Beer in the new era

haven't been up in almost a year and definitely have the itch. i do live 10 mins away from the only bar outside of vermont with regular access to hill so that helps.

I was confusing that with Collective Arts out of Toronto, which makes some pretty good beer (and has great can art!).

i went to the hillstead farm brewery and i think im a bear nerd now

Neckbear-d.

Walked by a pair of maybe 11-year-old boys yesterday and just overheard a snippet:

Boy One: The what?
Boy Two: The hop harvest! You know, hops.

Do you live in Oregon or New Zealand?

Hop Butcher, my favorite young local brewery, focuses mostly on NEIPAs, which I like, but they seem to be cranking out a new beer every week or so, and it's hard to keep up. But they just released a beer for St. Patrick's Day that seems so gross: a double milkshake IPA with mint and dyed green. No thanks. Kind of like the New Yorker fiction issue, it's nice when something you like more or less gives you the week off.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/food-dining/2019/03/18/bell-two-hearted-ale-standout-crowded-field/ocwIllq6sqvt61dRBezCsI/story.html?utm_campaign=coschedule&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=BellsBrewery

otm otm otm

for me it’s like the IPA equivalent of the metal rod in Paris that was the official meter

Not a huge fan of Two Hearted ...

I did have a Heady Topper last night. That's NEIPA ground zero, right? When did that acronym make its first appearance? What was the first beer to try and ape Heady Topper?

I’ve gotten burned lately by a couple of NE IPAs that have not been labeled as such. Not that I hate them but to me they’re not even close to the same thing as your standard IPA and it sucks to pour a can of some hazy shit when you aren’t in the mood.

like anything the juice craze is just what it is a a craze just like all the over the top badly done barrel aged imperial stouts a few years back. the good ones will survive the rest will go away.

ipa juicing is killing the snob beer industry

Heady Topper is not an NEIPA AFAIK but CAD or AJB are better suited to answer that question IMO

Heady is the OG NEIPA IMHO TBQH FWIW. First canned in 2011 ("Drink From The Can" on the packaging because the beer was so ugly for that moment in beer history).

Other hazy IPAs existed at the time (notably Alpine Nelson & Hill Farmstead experimentals like S&S#4) but nothing was in a 16oz can and embodied/preempted the hazy-can-mania that would arrive in the following decade.

They even use the word "hazy" on the can.

True story: A former ILX poster sent me a can he stealthily procured from a late night hookup's fridge (she was from VT iirc).

Thank you ILX.

lol what a bro

from this very thread (which is kind of like browsing a museum!):

I'm pretty stoked about the Goose Island Batch 5000 I brought back with me from Chicago - also made a run up to Wisconsin for New Glarus/Summit stuff, and it all survived in my checked luggage on the way back.

Heading to Vermont this weekend for the Hill Farmstead bottle release and a Heady Topper run - the latter when fresh is better than Pliny imo and worth digging up if you're in New England (their cans should hit Boston sometime next year).

― Federal Titt (govern yourself accordingly), Tuesday, November 15, 2011 9:22 AM (seven years ago)

man heady topper is so good

― call all destroyer, Tuesday, November 15, 2011 10:06 AM (seven years ago)

IIRC, that post by GYA is to get the very first canning run of Heady Topper! There was a wicked Nor'Easter that weekend according to legend, almost flooded out The Alchemist's former location.

tropical storm irene was in august 2011 and destroyed the pub. that prediction of the cans hitting boston is lol in retrospect!

haha totally remember reading about that

btw i have heard people make the claim that heady isn't an neipa but generally people advancing that as a serious point have been too addled by juicebombs to appreciate that the style originated with heady's danker, more traditional hop profile.

the big deal in 2011/12 was heady's crushability relative to other dipas of the time. before that my perception of dipas was via cringing my way through a dogfish head 90 minute or something.

not super Hazy really but my go to IPA from the northeast is Sip Of Sunshine it's easy to get and damn good.

sip is very good. lawson's was always mentioned in the same breath of the other big vermont brewers even though the sunshine ipas were his only beers that really fit the profile.

to me the use of the newer hops, the lighter malt bill, and lower bitterness are more important to the style than the presence of haze.

Ah see my entire experience with NEIPA is the juicebomb varieties and HT didn't remind me of that at all (although it has been 3-4 years since my last taste of the stuff).

I will admit to being a total hazy IPA dude (not bro) and being in the NYC metro, get Other Half, Grimm, and Sand City on the regular. One big attraction for me is that they pair beautifully with pot.

My big problem is with the fruited-sour IPAs getting so popular. Most of them aren't really that sour and with the fruit and lactose end up being way too sweet for me. When it comes to sours, I want a Oude Bruin or a barrel aged saison.

I have really enjoyed the Hudson Valley sour IPAs I've been lucky enough to have tried. They are definitely the diamond in the rough of that particular style though.

I did have a Hudson Valley sour IPA that tasted exactly like fresh squeezed white grapefruit juice and was great.

Co-sign PBKR. I want to be grimacing as I drink that stuff. Drinking that sweet stuff is life with the training wheels left on.

Hit both Fort George and Buoy pubs while in Astoria, OR this weekend. Big thumbs up to both.

Fort George's Fields of Green Hazy IPA is particularly yummy.

I love that part of the OR coast.

possibly good, possibly an abomination?

https://twbrewing.com/beer/salted-nut-roll-ale

If you can't even say what it's called without laughing or barfing in your mouth, I don't think it's even worth trying.

I would definitely taste an ounce or two of it... but def a hard pass on a 4 pack of 16oz cans.

https://cdn.craftbeer.com/wp-content/uploads/NewBelgium_MuralAguaFrescaCerveza.png

i think this is the worst beer ive ever had, it was barely even beer, i did not buy it or choose it, i took one sip

it had little pieces of lemon meat in it

ew

had a can of mirror universe from state fair coop the other day. WOW. hazy ipa nectar. loved the hint of pine/dank going on behind the subdued tropical (pineapple and something else. maybe mango?) backbone. A+

i mean agua fresca yeah cool nice, but beer uhhh, and with hibiscus what why

Gross!

breweries are really eager to use hibiscus for some reason, idk is it always on sale?

I've noticed that some local-ish beers that up until a few years ago were relatively harder to come by, like Zombie Dust and KBS, now just sit in stacks at the store for weeks and months. It's great if you're a fan, but it must be frustrating to be a brewery that boosts production to keep up with demand, but then shoots way past demand and is left with a surplus. I still see stacks of bourbon county!

I was gonna say, hibiscus is quite popular here in Montreal, but I don't know why. I've had ones I've liked but they only make sense if you put them in a separate category from beer

when i went to hillstead farm i had a hibiscus beer that was really good it tasted more like an extremely dry cider than a beer and it was a beautiful color, i got it cause i was talking to a quebecer who was drinking it lol, he told me he was taking $300 of beer back w him

xp it's gonna get pretty choppy out there for bigger craft breweries

classic growth conundrum, safer to stay small, grow slow

Didn't we just have the hibiscus discussion like a month ago?