Beer in the new era

Anyone else feel like bourbon barrel stouts do uniquely bad things to them? I drank a sixpoint master blend the other night and felt like shit for two days.

i barely fuck with em anymore, same for a lot of guys i know. not only are they very likely to wreck you, but the flavor profile has become unappealing. there are old bottles of bourbon county in my basement that i look at w/dread.

I like them, but I think the key is to split one with someone and drink them like you might drink, I dunno, bourbon. Share them, and smaller pours, and you (and they) are good.

Just had my first beer with cryo hops. Tasted like beer.

Xp yeah it wrecked me in this unique way that a similar amount of some other 13% alcohol beverage would not. It also does taste a little odd to me, syrupy and sort of somewhere in between cola/dr pepper/very sweet coffee.

https://media.giphy.com/media/JRsY1oIVA7IetTkKVO/giphy.gif

My daughter said "hmm what if" and made a rhubarb shandy yesterday with a gose she didn't care for as-is, and it is the best thing ever drunk.

https://chicago.eater.com/2020/5/19/21264134/jeppsons-malort-revolution-brewing-anti-hero-collaboration-chicago

Surprised it took this long for something like this tbh

rhubarb shandy sounds great

It is Oberon season again, thank god for some liquid sunshine in the age of covid

I’ve also been making beermosas on the weekends as supplies permit. So healthy and refreshing

To avoid this thread turning into a thread about beer for people who don't like beer...

Chicagolanders: Hearing rumblings that Three Floyds is in trouble and may be closing their brewpub?

Friend of mine says it has something to do with Indiana reopening and the ownership not being comfortable with putting people back to work. This way they can get unemployment and the plan is to reopen the pub in a year or two. Apparently their distributor sales are fine and they're still doing beer-to-go from that location.

Yeah, that's what I've been hearing as well. It's the eat-in brewpub that is essentially being put on mothballs for awhile, my understanding is that distribution, brewing and to-go beer sales aren't going anywhere.

In fact I've seen the new(er) Zombie Dust cans popping up more and more frequently, at least around where I live.

Every story I've heard of the brewpub has been one of bad attitude and terrible service, that couldn't possibly have helped.

I'm a big fan of Hop Butcher's NEIPA variants, but they seem to release 2-3 totally new ones a week, and given they can be hard to come by in the best of circumstances I've been beset by a combo of FOMO and sheer acquisitive exhaustion.

My local bar was selling mystery boxes for 12 bottles/$160 so I went in with a buddy...

Among the treasures:
1993 Thomas Hardy
2000 Scaldis Noel
2007 Sierra Nevada Bigfoot

Those old vintages were very unexpected! The rest of the box was pretty intense, but more recent vintages of local hyped stuff.

(also thanks dan, jon & Josh for the Three Floyds info)

Speaking of Three Floyds, apparently they did a "virtual Dark Lord Day" by selling bundles of "vintage" Dark Lord in boxes to be delivered and, perhaps unsurprisingly for every time they try something new, it was a complete shitshow. I didn't try myself, but apparently sold out in less than a minute and I'm seeing dozens of complaints of people absolutely baffled by how the ordering system worked. Multiple people complaining that they got to the point of where they were entering their credit card info and the contents of their virtual carts were cleared out beneath them.

Sounds like a mess all around.

Sorry, the box is to be picked up at the brewery, not delivered.

it's 2020 and no one has developed a decent ordering system for high-demand items.

Fair. Not sure this is all Three Floyd's fault. Biggest complaint seems to be that there was no countdown clock (like for concert tickets) that gave people time to complete the transaction.

Also more than one person saying the order triggered fraud protection from their banks and by the time they were able to confirm the automated checks, their orders had been released and sold out.

Dark Lord isn't even that good imo.

Meanwhile several vintages of Surly Darkness in both regular and BA variants sit on the shelves collecting dust at my local store. Nice to be able to pick some up now and then at a whim.

Hell, BCBS is still easy to find on shelves here.

If nothing else, I guess Three Floyds deserves credit for keeping Dark Lord a hot ticket for this long, even if it's doubtful to be worth it.

Made a very satisfying beer run to the border yesterday and stocked up on New Glarus. Pile of Moon Man, pile of Spotted Cow, some of their Belgian Red cherry beer and their Nectar Ale, which they described as a cross between beer and wine but which to me more or less tasted like one of their (delicious) fruit beers/lambics/sours. But I am not sophisticated.

The New Glarus fruit beers are some of my favorites of any beers. The cherry and raspberry.

I've had a bottle of Surly Darkness in my fridge since right after my wife and I moved to the twin cities. Date stamp is 10/24/2016. Drinking it tonight because I officially finished grad school and it is very, very good.

congrats!!

well deserved.

I'm trying to figure out this new "nectar" trend, or at least what seems to be a trend. I picked up some New Glarus Nectar Ale the other day, and I'm picking up some Phase Three "nectar" on Saturday. Is it just a goofier name for a sour? Is it meant to mean "fruit beer?" It seems like both of those things.

the new glarus one sounds like an approximation of fruited lambic? the phase three ones sound like the fruited berliners that are getting really popular.

Yeah, both sound like odd little hybrids. I don't know enough about beer to distinguish their various lineages and characteristics, though. All I know is that my wife loved the Nectar Ale from New Glarus, which she said did not even taste like beer.

I just saw the referred to as "smoothie sours."

aka "beer for people who don't like beer"

also should mention that New Glarus has been spontaneously fermenting beer in a coolship for 6 years (and outside of a coolship for way longer, when were b1 VSP & VSB released?) so they already have a brand (R&D) focused on that concept.

Wow, the Phase Three Straweberry-Lemon "nectar" was nuts. Not really recognizable as beer. Thick, viscous and practically pulpy. This is how they pour:

https://scontent.cdninstagram.com/v/t51.2885-15/e35/s1080x1080/108162061_357859465615902_4184306544832833492_n.jpg?_nc_ht=scontent.cdninstagram.com&_nc_cat=106&_nc_ohc=UsUOtTt-xFYAX9W2_Io&oh=9ba9f32b8300ae0a7129be85d78d47c3&oe=5F3C4C3A

if you're not, please keep them very cold. those guys are bombs waiting to go off.

this alcoholic fruit puree shit is insane

Everything is hot here right now, but at least they're in the basement closet. I've never had a can of anything blow up.

But yeah, it's like a cross between a sour and juice, more the latter but definitely super tart (at least the strawberry-lemon one was). it's as if a craft brewer saw someone drinking White Claw or Mike's Hard Lemonade or something and said, er, hold my beer.

5.4% fwiw

i would really, really encourage you to refrigerate them

I wish, no room.

Yeah, I've kept them in my partially submerged basement and had a few blow.

You're talking these beers, specifically? Is it the fruit? And do you mean ... blow up, like pop their top? Or just foam out of control when you pop the tab?

they blow up. the fruit puree is unfermented sugar. in warm conditions the yeast will reactivate and the cans will explode.

i've had infected stouts made by idiot local brewers blow up in my unfinished basement. it isn't fun, i don't recommend it.

this is from three days ago--brewery in question is very highly regarded and still this is happening with these fruit puree beers: https://www.pastemagazine.com/drink/craft-beer/exploding-beer-cans-trillium-450-north-fruit/

Huh. Sounds like (from what little I've just read) that this is really on the brewers, as really no one should be selling any cans at risk of popping. Regardless, while these are not the sort of beers I would want in my fridge at all times, I found room for most of the cans, which will encourage me to go through them faster. The remainder I nestled in a bag in case they explode. Most likely none of them will blow up, but at least I'm prepared. At the least sounds like they should be checked on occasionally. Though again, I've never had any beer explode, and there are some cans and bottles I've had in the basement for ... far too long.

you probably haven't had anything stored that contains fermentable sugar because up until recently brewers wouldn't release this stuff

Yeah, probably. Thanks for the heads up. I was reading some debate on the Beer Advocate Trillium thread, and people were defending them by saying the cans do say "keep cold, drink fresh," and people were responding that yeah, of course they say that, beer cans/brewers always say that, but it's never even implied " ... or the cans might explode." At least my wife likes these beers, so it won't all be on me. Unless they explode, of course.

Once the mainstream UK market became adjuncts instead of hops (I mean, why spend an eternity balancing a Vermont IPA when you can just chuck in lactose and fruit puree, right?), can swell and the risk of explosion be some a real issue.

Temperatures here rarely get above 30/85 degrees so the risk is lessened but I've still had cans that have been - allegedly - refrigerated through the whole supply chain that don't sit properly because the bottom of the can is bowed.

Apparently - and this is beer trade gossip only - one of the big supermarkets here had a mass explosion of a Brewdog delivery thanks to their thinner cans (to save money) on mass-market product. I'm skeptical but have seen it repeated.

I've been in a beer phase for the last couple of months, drinking a lot of IPAs, DIPAs, NEIPAs etc. in particular, usually bookended by some more sour stuff to start and darker beers to finish up on nights that I'm drinking. I've latched on to a few breweries...

Overtone (Glasgow) - especially for their seemingly endless selection of NEIPAs, DIPAs etc, though their Big Joe is also one of the best imperial stouts I've had.

Vault City (Edinburgh) - really great sour beers; balanced and complex with interesting flavours (had a Yuzu one last night and a Honeyberry last week) and way beyond all the disappointingly simplistic fruit juice-esque stuff one gets.

Pilot (Edinburgh) - everything I've had has been good, but I'm especially loving their North Sea Stout lately, which is made with liquorice and a bit of the North Sea in the recipe.

Full Circle (Newcastle) - had a few excellent hoppy beers from these folks, plus their recent imperial brown ale, Kodiak.

Verdant (Cornwall) - loads of really great hoppy beers. Where Does The Time Go? was a particular stand out for me.

Plus I still buy everything I can find from Basqueland (Basque Country, naturally), who I've been a big fan of for years. Their Coco Chango coconut porter is amazing.