What beer ya drinkin'?

[joe_papp]

I never realized how delicious beer could be until I discovered IPAs last year (was never a huge drinker, beer or otherwise). Last three beers I've had:

Today (6/19):
West Coast IPA | Green Flash Brewing Co. - https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/2743/22505/

last Saturday (6/17):
Bright | Tree House Brewing Company -
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/28743/213281/

last Friday (6/15):
Hop Nosh IPA | Uinta Brewing Company - https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/1416/73764/

Tree House doesn't have any distribution in Pennsylvania, so I've only had the Bright when in New England, or when my brother is back in Boston on business and brings some home (assuming it's available). We drank his last two cans this weekend after my niece's christening lol.

Both the Hop Nosh and West Coast IPA are readily available locally, so they're what I've probably bought most often in the past few months.

 

[froze]

I only drink dark, called stout beer, I don't like ale, or lager, or pilsner, or pale ale (the last three are the absolute worse, it's like drinking urine!).

My favorite beer brands (from what I can recall) is Russian Imperial Stout (my favorite), Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, Murphy's Irish Stout, Modelo Negra, New Castle Dark, Watneys dark, black IPA, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Goose Island BCBS Coffee Stout, that's about all I can remember, I have a list of others I've never had but would like to try but where I live or been too it's highly unlikely I'll find them since so far I haven't found them. I've tried milk stouts but didn't care for those.

 

[aphronesis]

Ruh roh.

 

[jmdirt]

I've been trying every pilsner I can find. They don't have as much "character" as other beers, but they are crisp and refreshing... good for 90 degree evenings. So far my favorite is Woodland Empire Bohemian Style Pilsner (brewed here in Boise, ID USA).

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

I only drink dark, called stout beer, I don't like ale, or lager, or pilsner, or pale ale (the last three are the absolute worse, it's like drinking urine!).

My favorite beer brands (from what I can recall) is Russian Imperial Stout (my favorite), Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, Murphy's Irish Stout, Modelo Negra, New Castle Dark, Watneys dark, black IPA, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Goose Island BCBS Coffee Stout, that's about all I can remember, I have a list of others I've never had but would like to try but where I live or been too it's highly unlikely I'll find them since so far I haven't found them. I've tried milk stouts but didn't care for those.

Every time I hear or read that, I wonder if they really know! :lol:

Just FYI: Stout (porter) are Ale (top fermenting). Lager (Pilsner) (bottom fermenting). So if you only drink stout beers, you drink ales. In the USA lager is too commonly associated with Butweiser and Coors which likely fit the description you gave!

 

[froze]

Re: Re:

I only drink dark, called stout beer, I don't like ale, or lager, or pilsner, or pale ale (the last three are the absolute worse, it's like drinking urine!).

My favorite beer brands (from what I can recall) is Russian Imperial Stout (my favorite), Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, Murphy's Irish Stout, Modelo Negra, New Castle Dark, Watneys dark, black IPA, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Goose Island BCBS Coffee Stout, that's about all I can remember, I have a list of others I've never had but would like to try but where I live or been too it's highly unlikely I'll find them since so far I haven't found them. I've tried milk stouts but didn't care for those.

Every time I hear or read that, I wonder if they really know! :lol:

Just FYI: Stout (porter) are Ale (top fermenting). Lager (Pilsner) (bottom fermenting). So if you only drink stout beers, you drink ales. In the USA lager is too commonly associated with Butweiser and Coors which likely fit the description you gave!

I'm sorry, were all or any of the beers I mentioned made by Budweiser or Coors, or even Busch which you left out?

I should have been more specific and just said color, my bad, but I can stand any beer that is lighter than dark brown.

 

[jmdirt]

Re: Re:

I only drink dark, called stout beer, I don't like ale, or lager, or pilsner, or pale ale (the last three are the absolute worse, it's like drinking urine!).

My favorite beer brands (from what I can recall) is Russian Imperial Stout (my favorite), Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, Murphy's Irish Stout, Modelo Negra, New Castle Dark, Watneys dark, black IPA, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Goose Island BCBS Coffee Stout, that's about all I can remember, I have a list of others I've never had but would like to try but where I live or been too it's highly unlikely I'll find them since so far I haven't found them. I've tried milk stouts but didn't care for those.

Every time I hear or read that, I wonder if they really know! :lol:

Just FYI: Stout (porter) are Ale (top fermenting). Lager (Pilsner) (bottom fermenting). So if you only drink stout beers, you drink ales. In the USA lager is too commonly associated with Butweiser and Coors which likely fit the description you gave!

I'm sorry, were all or any of the beers I mentioned made by Budweiser or Coors, or even Busch which you left out?

I should have been more specific and just said color, my bad, but I can stand any beer that is lighter than dark brown.

Bud and Bush are the same company. I don't think that you listed any made by B or C.

Have you tried:
http://www.crookedfencebrewing.com/brew-art/sins-of-our-fathers/

 

[aphronesis]

Goose Island is owned by Anheuser/InBev

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

Goose Island is owned by Anheuser/InBev

I can't keep up with all of the "micro" brews they are buying up. They recently bought one of our local brews too.

My point though was that when most USA people think of lager, they think of Bud and Coors (or the light versions) which IMO are not very good, but lagers can be brewed to be quite good. A local brew pub used to have a brown lager with a really tasty malt (too bad they were good beer makers but horrible business people because they went out of business).

 

[aphronesis]

I took your point. The post-prohibition damage done by the mass production majors was pretty extensive. For years my family would be sccandalized if I ordered "beer" at dinner because of those connotations. In general if you ordered an IPA in the 90s people thought of loutish plebs. Obviously things flipped at some point and it became overdeterminedly fashionable.

Just thought I'd throw out the InBev connection. Goose Island is solid and it's great the brewer has a mortgage and college funds for his kids, but I won't support A-B

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

I took your point. The post-prohibition damage done by the mass production majors was pretty extensive. For years my family would be sccandalized if I ordered "beer" at dinner because of those connotations. In general if you ordered an IPA in the 90s people thought of loutish plebs. Obviously things flipped at some point and it became overdeterminedly fashionable.

Just thought I'd throw out the InBev connection. Goose Island is solid and it's great the brewer has a mortgage and college funds for his kids, but I won't support A-B

One thing that I don't like about the fashionable flip, you nailed that, to IPAs is the contest to have high IBU. I prefer that they develop a "flavor" and then let the numbers fall where they will, but too many start with set numbers, and add hops to get to their number instead of working for balance. Don't get me wrong, a high IBU/big hop beer can be really good, but not if the only goal is high IBU. This really bothered me when it trickled into amber ales. IMO amber ales should be no higher than 30 IBU. Don't add hops just to be fashionable. Sockeye Brewing is one of my favorite locals and they have a really nice amber called Angles Perch. It has a sweet malt with a smooth hop follow (15 IBU). They also have Sockeye Salmon fish and chips battered with Angels Perch...very good!
http://sockeyebrew.com/big-six/

 

[aphronesis]

Yeah, Maier at Alaskan/Rogue probably helped set people on that IBU drive. I agree with having a nice golden that falls inside some set parameters. If someone naturally pushes it, fine. I haven't had Sockeye in a few years, but I agree it hits that spot. Anderson Valley, old school Pac hop, also do a nice golden. Maybe a little sweet.


Evil Twin/Lervig "Bigass Money Stout" 16%

Molasses, fig, cocoa head, bitter finish but no alcohol mouth. Should cellar well.

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

Yeah, Maier at Alaskan/Rogue probably helped set people on that IBU drive. I agree with having a nice golden that falls inside some set parameters. If someone naturally pushes it, fine. I haven't had Sockeye in a few years, but I agree it hits that spot. Anderson Valley, old school Pac hop, also do a nice golden. Maybe a little sweet.


Evil Twin/Lervig "Bigass Money Stout" 16%

Molasses, fig, cocoa head, bitter finish but no alcohol mouth. Should cellar well.

I had a Boont Amber from Anderson Valley last fall and enjoyed it (I had to go to their website to remember the name). I live one block from an old market (c. 1900) that is listed on the Anderson site so guess where I'll be going for lunch!
http://idahoarchitectureproject.org/s/1376/Roosevelt-Market

 

[sir fly]

 

[aphronesis]

Foret Noire, Swiss stout blended w//cherry wine and fermented cherris

 

[Tricycle Rider]

Bah, the usual, Widmer Brothers Hefe. Had a really nice beer last week, but *** if I remember what it was called. (I had already gone and recycled the bottles earlier today without paying attention to the name. D'oh!)

Btw. dad's fave Killian's Red is not a bad beer, but it's just a bit too watery for my taste.

 

[froze]

Re: Re:

I only drink dark, called stout beer, I don't like ale, or lager, or pilsner, or pale ale (the last three are the absolute worse, it's like drinking urine!).

My favorite beer brands (from what I can recall) is Russian Imperial Stout (my favorite), Guinness Foreign Extra Stout, Murphy's Irish Stout, Modelo Negra, New Castle Dark, Watneys dark, black IPA, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Goose Island BCBS Coffee Stout, that's about all I can remember, I have a list of others I've never had but would like to try but where I live or been too it's highly unlikely I'll find them since so far I haven't found them. I've tried milk stouts but didn't care for those.

Every time I hear or read that, I wonder if they really know! :lol:

Just FYI: Stout (porter) are Ale (top fermenting). Lager (Pilsner) (bottom fermenting). So if you only drink stout beers, you drink ales. In the USA lager is too commonly associated with Butweiser and Coors which likely fit the description you gave!

I'm sorry, were all or any of the beers I mentioned made by Budweiser or Coors, or even Busch which you left out?

I should have been more specific and just said color, my bad, but I can stand any beer that is lighter than dark brown.

Bud and Bush are the same company. I don't think that you listed any made by B or C.

Have you tried:
http://www.crookedfencebrewing.com/brew-art/sins-of-our-fathers/

Nope, never heard of the brand. I live in NE Fort Wayne and it's difficult to find a lot of the dark stuff here; there is some local stuff but not dark and not very good, but of course I only like dark so anything less than dark that I've ever tried taste nasty; note, I said that I have tried, obviously I haven't tried all the beers in the world there may be something pale that might taste good, I just haven't found it yet.

Look, before you hack me apart I am not a beer connoisseur, I don't sniff it, I don't analyze how it sets on my palate, I don't care about it's texture, or worry about how the head is. I simply go into a restaurant either in this country, or if i happen to be in some other country, and ask what their darkest beer is, and they may bring a sample, I've tried samples that were less than dark and had to pass, but I don't care about the brand as much as I care about the beer being dark, I'll try any brand in that regard, but most of my time I spend in Fort Wayne Indiana which isn't very diverse when it comes to different beers unless you like those flowery beers. I'm not big on having beer at home because I don't drink that much, I have maybe one beer once a month sometimes twice if I'm in a restaurant that I know has a beer that I like, and I never drink more than one glass. I actually prefer my beer a bit on the warmer side vs cold, because cold will mask true flavors in a beer, in fact cold will mask flavors of any drink including just plain water. I also don't drink any other type of alcoholic beverages, just dark beer. So I don't know what company owns who, and frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn, all I give a damn about is whether the beer is dark! LOL!

But if I should ever run into Crooked Fence Brewing beer I will, as I do whenever a new (to me) dark beer is available, I'll try it. Here in Fort Wayne the dark beer selection is rather limited, even at a large liquor store you can't find much, some of those ones I mentioned earlier were either in a different country or was in California where I use to live, I was shocked to find Russian Imperial Stout here, and in a pizza restaurant of all places, not even pubs here carry that, yeah I've been to pubs and walked out because they didn't have anything dark, a pub!...that's small town midwest America for you.

 

[jmdirt]

Just had a Pabst Blue Ribbon last night and it wasn't bad...by that I mean that it really doesn't taste like much of anything. My 80 year old neighbor was drinking one, and handed one to me so what the heck. That was my first PBR since maybe '85.

 

[aphronesis]

You live in a part of the country where no one could stretch the kirsch irony far enough to open new "hip" bars full of young guys wearing John Deere hats and drinking PBR for retro class subversion kicks. It was a sad moment that's thankfully past.

 

[Unchained]

I have had a chance to drink lots and lots and lots of beer over the last@6 weeks. Also lots of it in Ensenada. AguaMala has outstanding flavors.
On top of great beer they make a couple of crazy good food items..one is their Lamburgessa, which is some zany burger made with Baja lamb.. really good.The ceviche...is exceptional..it has some unusual spice(?) and also has some mystery leaf..not parsley, not cilantro but round like clover that makes the fish taste out of this world.. I normally have a Pilsner with my food. This place is made of stacked shipping containers were 75% of the view is of the open Pacific.
Another place right up the road is Transpenisular.It has a great selection, maybe 8 or 10 flavors that they brew on site. My Intel says that the master brewer came from Stone in San Diego..it would make sense because all varieties I have sampled are easy to drink and enjoy..
I was really pissed off with tropical storm Cindy..most of my interstate 10 plans were delayed and moved North Broadway I-20..I still got in some decent beer drinking with slightly less planning but the internet made discovery of good beer possible..
Drank good beer in Monroe Louisiana and Abilene Texas.. and Tucson had some good brew..
Not sure what selection I had at Pizzeria Bianco but the pie- beer combo was one of the only good things about riding a new motorcycle in @120 degree heat.. The beer also made @60-85 dollar chit hole hotels livable.. I had to extend my trip by @4 days due to not getting enough early miles in before heat became too much.
AguaMala.com.mx
confess.com
Another heavy hitter is Mamut, in Tijuana.. The place has solid offerings in both food and beer in a city I am not all that fond of..find myself passing thru from time to time..
I had lots of great food and drink in SF and when I attended the superbikes at Laguna Seca,
California Pizza Kitchen is sub standard

 

[jmdirt]

aphronesis, we have a place that has $.50 Oly cans on Wednesdays! There are a lot of people of all ages around these here parts who consume a lot of BL and CL at least in part because its not "craft".

Unchained, I was in TJ in '87 and it was disgusting, then again in '93 and it seemed worse. I recently watched a PBS show about how they are cleaning TJ up so that more tourists will come there instead of passing through. Plus they have a foodie movement going on in the revitalized areas. I have in-laws in Carlsbad so maybe next time I'm down there I'll try TJ again?

 

[Unchained]

TJ is better..but that's relative. San Diego has had a huge influence on Northern Baja beer culture. Mexico has experienced ultra growth in food and beverage.. everything. Mexicans working all over the planet and returning to try new stuff on an old culture.. it's working..
Carlsbad=Rouleur...
rouleurbrewing.com

 

[jmdirt]

Re:

TJ is better..but that's relative. San Diego has had a huge influence on Northern Baja beer culture. Mexico has experienced ultra growth in food and beverage.. everything. Mexicans working all over the planet and returning to try new stuff on an old culture.. it's working..
Carlsbad=Rouleur...
rouleurbrewing.com

In the late 70s and early 80s I used to go to Carlsbad to race moto. That track is now under 100,000 houses! Those in-laws moved from La Jolla (well from Idaho to Portland to La Jolla to CBad). I'll see if they know Rouleur, but they are wine folks.

 

[aphronesis]

Re:

aphronesis, we have a place that has $.50 Oly cans on Wednesdays! There are a lot of people of all ages around these here parts who consume a lot of BL and CL at least in part because its not "craft".

Unchained, I was in TJ in '87 and it was disgusting, then again in '93 and it seemed worse. I recently watched a PBS show about how they are cleaning TJ up so that more tourists will come there instead of passing through. Plus they have a foodie movement going on in the revitalized areas. I have in-laws in Carlsbad so maybe next time I'm down there I'll try TJ again?

"It's the water and not a lot more."Mickeys big mouth I could maybe get behind.

Seriously, I'm sure there are lots of places like that and I get the resentment and backlash.

My point was more that in the 00s you had trust fund kids and what not drinking PBR and wearing trucker hats (gas station shirts) because it was slumming retro chic.

 

[jmdirt]

Re: Re:

aphronesis, we have a place that has $.50 Oly cans on Wednesdays! There are a lot of people of all ages around these here parts who consume a lot of BL and CL at least in part because its not "craft".

Unchained, I was in TJ in '87 and it was disgusting, then again in '93 and it seemed worse. I recently watched a PBS show about how they are cleaning TJ up so that more tourists will come there instead of passing through. Plus they have a foodie movement going on in the revitalized areas. I have in-laws in Carlsbad so maybe next time I'm down there I'll try TJ again?

"It's the water and not a lot more."Mickeys big mouth I could maybe get behind.

Seriously, I'm sure there are lots of places like that and I get the resentment and backlash.

My point was more that in the 00s you had trust fund kids and what not drinking PBR and wearing trucker hats (gas station shirts) because it was slumming retro chic.

I try to avoid trustfunders...or maybe they avoid me! :lol: The tech douches (that's not all of the tech people) are still that way around here, they drive their Lotus to McD's and then grab a Coors Light at any place where other people can see them. A friend of mine calls those places "top knot hives"!