Beer in the new era

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.

I had a few Basqueland beers (IPAs) when we were in Bilbao a few years ago and thought they were very good.

I have bought from far too many breweries during lockdown.

Of your above:

Vault City are amazing but far too difficult to get hold of. Their new drop today sold out completely just off the pre-sale so they broke up some boxes for long enough for 5 minutes of general sale. SIPA V2 (the hop-only one) was incredible.

Pilot are great but their Twitter presence is better than their beer (by a nose). Taproom is on my list for next month (assuming they're open).

Been on the Verdant (and Deya) bus for several years now, nobody better when you want a neipa but (both) a bit single-minded and similarly single-hour sellouts for new brew drops during lockdown.

Basquland very good and cosign on CocoChango which is probably their best.

Never pulled the trigger on Overtone but intend to rectify that when in Glasgow next month.

Full Circle are new to me, will check them out.

I've been on a lager kick and Donzoko (Hartlepool), Braybrooke (East Mids) and Utopian (Devon) have knocked it out of the park (although Donzoko have the same stock issues I complain about above).

6°North from Laurencekirk make some amazing Belgian style beers, and the Flemish Black is simply incredible.

Meanwhile, in my little corner of the world... West Coast IPAs... are now a thing again? What a bizarre last decade.

I'm visiting my family in Michigan's UP and scored some of this at the store. It was a nice beer but also the long distance between here and Sonoma makes it a little strange for me, conceptually.

Dry Kriek is our second collaboration with our winemaking friends in Sonoma County, and our first to be bottled for limited distribution.

This multidimensional beer began as a rustic red sour, laid down to age in French oak barrels previously filled with some of California’s.... pic.twitter.com/P5fFsv9QRc

— Upper Hand Brewery (@UpperHandBeer) April 17, 2020

Also to Al Broccoli's point, Upper Hand's basic green can IPA is very west coast and I like it.

xpost I think Michigan's wine country is not bad, and perhaps prettier than Sonoma, which was also a strange surprise to me.

Sonoma County esp. Dry Creek (nice pun Bells) produces some of the best wine in the world imho so that's a concept that I can get behind, esp. in conjunction with UP neighbor Door County, WI that produces the very best tart cherries in the Western Hemisphere.

Oh yeah it was a very good flavor for sure, just as an expat yooper the inclusion of California wine with a local brew is… surprising? Nothing that I would have expected to see as recently as five or ten years ago. The cherries make sense, as do the UP oats they're using for their hazebro beer.

I'm not a fan of the fruited IPAs generally. Fruited berliner-style sours can be good if they say away from smoothy territory. I've loved some of the co-fermentation "beers" that care a combination of beer, wine, and cider. I had some stuff from Jester King outside Austin that were incredible, like a spontaneously-fermented sour refermented with merlot grape juice/must that was just lovely.

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