Beer in the new era

I bought Small Green Everything and Space Diamond. Prices were at the very very upper end for something not barrel aged or anything. Doubt they can be good or special enough to make me want to pay that again, but I imagine they will be good.

Space Diamonds is one of my favorites. It's all or mostly galaxy hop. As I said above, Broccoli is one of my absolute favorites.

huh, I would consider Tree House the ground zero for hazebroze. Other Half's flagship beer up until a couple years ago was Green Diamonds (which used to be a malt-forward IPA, but it looks like it's been retooled quite a bit since I first had it 5+ years ago).

Other Half reminds me of an East Coast version of Monkish, massive focus on branding and very loyal to trends/hype with reliable beer. I had the Other Half anniversary beer which was a (stick with me) bananas foster inspired BA stout... but it was really well done in that late '10s style long-boil/"thicc", heavily-adjuncted stout.

Yeah, Tree House was definitely a little earlier than Other Half, perhaps along with Hill Farmstead and maybe Tired Hands (milkshake IPA originator). I'm not sure anyone so totally embodies the hazebro mentality as Other Half though (at least the private equity hazebro mentality).

Monkish cans I had a couple years ago were amazing, but I was less wowed when I visited the brewery last fall. Might have been my mood though. I can definitely see the similarities to OH, but OH's philosophy can be summed up with, "more hops".

Has anyone been to Forest & Main in Ambler, PA? One of the coolest breweries around. Two dudes: one brews farmhouse ales (especially barrel-aged saisons); the other brews hand-pulled English-style bitters and stouts in the 3-5% abv range. The latter are some of my favorite beers ever.

i've had some of their stuff - it's good. we're blessed w/ an abundance of good breweries (and great beer distribution has gotten really impressive around here) in PA. have u had bullfrog or pizza boy? both make fantastic memorable sours.

a huge portion of the o.g. treehouse fanbase is like plumbers from northern connecticut, so i feel like true hazebro culture originated elsewhere

hazebro culture: Tree House King Julius b1 (I think?) was the first time I saw people trading fruited lambic for IPAs.

have u had bullfrog or pizza boy? both make fantastic memorable sours.

I have had pizza boy beers, including a great IPA called, "Spandex, Glitter & Ego", at Al's of Hamden. Never had pizza boy sours and never heard of bullfrog.

Pizza boy brewer iirc was bullfrog brewer before starting pizza boy my faves of his are this blueberry sour that is v intense and hoptart which is v hoppy and v sour alas I rarely get over there bc it’s outside Harrisburg and the stuff that comes to Philly are all IPAs I haven’t seen any of their sours on tap here

I will keep an eye out for pizza boy and bullfrog sours. I did order a couple 4-packs of Tired Hands since I am visiting my parents for the first time in 7 months.

One thing that I have thought about is that I love the brewery-direct model that a lot of the Tired Hands, Trillium, Tree House, Other Half, etc. use. Theoretically it's an American version of the English/German model where you drink the local beer that's brewed within a 30-miles and there is variation of styles from region to region. That's why it's a little bit of a bummer that IPAs (first, West Coast, then, NE) have become so ubiquitous because it reduces that regional variation. Regardless, pre-coronavirus, one of my favorite things was to check out the local breweries when traveling.

*30-mile radius

Other Half's Space Diamonds was excellent. Small Green Everything was just OK.

I love it when my favorite but distressingly creative and prolific breweries release something like a maple stout (in summer) or a triple IPA, because that makes it easier to take the week off. Kind of like when the New Yorker drops its fiction double issue.

https://t.co/typBftZB5d pic.twitter.com/HoqbgGVSO1

— Worst Beer Blog (@WorstBeerBlog) August 31, 2020

Today Surly announced they're laying off their entire hospitality staff and closing their taproom. This TOTALLY ISN'T A RESPONSE TO UNIONIZING EFFORTS allegedly, and is due to covid/winter/etc excuses. Super gross imo.

yup, gross

A Surly employee tells @CityPages the company hired about 12 new employees at the brew hall in the last couple weeks, some were still in training when the layoffs/closure announcement came down https://t.co/qSPQb024MC

— Matt DeLong (@mattdelong) September 2, 2020

Are there any notable union shops in the craft beer world? I feel like there must be but I'm drawing a blank. I should probably just google.

That does seem pretty gross and like very suspicious timing. Tried to go there twice when I was in Minneapolis last summer, but the wait was ridiculous both times. It made sense the first time since we stupidly tried during a dinner rush, but the second time was 3:30 on like a Tuesday afternoon and there was still a two plus hour wait.

anchor has a union iirc

While not a union, Modern Times is an employee-owned ESOP cooperative.

^^^I wondered about that, they've done a bunch of collaborations with Fair State

there's a new(ish) Brewer in Rhode Island, FOOLPROOF BREWING. I tried their IPA yesterday and really liked it. Good flavor, not syrupy, not over-hopped.
I love almost everything Foolproof has put out. Peanut Butter Raincloud!

i think they are for sale if you are interested.

makes the choice of twin cities beer even easier

https://fairstate.coop/news/we-are-americas-first-unionized-microbrewery/

One bottle of Sam Adams Utopias at my local, only $249. That seems too expensive for a pleb like me to contemplate.

It would be one thing if that beer tasted good, it is absolutely not worth the price of admission imho.

sam adams makes $250 bottle of beer?

The midwest (or at least Chicago) seems to like its beers on the sweet side, so while I think a lot of breweries are killing it when it comes to NEIPAs, the beers I find to be sometimes just a little too much. I do like it, then, when breweries try to emulate/replicate other regional beers, just to mess with different flavor profiles. Phase Three, for example, recently released an excellent beer called Terrazzo, which (as I understand it, based on the hops used) was kinda its take on a west coast IPA a a Pliny, and this week they released Blue Hour, a "Vermont-style double IPA," so you know what they're going for there. Drinking that one right now, though both were excellent, with more bitterness than a lot of the brews P3 and Hop Butcher (my other local fave these days) have been releasing. Revolution really seems to be doing great here, too, with tons of interesting one-offs and experiments along with their regulars. What a glorious time to drink beer.

A buddy of mine sent me cans of MORE Morever IPA which was very well balanced plus some Revolution Ryeway To Heaven (have yet to open). Thank you Chicago!

Yeah, the old brewer from MORE moved on to found Phase Three, I think, but I've heard that More has kept it together in his wake. Revolution's barrel aged stouts are all great, btw, no stinkers.

IIRC that was the brewer who was early on brewing thiccc stouts at RAR before getting poached to More?

i’ve got a local snooty beer bar with one of those can machines, it’s great. never seen them before! whatever they’ve got on tap that you want, they will put in a can, for about a pound cheaper than you’d pay to sit in. by the time i get home the condensation on the can has eroded whatever they’ve written on the can do i never remember what one bought and which ones i should buy again.

Man, Ryeway is so good. Just saying.

Also, keep not buying Surly if it's an issue where you are.

sam adams makes $250 bottle of beer?

It’s almost more of a spirit. Uncarbonated, served ambient temperature, close to 30% abv, and it ages well- even after opening. When I have a bottle in the house, I keep it tucked away and bring it out for special occasions or sharing a nip with friends. It lasts for months or even years that way, and it’s a delight to the very end. But, full disclosure, I work for the company.

A lot of gossip flying around this weekend about The Bruery, essentially their equity partner couldn't make their loan payments to the bank, so the bank auctioned it off and it sold for $3M. The equity partner is out ~$40M, the bank is out ~$17M. Patrick Rue (founder) had the opportunity to outbid the $3M offer and he passed. In 2015 they were assessed at around $100M.

Reminds me of when Ballast Point was sold to PE in 2015 for $1B and then they bought back to a virtually unknown brewery in Chicago last year for $75M.

Personal interjection... I've got some The Bruery coming next week or the week after - bought a couple of their 'I’ve got Friends in the Music Business' barrel aged blends (collaboration with Brouwerij Frontaal). I haven't bought much/any US stuff before as the prices can be fierce here in the UK, certainly for the well renowned stuff, but these were ok and seem like they should suit winter drinking well.

fwiw those fruited beers I bought over the summer never exploded, but at the same time, they were kind of gross, so they're just sitting around in the fridge.

Some new info here plus some bits I've seen elsewhere

https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/ancient-beer/

Man I've really been slacking on beer this year, with brewery visits out and reduced shopping options. Still been supporting our locals, but since I haven't felt comfortable enough to actually go in any of them I've been limited to their (mostly) reduced offerings for to go and delivery.

Been really into Hop Butcher stuff that a store keeps getting in though.

You really can't wrong with Hop Butcher except when they go too far afield with some red flag brew (like, graham cracker blackberry banana apricot fruit punch milkshake double IPA, or some shit). Most of their stuff is variations on a really palatable NEIPA flavor profile. Been drinking some great stuff from Saint Errant, Pipeworks and Phase Three as well, locally, plus of course Revolution and Half Acre keep churning out great stuff. Rev's Deth's Tar has been popping up in stores, and for my money they've surpassed Goose Island on the barrel-aged front, plus selling it in four-packs of 12oz cans is a much better way to buy/drink that stuff. They have great curbside service, too.

Yeah I've had some awful milkshake stuff in the past, so I've been hesitant to try any of that from Hop Butcher.

If I lived in your fair city I would be supporting Off Color & Revolution as much as possible.

I do support Rev as much as possible and Josh reminds me that I def need to go pick up some Deth's Tar before things clamp down again. I gotta admit that I find Off Color to be really hit and miss for me.

plz support Metropolitan Brewing as well, a v good friend of mine works there and they (the business) are in a very precarious spot

(my opinion of Off Color is much the same, the price paid for being so experimental I guess)

I use untappd religiously to track every unique beer I consume; I've added only five or six since march.

Same here joygoat, I started 2020 needing only about 20 more beers to get to 1,000 unique beers and I'm still 6 or 7 away.

i'm at 989 right now and THIS WAS GONNA BE THE YEAR

Just checked and I'm closer than I thought, but still 996.

I have trouble getting excited about Bourbon County Stout, since the regular seems to stick around for months now, the rare stuff vanishes in advance, and the rest of them that I come across always seem a little gross or unappealing (especially for the price). Meanwhile, Revolution's barrel-aged program keeps, well, barreling along. I'm not sure if it's an annual thing, but Deth By Cherries made another appearance this year, and I just scored a 4-pack at the local store for a pittance, since it hadn't been priced yet. "The rest of them are around $25, is that OK?" Yes please.