Sitting at the Goose Island pub in O’Hare. Don’t hang a Bourbon County Stout sign on the wall if you don’t actually sell it, your cowardly assholes.
I appreciate loving all IPAs, but man there are a lot I love more than Goose Island IPA.
This is true. But I will have one now and then.
This is about my strat. For me though, it’s more like I have one so infrequently I forget how bad it is, so I’m standing in the store thinking “Well, it’s Goose Island so it can’t be that bad”… and it is lower than my expectations. It also stings when you’re in the airport and realize it’s a ~$15 pint (iirc).
Man, I have the memory of a fruit fly because I keep falling for these NE IPAs, knowing that I really don’t like them.
Oh, Other Half is new to Ohio? Awesome - they seem really highly rated. I’ll buy a 4-pack of their flagship.
Yeah, it’s not very good. At all. And that’s before taking the chicken broth appearance into account.
What’s the date on the can? Just curious. I live near Other Half’s Finger Lakes location and get spoiled by their fresh stuff.
Yeah I was taken to the Other Half Brooklyn location by a friend and the 3 or 4 pints I tried were consistently excellent. Sorry your can fell short but that’s a place that generally meets the hype
Looks like 6/5/23, so freshness is definitely not an issue.
I’m not upset I didn’t like it, but I am upset that I was dumb enough to buy a 4-pack instead of a single when I know that I don’t generally like NE IPAs. I did buy one can of Broccoli, so maybe that will hit me better.
Goose Island IPA is my least favorite “normal” IPA I’ve ever had
Goose Island’s Beer Hug is my favorite beer ever
I have had many delicious Other Half beers.
In more positive news, I had a good beer on Father’s Day. I really enjoy Tilquin gueuze, but the question is, “How can you modify a traditional Belgian gueuze to please a middle-aged man with the palate of a 5-year old?”
Answer:
That’s right - add maple syrup. This has been around for a few years, and I’ve been casually looking for it but never happened upon it in person until a week ago. Seemed like a great choice for Father’s Day.
Verdict: Really good, but not enough of an upgrade over the standard gueuze to warrant the ~50% increase in price. The maple syrup was basically not detectable, and I think the primary result of its addition was to jack up the ABV–I could tell that it was slightly boozier than normal, but I was stunned to find out it was 10% alcohol. A fun experiment, and one that I’ll gladly drink again if offered, but I will not be purchasing again.
My local store (which is SOCIALISM because I live in Canada) has started carrying a lot more “orange” wines, this seems to be a bit of a trend.
They are really good with various foods that usually pair with more boring dry whites - curries, kimchi, Moroccan flavors all go great with this stuff. I’m a fan.
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The spidercrab family is on a European vacation right now. Mainly London and Paris, but we did spend a night in Belgium, and I got to stop by Cantillon. No time for a tour but the family indulged me while I had a drink in the tasting room (a bottle of 2020 Lou Pepe Kriek, which I guess is more than one drink). The only reason I’m posting is that the server was incredibly surly, which led to the following hilarious interaction with the guy in front of me:
Guy in front of me: Do you have flights?
Surly server without any hint of amusement: No. This is not an airport.
Anyway the bottle was very good and made me think I should drink more of my lambic rather than letting it go to waste in my basement.
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Need to pick up some good Belgian lambics again. It’s been awhile.
Also recently went home for a trip to Norway and brought a bunch of Napa/sonoma wines to share with friends and family while we were there. I must say I really enjoy the silver oak Alexander valley wines. I think I prefer them over their Napa location and they’re a decent bit cheaper. Also love the wines from dry creek winery near Healdsburg.
Standard service in Europe.
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We had a similar experience at Cantillon around five years ago. I was standing in front of the counter, reading the board, and I said (sort of to myself and sort of to the counter guy) “no Fou Foune?”
The guy said “do you see it up there? No? Then we don’t have it”
I just sort of rolled my eyes. They had just about everything else, we hooked up with some other people so we could split bottles and tried them all. Loved the bottle serving baskets. Had a great time
This is really the way to do it. I was there with my lame family, and even though my wife gamely tried a glass of the Lou Pepe Kriek, it was definitely always going to be a single bottle affair. In contrast, there was another table in the room with 5 American guys just passing around 6-10 different bottles. It looked awesome. I am a very introverted person, but if there’s another Cantillon visit in my future, I’d feel pretty comfortable asking if I could join a table like that and participate in the sharing. I think it’s pretty likely most tables would say yes (assuming that I added to the bottle collection, obviously).
I am sad to report another failed Other Half experiment:
Like with Green City, I knew after just a couple of sips this wasn’t for me. It’s about time for me to accept that there’s something about these hazy beers that I can’t stand. At least it didn’t go entirely to waste - I used it to make a few fruit fly traps. (We’ve been infested with them recently.)
As a replacement, I opened this from Revolution:
Oh man, look at that clarity. This was great and I’m close to the point where I can say that Revolution is my favorite brewery. Certainly if I still lived in Chicago I’d be crushing Revolution nonstop. More classic West Coast IPAs and Double IPAs, please.
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I just noticed a local store carries a bunch of different 3 Fonteinen. Do you have any experience with them? I bought an elderberry Tilquin but passed on the Fonteinen.
