Damn. I’m not ashamed to admit I’m jealous. Cheers!
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Worth it to buy for a possible blue wave celebration or end of the world luau? From my local beer shop twitter account
I don’t really like it that much. It’s completely flat (by design) and tastes like watered down gueuze to me. Some people absolutely rave about it, but the people that do generally talk about it excelling after significant aging. So even if you fall in the group of people who might like it, I think you might be less likely to enjoy it fresh rather than aged. I have a few bottles that I’m hoping I’ll like more if I age them for a few years.
That being said, Cantillon of any type is hard to find on the shelf, and it’s always fun to open a hard-to-find beer, particularly a lambic where your experience is going to be pretty hard to predict. I haven’t seen Cantillon on the shelf here for like 8 years, and Grand Cru is, in my experience, harder to find than the core trio of Gueuze, Kriek, and Rose de Gambrinus. So if you were to take the attitude of “I auto-buy any Cantillon I see in the store”, it would be hard to blame you. If it were me, I’d buy the bottle for election night with the attitude of “This is going to be a crazy night with lots of ups and downs, so I’m going to open a beer that I may love or I may hate, but it’s gonna be different from most other beers I try, and I’m gonna make this night memorable.”
(I feel compelled to point out that I had a Cantillon Fou Foune ready to go for Election Night 2016, but that plan was abandoned when things went south. So I’m sure as shit not planning on anything Cantillon related this year.)
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damn that’s a good answer. thanks.
Speaking of gueuze, I recently dipped into some 3F that I recently purchased from Belgium. The 3 bottles I’ve tried in the last week:
Oude Geuze Vintage - Absolute banger of a beer. As I understand it, 3F makes regular batches of standard geuze, but sometimes holds back a portion that they believe is particularly noteworthy or well-suited for aging. So my expectations for this are substantially higher than for a standard geuze. In this case, this crushed my expectations. I am a terrible describer, but this was like a richer, deeper version of geuze in the same way that Tilquin Geuze^2 is. (I absolutely love Geuze^2.)
When I bought my most recent pack from Belgium, it contained 4x of 3 different beers, and this one was the beer that drove that purchase. I’ve got 3 bottles left, but I’m very tempted to buy another box just to get 4 more.
Oude Geuze Platinum - Actually, when I bought my most recent pack, it was 2 separate boxes: the 4x3 I described above, and a separate 4x3 where this bottle was the featured hard-to-get bottle that drove the purchase. This is like the next generation of 3F Golden Blend, which I’ve really liked in the past. What makes this different is that it’s a blend of 1-, 2-, 3-, and 4-year lambic, where the standard geuze only has 1-, 2-, and 3-year. For whatever reason, this bottle didn’t really wow me, and I’m not really tempted to order more. If you had just poured it blind, I would have assumed it was a standard geuze and thought it was fine. But the higher cost isn’t worth it. Maybe I’ll change my mind after trying a 2nd bottle.
This is one of the other bottles that came in the 4x3 pack with the Vintage bottle that I loved so much. This is a regular geuze, but it was aged in Amontillado sherry barrels, which I thought sounded cool. But ultimately, the barrels just seemed to make a drier version of geuze, which I didn’t really love. Didn’t hate, but didn’t love it. So this dampened my desire to reorder that first box a little bit. I think what’s going to happen is that I’m going to hem and haw about it, then after drinking one or two beers I’m just going to pull the trigger and pretend it was a drunken mistake even though it was entirely intentional.
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New England based you may be able to find:
Smuttynose Finestkind
Stoneface Brewing is a smaller New Hampshire brewer that makes several good IPAs. I don’t know if you’d ever see them, but I wanted to mention them in case you happen to stumble on them.
Lord Hobo Boom Sauce
Maine Beer Company Lunch
Clown Shoes Hoppy Feet - Black IPA, really bitter, they’re my favorite.
More National:
Cigar City Jai Alai that cuserounder mentioned
Bell’s Brewery Two Hearted Ale.
Dogfishead 90 minute. 60 minute is really good too, just less bitter.
Lagunitas IPA
Ballast Point Sculpin - I prefer the original to the grapefruit
Thanks. Can only get Clown Shoes in MN I’ll look for their black. Will have to try some of the other nationals again haven’t had a 2 hearted in years.
I’m trying to think if I’ve ever picked up a random MN area beer that I really liked. I think mostly out here we just see Bell’s and Founders from that MN/MI/WI region.
I need Founders to bring back Dark Penance.
Oh, there’s a beer I really like they make in Iowa I bet you can find, Pseudo Sue from Toppling Goliath. I can never get that where I live.
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Even better than that is King Sue, if you can find it.
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Yeah you can find Toppling Goliath in MN and it’s good stuff. Best MN beers aren’t really distributed outside the state or the upper mid-west area. hell one of the best breweries (Dangerous Man) doesn’t even sell outside their brewery and you can only get growlers and crowlers
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You’re in…New Hampshire? I’m in Boston and can get Pseudo Sue in stores and on draft.
So, depending on how far you want to drive…
ETA - bink
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Yeah, I picked it up initially in Mass, I’m just not swinging into beer stores down there all that often. After I posted about it I went to the brewery website and searched for any NH stores, and they showed two, but they were mistakenly labeled NH and are actually in CT.
Damn good beer, I should make a special stop some time.
Blessed your heart.
The agave makes it fancy.
Revolution Deth’s Tar, a Chicago staple. Easily on par with or better than GI BCS. This year’s entry is not a disappointment.
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So, champagne for Tuesday or straight whiskey?
Yes.
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