lowering the bar here, but tried Dead Guy Ale yesterday, which is my first (knowingly) taste of Maibock style beer. Was pretty impressed. I don’t like sweet beers but this was somewhat balanced by the heavy hops. Not sure it will be my go-to beer, but rare for me to find a non-IPA that I like a lot.
Also some kickass can design.
For a while this was very common in Toronto but i don’t see it around much anymore. It’s a good beer.
Yea dead guy is great
Well I suppose. But we don’t have gas in town and so we would have to have a propane tank installed and plumbed, which isn’t cheap.
Also, although we do purchase moderately expensive wines, the rest of our household budget is fairly modest. We drive inexpensive cars until they die, we don’t own boats and campers and skidoos, we still live in the “starter” house we bought almost 20 years ago, etc. I think the saying is you can generally afford anything, but you can’t afford everything. (And I know this doesn’t apply to a lot of people who struggle just to make ends meet. Which included us until the last couple of years.)
I’m an avowed beer “enthusiast” and one of my favorite things to do is travel to breweries and maybe do a tour, check out the operation, whatever, and then drink their beer “at the source.”
A couple years ago I went to Rogue in Newport, OR. I really enjoy perusing the beer list and planning out a tasting flight. One of the biggest criteria is trying things that aren’t available back home.
Rogue had a ton of stuff that doesn’t get distributed so it was great. Honestly don’t recall all the details on these beers but I remember enjoying them.
And whoever invented the crowler is a goddam genius.
Oregon coast is beautiful as well. Newport is kinda meh but has this cool bridge spanning Yaquina Bay.
I can’t honestly say that Rogue is in my top 5 breweries but they still make some pretty darn good beer. Visiting the source of the beer always leaves me feeling like I “get” the beer a lot more–like there’s a common thread that runs through all of their offerings–and you can grok it in its fullness that way.
We do this too.
We find breweries wherever we travel. I could probably fill a Trump-length thread with pictures from every place we’ve gone and had a taster flight. Lost Abbey here at home is still my favorite craft brewery, but we’ve found great stuff all over the place.
I tried this from your home town last week, was very impressed. I know it’s basic stuff but pretty damn good ipa to get from walmart.
heh, Karl Strauss is like the Coors of San Diego craft beer, but that’s ok. A lot of the best stuff isn’t distributed anywhere outside of CA or the southwest.
If you can find any of Stone’s stuff, they are big on IPAs. I’m not a huge IPA fan, but San Diego kind of specializes in it, so you can’t swing a dead cat around here without hitting a beer that tastes like unsweetened grapefruit.
that was kinda weirdly condescending. this is highly regarded for a mid-size brewery.
But that’s okay, you like Echo and the Bunnymen, who are the coors light of british post-punk :)
I am a craft beer snob. I freely admit it. Also, Stone has more than just their “Stone IPA”. Get your hands on a Ruination or Enjoy By if you can.
Better yet, try a Sculpin from Ballast Point if you can find that (I’m pretty sure they distribute nationally).
Jbro. I love Champagne and talked to a bunch of Champagne ‘experts’ over the years and most of them said Champagne doesn’t age. Meaning the only reason to keep 2008 vintage is because it was a great vintage but it wont actually taste better over time. Also means all the older great vintages are no longer special because a 2008 beats them all now until the next great vintage comes along.
I never cellared Champagne so what is your opinion on this.
I live in California ffs. I had Sculpin, it’s good.
I think most of the Champagne houses say their stuff is ready to drink upon release, which is different than saying it won’t change or improve with age. People will have preferences for younger versus older, (my preference is slightly toward younger at the moment), but there is no doubt that it further changes with age and it develops more tertiary flavors while losing some of the fruit and the acid integrating a bit and becoming more mellow in many cases.
Just an example, here are 3 consecutive reviews of 2008 Dom Perignon posted on CellarTracker within about the last week. (There are hundreds of reviews and you will find a general consensus that this is expected to improve with age and become one of the great Champagnes from a great vintage.)
I’ve tried one bottle so far and agree with the general consensus that this needs time. The rest of my stash I’m probably going to give about 5 years or so and then see how it’s developed. Most likely I’ll drink all of mine within about 20 years while some people will plan to age this for 30-50 years.
However, people should drink stuff whenever it suits their tastes imo. If they think it’s at its peak upon release then there is no reason to wait.
We get Stone “enjoy by” beers in Toronto every once in a while. Great stuff.
Tonight I shared a bottle of 2011 Bruno Giacosa Spumante Extra Brut with my wife. This is a Blanc de Noirs (100% pinot noir) white sparkling wine from Italy. I’ve been trying some examples of Spumante and Cremant d’Alsace (France) looking for reasonably priced sparkling wines.
This was pretty good. The nose was citrus and bread with a slight hint of berries. I could taste citrus and strawberry and maybe something which reminds me of rose petals. (I’ve never chewed on a rose petal but what I think it might taste like.) It kind of tastes a little synthetic though - a touch like perfume, which reminds me a bit of a still Rose’ wine. It’s probably the pinot noir giving it that profile. There is also has a slight bitter note on the finish.
Non-vintage champagne won’t improve with age, it’s blended to be drunk now. With vintage champagnes it just depends on the wine, as it does with other wines. Years ago when I was best man at a friend’s wedding I bought a bottle of 1996 vintage Krug, which at 600 AUD (400 USD) retail is still the most expensive wine I have ever personally bought. We drank it the morning of the wedding and it was probably also the clearest-cut instance of brutal vinfanticide I have ever committed. It was insanely acidic and wanted like 20 years in a cellar to calm down. The wine is intended to be made that way though.
Side note, I think aging wine is overrated in general. Although the best wines you ever have are very likely to be aged wines, a lot of modern wines aren’t built for it and my strike rate on trying to improve wines by aging them is well south of 50%, with a very very low number of them ever getting really great. These days I regard cellaring wine as gambling and so tend to mostly cellar Pinot Noir, where short term cellaring can get good results.
I do quite a bit of research when deciding which wines to buy and then how long I expect to hold them. In a lot of cases, I’m holding for only a couple to a few years. I don’t have too many that I intend to hold for more than 10-20 years - maybe about 100 bottles at this point. As I gain experience, I’m also able to make my own judgments. But I’m very rarely buying wines that are meant to be drunk immediately, unless those wines already have some age on them, or I know they were made to drink immediately and I intend to drink them immediately. (i.e. - I try to only age wines that need aging.)
I also know people who age certain NV Champagnes. While they are blended to drink upon release, they will change with age, as all wines will. It’s a matter of personal preference if the change is for the better or for the worse.
Rogue is owned by terrible people don’t drink them
Tiki culture never really died in San Diego. Some of the boomers I play poker with have been obsessed with it since long before it became trendy again.
