in a hot climate. They went broke, sold the brewery and pissed off back to California quick smart, never to be heard of again. If only they'd stuck it out!



I like that term. I'll be using it again in future.

Going down to the brewshop tomorrow to pick up the spec malts and hops for the Hop Head Red styled red IPA I plan to enter in the comp to win a tap at the bar. I ordered some US grown Warrior and Amarillo hop pellets too. Apparently the Warrior is the highest alpha acid hop generally available, so should suit my plans to make an uncompromising red IPA of around 85-90 IBU

Went to Green Flash last night to try some Palate Wrecker (Hamilton's Ale)
9.5% ABV/100+ IBU's.
Brought home a four pack and a bomber.

Great to see Vinnie and Nathalie/Russian River tonight for no event, nothing going on. They're in town to do a little business, but just wanted to enjoy a quiet night at the bar. I hope to hoist a beer with them again before they leave.

Got to have the Bruery/Pizzeria Basta collaboration, which is a Biere De Garde made with zucchini, fennel seed and lemon peel. Kinda comes off a bit like a saison in character, though amber in color.

Holy snapping duckshit, willya lookit all them taps!
I'm doing a pubcrawl of all the local microbreweries in a few weeks, and I don't think there will be that many taps in the dozen or so micros & brewpubs we're visiting.




I need to get onto some Russian River stuff. I'm pretty sure I can get it here, but it's a hundred mile round trip for me to the only place I know that stocks it.

How was the fennel in the Biere de Garde? I reckon it'd be real easy to over do it.

Weighed out all my grains, hops and water chems. Looking forward to an easy brewday tomrrow.

I thought it was well-done. The lemon peel came through nicely too. Some people loved it and some thought it was too much.

honey beer from Brasserie Dupont that also has delicious saisons. This is pure unfiltered organic trip beer so I'll be lounging on the couch and listening to the most organic doom band I've heard in recent times:

Drinking an organinc beer myself right now...some Wyld Exta Pale Ale from A Utah brewery, Uinta. Liking it a lot....nice sessionable beer for the warm sunny weather that is starting to show itself around here.



Followed that up with a Crazy Mountain Amber Ale...it was alright, nothing special though. Wont be in a rush to drink it again. To be fair, I have a feeling this can was not too fresh.



Now onto some Victory Headwaters Pale Ale. This one is a definite grower, the more I drink of it the more I like it. My first bottle I was questioning my decision to buy a six pack of it, now I thinking more six packs could be in the future. Not a beer I want to drink on its own throughout a night, but a great beer to mix and match with others.

my first from the Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project.

Crooked Stave's beers have all been good of what I have tried, but only tried a couple of theirs because of their ridiculous price. The WWBR is not one of the CS's I have tried though.

Seems like those WWB beers are meant for some aging and that Red has to be like a year old now? Did it age well?

Adam,
Please understand that these Wild beers take time, a lot of time. Brett takes much longer to ferment than Sacchromyces (regular beer yeast). Time = money, so it's gonna cost more to get one of these.

I had one of those recently and it was delicious.

In Santiago Chile last week drinking the native Kunstmann miel (honey) ale.

Last night we went to Thursday Cask Night at Karl Strauss to try their new Imperial Stout.
It's brewed with Ethiopian coffee and cocoa nibs. 9.5% ABV.
It's named after a popular diving spot here off the coast of San Diego called Wreck Alley.
which is an artificial reef formed by sunken ships.

Tonight on the way home from work I am stopping at Alesmith to have some of their Speedway Stout brewed with Vietnamese coffee.

Strong, bitter and blond it reads on the label. all true. the name gives some of the taste away too.

still listening to Stangala, for fuck's sake JJ check out that band.

Tomorrow, the forecast is rain during the day, and a cloudy 40° evening. The perfect night to finish the remainder of my Black Lager by Guinness (it wasn't doin the trick last week, when i was getting smashed after seeing Van Halen in Atlantic City. That turned out being more of a whiskey-night) as well as the delicious, black-as-night Imperial Porter from Southampton...


Tonight, however, after my 40hr tenure in foodservice redundancy (ie; M-F 6-3 feeding office folk), I thought i'd give something a little more mainstream a shot.
Bud Light Platinum. A light beer that'll getchya fucked up. At 6%, this version of the US' best selling beer sure did the fuckin trick.
At first I wrote it off as Steel Reserve Light, an easier to drink make of headache-inducing malt water. But after 2 or 3, it got easier to drink and really opened up on the pallette.
Maybe it was the Spring weather, or the sunshine, or sitting outside by a fire in a t-shirt with my portable iPod speaker, cranking out a shuffled mix of Motorhead, Hank 3, and a ton of sludge...but this beer tasted.fucking.great.

BOLD flavor. This one has been a grower. I've given it extra time since it is made about a mile from home. Been to the brewery. Small operation, making a huge flavor and impact. Lots of awards and positive press for a brewery less than a year old. They also brew an amber ale and extra pale ale. All available on tap or cans only. They have moved into Mass those on in New England, check it out.

"We do what we can. We can what we do."







Stowaway I.P.A. (India Pale Ale)
Bold, complex flavors with a solid malt backbone and assertive hop profile, along with cold conditioning, give this beer its crisp, clean, hoppy finish.

Technical Specifications:

•A proprietary blend of North American 2-row malted barley, including barley grown in Northern Maine’s Aroostook County
•Domestic and imported “Character” malts provide complexity, color and body
•5 different hops varieties grown in the Pacific Northwest
•Double dry-hopped during fermentation and conditioning
•Clean, well attenuating, top-fermenting American ale yeast
•Pure, soft water from Lake Auburn, Maine

6.9% ABV
69 IBU’s

Flavor Profile:

Deep amber-to-orangish in color; pours with a nice, creamy head; huge hop aroma of citrus, pine and grapefruit rind notes with a big, complex, and intense hop flavor that lingers for a very long time. The malt flavor up-front turns dry and crisp; full bodied and a dry finish with a pleasant, long lasting, hop aftertaste and beautiful lace left in the glass. Stowaway leaves you wanting more.

A friend bought over a bottle of this Seattle brew. Mind.blowing.brewskie.! It has the profile of a lighter barleywine but it's only around 8.5%, so not a boozer. It has the typical hints raisin or prunes but man they nailed the balance and the Bourbon cask, or whatever they do to inject that, works beautifully. As you can see they take it rather seriously with the wax top and all. It the best bourbon barrel beer I've encountered even after a BB beer fest a year ago. Right down to it, it's in the top 3 beers I've ever had (could be psychological at the moment), with number 1 probably a Guinness tap on the Emerald Isle. I gotta get another bottle to be sure but seriously grab one if you see it. Og, I just remembered had it from a Cask - The Abominable Bourbon Barrel, and it was great, but the bottle was killer. Prob a diff vintage. A monster of a brew.

Drinking some Deschutes Hop Henge IPA. Solid and quite enjoyable, as is expected from a Deschutes brew.

..and I never drink on a monday night.

Had some tasty sours the other night. The Blackberry Petite is from Crooked Stave's member program. I picked up a bunch more to age. It probably needs 2-3 years to hit its peak. It tastes a bit like blackberry soda up front and finishes with a bleu cheese/aged gouda note. It'll be good but needs some time.
The Cantillons speak for themselves. Really love the Vigneronne.
The Green Flash Rayon Vert is probably one of my favorite new beers. It's in the vein of Orval; a hoppy Brett beer. Yum.




Odell's Shenanigans: a decent crimson sour ale. Nothing terribly special. This seems typical of Odell's sour program - very drinkable, nothing remarkable. I'd have another one, but I'm not too anxious to spend the money.

Anchorage Brewing: a Brett fermented Trippel. Kinda what it sounds like. A Belgian trippel with a bit of funkiness. This brewery is doing all Brett beers. Good stuff.

Haand Bryggeret: Haand Bic, this was really good. A sour, barrel-aged beer with cranberries and cherries added. The best of this lot.

Mikkeller Ris a la M'ale: Barrel-aged beer with almonds and cherries added. Very nice, nothing too crazy. Not a lot of acidity.




Going to A.C. Golden for a tour today with peeps from work. We're going to tour their barrel room and the boss is going to create a special blend just for the bar.

Man, I REALLY want to try the Shenanigans so I was definitely hoping for a more glowing review than decent but not special. I am sure I will still go for it because I have been craving it ever since I saw them promote it on their site a few months ago so hopefully it works better for me than it did for you.

Also, finally tried the Rayon Vert the other week. I made the mistake of trying it as my last beer of the night so not sure if my palette was still fresh enough to come up with a proper feel for how I liked it. My thoughts at the time were it was enjoyable but wasn't sold on whether I preferred that approach for the style (i.e. inclusion of the brett) or not. Will have to try it again with a fresher palette to figure that out.

Went on a tour of A.C. Golden yesterday. It's the test brewery/craft brewery inside of Coors. We've had a bunch of their beer on tap at the bar but none of us had ever been out to the brewery. They're doing some really great things. The brewers we hung out with were super cool and shared a lot of knowledge. After showing us the main brewery they use and having us sample a killer saison and an equally killer bourbon barrel-aged russian imperial stout, we headed up to their once secret barrel room. The last photo is of HBB-1 & HBB-2. Those are the first two barrels of Hidden Barrel Brewing. They were told they couldn't make sours so they hid the barrels behind sacks of grain and some cardboard. The boss found out about it, tried the beer and decided they could expand so they now have a lot more barrels going. They've cultured some of the yeast/bugs from Russian River and New Belgium's La Folie to innoculate a few of the barrels. We got to pull pins and drink straight off the barrels and do some on-the-spot blending. A really fun way to spend an afternoon.

new brewery in houston, karbach!

got a 4 pack of their rodeo clown tonight, the stuff is sweet nectar of double ipa hoppiness, this is my new fav by far:)

i believe the brewmaster is from flying dog if i'm not mistaken(that would be "former" flying dog ha ha)

http://www.karbachbrewing.com/

Baseball is back and a beer is open. Picked up some of that Idiot Sauvin that you suggested SL and enjoying it. I am definitely finding that I am a big fan of the nelson sauvin hops.