Trying Pliny the Elder for the first time. Good beer.
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Nice. It’s on my short list of perfect beers.
Just an FYI - plan on being there this year by end of September or you might catch everybody right at harvest and it will be hard to secure tastings at the small owner operated places.
Thanks for the warning. Unfortunately, our trip is set around our anniversary and when we can get time off (the, like, one and only downside to MrsWookie switching jobs for a massive pay raise), so I think we’ll just be trying to take what we can get when pickins are slim.
So, what’s on the list?
We’ve got Pliny the Elder and IIRC Weihenstephaner. What else?
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Westvleteren 12 is on it. And, like, honestly I have to concede that Bud Light is perfect at what it sets out to do. I’m not sure if I’ve had a perfect imperial stout. They are so extreme as a style that I’m not sure I’ve had one that isn’t “too…something.”
I’m adding Ayinger Marzen to the perfect beer list for me.
I’m trying to wrap my head around a dark beer to add, but having issues. Samuel Smith Oatmeal Stout might be it, but if I’m not sure then maybe it auto doesn’t count?
A dark beer that I never really drink but I nonetheless think is kind of perfect is Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald Porter. It’s a 6% beer so it’s light enough to drink year round, but still offers a delicious roasty/malty taste. Having written this, I will continue to not drink it (or Great Lakes’ delicious lagers) for no good reason.
Suck?
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rochefort 10 hits my palette just right (also I haven’t had westvleteren 12 in a while) so I’ll swap it in for my neoplatonic quad. Five years ago I would have put bourbon county stout in the team photo but then half my bottles turned into yamaroku kikubisiho and anyway it was always embarrassing getting so bombed so fast
no beer exchanges + west coast = I’ve still never tried most of the east coast stuff that was killing it on beer advocate back in the day (heady topper, julius, etc). I’m guessing those are all still super tasty but also that the whole beer world got so good so fast that they seem less life-changing? But who knows: pliny is still absolutely my go-to for at least 35% of all beer situations, I love it. And I weep for my fake id years drinking keystone. This is dumb but my gateway beer was an on-tap fuller’s london porter, aaah it was so good, I’d be afraid to try another one now because meddling with nostalgia is sad and also because sitting at a bar drinking a jet black beer no longer makes me feel like Indiana Jones riding a tiger shark
also you guys have better palettes than I do; of course I love eating & drinking the kind of fantastically fine things that vikings and comanches would have fought wars over but the truth is I’d be pretty unfazed by a twenty-year prison cafeteria stretch. For example right now am eating a handful of trader joe’s cinnadragons that I’m going to follow with a dessert of trader joe’s super sour scandinavian swimmers and the whole thing is really really working, so it’s possible that the triangle test I’m planning tonight of westy’s 12 vs roch 10 would be less wasted on yall
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Because of this outstanding post, I’m now resolved to drinking 2 Plinys tonight.
Once I get out of this stupid meeting, I’m driving directly to the beer aisle.
You can buy pliney in an aisle?
Yes, but I am currently about 20 miles from the brewery. The further away you get, the less likely you are to find it in the aisle (duh).
You can get Happy Hops and Blind pig in Southern CA, but Pliny isn’t around.
bay um areans can enjoy unlimited pliny the elder at whole foods and prob elsewhere, tho unlimited is the wrong word because you can’t buy more than six ~17oz bottles at a time of any specific russian river beer. Pliny and some of the wild ales (e.g. supplication) are always in the rotation for me. The plinys for sure seem better when they’re fresh but I have a gullible palette.
have recently been in a bitter phase; just got sucked back into in my triennial adventure to really nail a negroni. Current leader in the clubhouse is: 1.4 martin miller’s gin : 1 cocchi : 1 campari. My desert island sweet vermouth is carpano antica but cocchi seems sweeter which works for balance?
my 2022 technological breakthrough was using 1" ice cubes instead of 1.25" ones or some other larger trendier vengeful shape that can’t fit right in a rocks glass
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I bought a new bottle of liquor from the shop that has become my favorite local distiller. They were at the farmer’s market pouring samples, and this was both good and a surprise. According to the woman working there, it’s distilled from “corn,” but I’m not sure if it’s 100% corn, 51% corn, or somewhere in between. I didn’t press. It is aged in spent, uncharred oak barrels that have previously held pinot noir. It is unsweetened, and it’s 94.86 proof (yes, we are given 4 significant figures). What is this liquor marketed as?
What is it?
- Brandy
- Whisky
- Gin
- Whiskey
- Cordial
- Rum
- Vodka
- Other
0 voters
Whiskey is distilled from any malted grain right? Could be a vodka too I suppose but that’s not generally aged
Yes. Usually barley, corn, or rye. American bourbon whiskey must be at least 51% corn, and American rye at least 51% rye.
I’m going with moonshine.
Here is the answer, btw. This was being marketed as a vodka, despite being a barrel aged, high proof, corn distillate. It tasted like a slightly lesser version of the pinot noir barrel aged American whiskey (the stuff I was there to buy from them in the first place) for about half the price. So, I while I will mock their marketing on the internet, I will enjoy the product nevertheless.
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