Had a few of these on the fourth:



Really excellent red ale. Normally the style is just sort of there for me but this one was extremely malty, with some slight sweetness, but well-balanced by a decent bit of hops and some slightly tangy rye. It was so well-balanced that it was extremely easy-drinking stuff even at 8%. Downed a bunch of those as well as a 750ml bottle of Unibroue La Fin du Monde, which was as tasty as always. I'll still grumble about not being able to get Three Floyds around here, but that Finch's stuff is at least some sort of start in terms of getting great Chicago-area beers in the DC area.

Its a lazy Sunday with all of the buds out of town and a light wallet so I picked up a 12 pack of the old friend PBR. Not as bad as I remember it being, but I think would havve enjoyed some piss American Bud a bit more. Guess I will throw some bezoz and bud to make this a little more enjoyable.

Can anyone recommend a Pumpkin Stout that's available on the West Coast?

You have about 6-8 weeks before Pumpkin beers start appearing on shelves. Both Elysian and Alaskan usually have dark pumpkin beers that are relatively easy to find in the West.

Went to a cool Czech/German/Belgian restaurant for lunch today and had two good liters:

Praga Dark Lager - Dark Czech lager that was really tasty. Easy-drinking but really malty, a bit sweet and quite fruity. Basically imagine a really robust porter or English stout or something, minus much of the roastiness and with a relatively light body. I can't imagine how much of this stuff I could put away if I really put my mind and liver to it.

Poperings Hommel Bier - Jeeesus. Essentially the best imaginable hybrid of an English IPA and a yeasty, effervescent Belgian pale ale. Still fairly creamy after the carbonation dies on your tongue but not really rich per se - immensely quaffable and extremely well-rounded. I've never even seen this stuff in bottles but man was it tasty.

Lolwut I can understand the cuisinary overlap between German and each of the other two, but Czech and Belgian? What's common to them?

I tried Peroni Nastro Azzurro the other day (if I spelled that right). It was really good in the mouth giggity, but there was almost no after taste and it kinda jingled my "cheap brew" bell, gishmoigity, much like Budweiser does. It also gave me some wicked bad diarrhea. I really wanted to try one I saw called "Dead Guy Ale", because dead stuff and ale. But y'know... I'm 'tarded.

The three most important countries for beer culture and history. I don't think there's that much overlap between Belgian and German cuisine either.

Yeah, it's mainly a beer place (the name is, after all, "Tyber Bierhaus"). The manager is actually a Lithuanian woman, hah. The cuisine ranged from goulash (Czech style) to pierogis to pastrami, sausages and schnitzel. Anyway many of the dishes and most of the beers available there aren't at all common to find on taps here in the US so I'm willing to completely forgive the strange combination of cuisines.

The beer conquest continues! Had some interesting Stone beers today:

Collective Distortion IPA - Big piney, resinous imperial IPA but being brewed with elderberries and coriander definitely gave this thing an up-front spice kick with a bit of fruity sweetness on the back end that mingled really interestingly with the monster hops. I'd be interested in trying a similar IPA that wasn't so hops-forward just to get a bit more of those other flavors going on, but this was definitely worth a shot.

Saison - Pretty basic style of beer but surprisingly I'd never had Stone's take on it before. Really tasty though - they nailed the yeasty funk and peppery notes but there's plenty of malt and sweetness. Excellent session beer, this.

Sprocketbier - Alright, this was a fuckin' weird one but I really liked it. They're calling this thing a Kolsch, which it absolutely was in terms of body and mouthfeel and general easy-drinkingness, but this thing was nearly pitch black - lots of roasted, almost smoky malt and a bit of cutting rye but somehow neither of these things overwhelmed the easygoing...Kolschness...of the beer. Definitely a strange experiment but I thought it worked really well.

Finally hit up a big beer store near my neighborhood that I've been meaning to check out. Here's my haul below, any thoughts?:

Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere Harvest
Avery Hog Heaven
Avery The Czar
Stone Old Guardian
Gulden Draak
Unibroue Trois Pistoles
Ommegang Fleur de Houblon
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot

I got several barleywine-style ales, been really interested in trying more in that vein after being blown away by the Bigfoot in the last couple years. The Trois Pistoles was the first Unibroue I ever had, years ago (probably one of the first truly GOOD beers I probably ever tried), but for some reason I never ever see it sold around these parts, so I've basically forgotten what it's like by now. Hoping it'll be a delicious reunion (or it'd better be, at ~ $5 for a 12 oz bottle ). Never tried the Gulden Draak, either! It was pricey, but I've been curious about it for too long to resist.
They had several other Avery offerings which I'm looking forward to... the Dugana, Maharaja, Salvation, and maybe one or two more. I came to the shop looking to pick up the Samael, but unluckily they didn't have it on the shelf.

Passed up these few (good/bad call?): Ommegang Gnomegang, Green Flash Double Stout, Ommegang Scythe & Sickle

Excellent haul! Well, I haven't had the Ommegang Fleur de Houblon but Ommegang has never let me down so I'm sure it'll be tasty. Have you had Unibroue's Maudite more recently than the Trois Pistoles? They're somewhat similar but the Trois Pistoles is both sweeter and more tart than the Maudite. Definitely a nice post-dinner sipper, that.

The Fleur de Houblon I've had once before and it was excellent, so I picked it up again . When it comes to light-yet-complex beers, it's one of the most outstanding I've had in recent memory. Pretty awesome stuff, very floral nose and excellently integrated hops on the palate, not too overbearing, it's all woven together really well. Really nice.

The Maudite I had a couple times several years ago... I recall it being quite nice but not exactly amazing. Hard to say, maybe I didn't have the palate for it as much at the time. They've also got the Blanche et le Noire du Chambly at this store, so I'll definitely check those out at some point. Would really like to try the Don de Dieu but have never seen it for sale anywhere around.

I just had a mouthgasm. I'm drinking the "Dixième" by Les Trois Mousquetaires. Brewed for their 10th anniversary. It's quite the style, Imperial black kriek. "Blend of young and aged beer, both fermented and aged in oak barrels with brettanomyces yeasts and whole tart cherries" according to the bottle.

It pours a very dark liquid, with some brown-ish red accents, similar to dried blood. Quick fading head. Aroma is mostly cherries and chocolate with notes of oak and leather/barn (bretts). As for the taste, the sour cherries and the chocolate knock you out before being eclipsed by the wild and funky flavors of the wild yeasts, quickly giving way for the sourness of the cherries and it all end on a smooth oak finale. Everything happens rapidly. Intense, disconcerting, excellent. Du grand Art!

Damn that sounds good.

Of the three bombers in my fridge I decided to take down Stone's Old Guardian first. Really delicious stuff. Nose is redolent of tropical fruit (grilled pineapple?), nutty/candy malt, palate gets spicier and bittererer/hoppier on the finish and still retains some freshness with a relatively light aftertaste. Smooth, lovely stuff, and over 11% to boot. Makes me want to try more of Stone's offerings... haven't been too excited after being a little underwhelmed by the IPA.

Oh, the Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere went down really well yesterday, too. Also fruity but with an interesting and very welcome overtone on the nose (liquorice?). A light and zesty brew with a lot of richness, much preferable to, say, the SN Pale Ale.

Trois Pistoles is definitely my favorite Unibroue, very tasty, sweet and strong but without a huge alcohol kick. I must say it's very stealthy though, got drunk several times with it without drinking too much! I've tried most of their stuff but I always go back to their this one or La Maudite. They often do the "build your own six pack" sale so it's cool to get like 3 different beers.

I have to admit that I've grown bored of Unibroue. I think they are outrageously conservative. I'd like for them to try new stuff, to expend their selection instead of just sticking to Belgian classics. But then I am aware that being from Quebec I guess it's a bit normal to feel that since their beers are so common here. Hell I'd shit my pants if sth like Stone IPA or DFH 90 Minutes were available year round here yet they can be boring for US beer enthusiasts.

However, their 17 http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/unibroue-17/83527/ is godly. It reminds me of the St-Bernardus Abt 12. Stuff like Trois Pistoles. Don de Dieu might be good, but 17 is in a league of its own. Brewed once a year and released around Nov-Dec, it's a like X-mas in a bottle. I have a 2011, 2012 and 2013 bottle and I am waiting for the 2014 to come out to set up a nice tasting session with friends.

Edit : Went to a local pub/brewery called La Souche (tree stump) 2 days ago. The place is nice, they play mostly rock music and the food is quite great, but their beers never were that great, ranging from "no fucking way" to "yeah it's alright". When they opened some years ago, they didn't have their brewer license, so they were simply a pub, serving beers from other microbreweries. When they started brewing and serving their own, I stopped going there since I though the quality was sadly absent. But I kept hearing how they were adding to beers and improving their recipes. So some friends and I decided to check them out again and I have to say I was surprised. I tried 2 beers, their Limoilou Beach, a blackcurrant flavored sour beer and the Canardière, their IPA. The Sour one was exceptional. No hints of artificial flavoring, just real aroma and taste of blackcurrant. Their IPA was good, not the best I've had, but quite decent. Not a tropical fruits/citrus type, but way more on the resin, pine side.

Yeah, I can admit the same and I've been trying the stuff of (better) microbreweries like Trou du Diable! I forgot that I've tried La Terrible as well, weird since it's one of the best beer I ever purchased. http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/unibroue-l ... ble/13815/

TDD are ace indeed. Have you tried the Apocalypso? It's a very refreshing wheat IPA and one of their best beer imo.

Yeah, seconding La Terrible as being fantastic stuff. Strangely that stuff's super common around here even though it seems like a smaller batch thing that Unibroue does.

I understand being bored with their conservative brewing habits, but in the end I think it's good that there are some really top-shelf breweries out there sticking to more traditional styles. Crazy experimentation has been all the rage for a while now and with so many breweries doing wacky hybrids or unclassifiable experiments, it's nice to come back to tried and true quality shit sometimes. I just wish there were a brewery of Unibroue's caliber with a penchant for English and Scottish styles in my area. Now *that* would be grand.

On my first ever glass of Gulden Draak. 'Tis divine! Really delicious stuff. Comes with a hefty price, but worth the coin. Almost like a really awesome Belgian version of an amber ale or something. I guess this is a Tripel, technically? Color-wise a little unusual, like a browned amber, with a massive head to it. On the nose I get really robust grape, like rich grape juice with an underlayer of other nameless fruits and yummy yeastiness. On the palate it's just malty, yeasty deliciousness with a nice fruity body, then on the finish I get something like sour cherry. Fuckin' A-grade brew right here. Can anyone tell me what this retails for in northern Europe/Scandinavia? I think this 12 oz bottle was over $5 ... ...but..... .... ..... .....

I don't really think the brewers who make Gulden Draak give a rat's ass what you call it. At one point the label on the beer described it as a barleywine, not a dark triple. I'm not sure what they call it now and don't really care.

Unibroue 17 is indeed very tasty, very mellow stuff.

Had a Shipyard Monkey Fist IPA tonight, which comes in at 6.9%. It was very heavy on the hops, and had a sharp, bitter taste. It was good for what it was and definitely achieved what it was aiming for, but definitely something I'd only want to have once in a while.

My final beers in the USA (unless I have one at the airport in San Francisco on my layover...) will be this four-pack of Boulevard Tank 7 Farmhouse Ale I got. I bought a bomber of the stuff for a friend of mine a few months ago as a housewarming present but he drank it when I wasn't around so I never actually got a chance to try it.

Good luck finding good craft beers in SK ( ?). Are you going to be in Seoul or somewhere else? Might want to do some beer store research before you get there...

Pfff, you think I haven't done beer research? I just realized yesterday I'd done shitloads of beer research and barely any food research, hah.

I'm gonna be in Cheonan, which is like 1.5 hours south of Seoul (or 35 minutes on the KTX high speed train). The beer scene in Korea is pretty shit. There are essentially two Korean macro breweries that dominate the market utterly and which put out mainly a handful of varieties of shitty rice adjunct lagers that are apparently pretty poor even by Asia's already low standards. These beers will run you about $1.50 or so for a pint at a bar, or for a bomber in a shop. They also have jumped on the "fake macro craft beer" wagon with apparently mixed results - some of them seem like their regular beer with some grain alcohol or whatever added to up the ABV, then with some food coloring and artificial flavorings. Others seem to be the genuine article but still aren't really anything to write home about.

There are a few bona fide craft breweries there, but I think their bottling operations are limited or nonexistent, and due to the expense of good ingredients the beers themselves are pricey (I've heard around $8-9 for a pint on premises). Compared to the $15+ you can pay for a pint of imported stuff, that's pretty decent though, I guess. Supposedly those macros also brew some big international macro stuff on license, like Beck's and (surprisingly!) Leffe Blonde, so maybe that will be an affordable option.

I'll just have to try it out and see if there's anything that's both decent and affordable. If not, I'll stick to drinking mostly crap beer with some treats now and then, or more likely, the ludicrously inexpensive alternative: soju (apparently a big bottle of 30% abv soju runs you like $1). Or homebrew.

A tripel? No, not really. At least so far as tripel has been since its inception decades ago until the recent years of this new craft beer explosion when some American breweries (and after Belgians started aping them as well) started making dark/black tripels in the vein of dark/black IPAs (or whatever you call them). Technically the dubbel and tripel are always "abbey-style" ales (whatever that means these days) while Gulden Draak isn't - supposedly. But for a tripel it features much too much dark malts. With that said, I'm not particularly fond of it myself. It's good, but a bit too sweet and alcoholic in flavor and the ABV is much too high for the actual amount of flavor. In that regard, I would much rather go for a blue Chimay, an Achel 8 Bruin or a Rochefort 8. It's not currently available at the monopoly store, but back when it was, it was around four and a half euros for a small bottle, I think.

Hmm, I dunno, the brewery itself bills it as a "dark triple," so I was just going by that because I didn't really know how else to classify it. Not that it needs to be classified. It's a dragon, dammit. Draakbrau.

I like beer but I'm far from being an expert on it.

I enjoy Erdinger and Guinness a lot. Those are usually my go to choices when I happen to buy foreign beers. Carlsberg is probably my biggest guilty pleasure when it comes to beer.

Haven't really tried a beer I've really disliked other than Heineken.

Oh, and if you happen to come across Portuguese beer someday, go for Super Bock. Sagres is average as hell.

You can buy that for around 1'60 euros here in Spain... and it's even cheaper in Belgium.

Just had a bottle of Interlude by Allagash. Ale aged in red wine barrels with brettanomyces.

Nice orange/amber color, topped by timid white lacing.

On the nose, young wood, honey and wild funky notes caused by the wild yeasts.

Mouth : the aging in red wine barrels is obvious. Strong grape character, held by a quick burst of sourness and everything ends in a sweet honey finale. Wow.

Too bad I must drive like 5 hrs to get my hands on such stuff :\

Sucking down the Tank 7's just now. Farewell, sweet malts. I loved thee so.

KOREA BEEEEEERSTRAVAGANZAAAAA!

I bought four beers from the store on the corner and figured tonight was a good night to give them a whirl. I skipped the more popular Korean macro adjunct lagers and went for more interesting looking stuff that was also inexpensive. This was just a regular grocery store though so this stuff is probably widely available.

Aleston Brown Ale: this is advertised as a classic "British-style" beer brewed with noble hops and pale malts. Considering I was expecting trash, this was really ok. Sort of tasted vaguely like Newcastle, but maybe cut with some Yeungling or something that gave it a definite cheap (but not awful) lager feel.

Aleston Black Ale: this is brewed with "black malts" and "pellet hops" and is closer to the color of Coca-Cola. It tastes nearly the same as the brown, if maybe a touch sweeter. Add some residual sugars and a splash of Guinness to the above and you've got it.

Kloud Original Gravity Lager: this one's shit. Thankfully not too heavily carbonated, but piss-weak and simply bad. Like flattish Natty Lite or so. Awful.

Black Beer Stout -Lager Style: brewed with "dark German malts". I dunno what kind of drugs or insanity or ignorance Koreans are on when they come up with shit like this but I want some. Anyway this is another Coke looking beer that tastes like a slightly richer than usual macro lager with some extra sweetness to it. Pretty similar to the Aleston beers but not quite as malty and more carbonated, so not as good.

I also found some imports at this same grocery store that aren't refrigerated. They ran from $2-3/bottle with the Japanese and Chinese stuff at the low end and European stuff like Guinness or Leffe at the higher end. The Korean beers were still $1-$1.50 each, though, so the extra expense for imports might be worth the price if the bulk of my drinking winds up being soju (which is $1 for a 360 ml bottle of 21% abv booze, so...) with beers only supplementing.

Do they have halfway decent mainstream Asian beers more readily available? I'm thinking stuff like Singha, Sapporo, etc. Nothing exciting but at least not gross?

Yeah, they had those. You're still paying the import taxes on then though so at that point you may as well drink European stuff, y'know?

Tru dat. Sounds kinda lame overall...at this rate you might as well switch to boba tea.

Hoping to hear more interesting things in the future batman.

Here's what I bought myself last night as it's cold, raining and just generally miserable where I'm at, so these might help cheer me up.



Three heavy Founders darker beers (yay!), with those being the Breakfast Stout, the Curmudgeon and the Dirty Bastard. These are fairly strong with them clocking in at 8.3%, 9.8% and 8.5% respectively. The Breakfast stout I have had before, and LOVE it, it's delicious, but the other two I haven't, but based on other Founders beers they certainly won't stink.



These three I have never tried, so we'll see... What we have is a Harviestoun Ola Dubh, an Eel River Raven Eye Imperial stout and a Trappistes Rochefort 8 Belgian. None of these look bad. The Ola Dubh looks interesting, as it's a special reserve beer aged in oak casks that housed 16 year old single malts, and it's from February 2012 so yum. Looking forward to this. Rochefort 8 I have also never tried for whatever reason, but it's a proper Belgian (strong, 9.2% strong) dark ale, so it should be gorgeous. Eel River beers I've never had either, so it will be a first, and we'll see how their Imperial stout goes.

Never even seen that Eel River but all the rest is fantastic stuff. Excellent haul! The Harviestoun is divine but I'm also a huge fan of their more common Old Engine Oil, which is one of my all-time favorites. You suck for being abke to get Founder's in Oz when I couldn't even get it in Maryland

That does look great, Crushed, damn. And batman, Founders was rare in Maryland, eh? It's not TOO common up here in Brooklyn, either. We regularly get their Centennial IPA, Porter, Breakfast Stout, and maybe one or two of their other main light brews, but everything else is a bit elusive, which sucks. They've got so many offerings on the darker spectrum that I'd love to try.

Thanks. Haha yeah my local stockist (large, large store) has loads of Founders, and well, a metric shit ton of American craft beer in general, most of which is bloody excellent. Really into the darker, strong beers right now, being winter and all, and Founders are fantastic.

It's more of a pity that that in the states at least, you don't have access to some of our stunning craft brews, that are a top drop indeed. Seems as shame... There were other Ola Dubh's there as well by Harviestoun, such as the 12 and an 18, but they were quite pricey mind, at a round $12-14 a bottle, so next time for me. Old Engine Oil was there also, and is usually in stock.

Guiness, Heineken and Budweiser Dark Crown are my favorite regular store beers but I usually drink crap Old Milwaukee's Best Light because its $3.50 for six 16 oz cans and sometimes the Ice version that we call "Polar Beast". My friend says it "gets your mind right". I have tried quite a few different beers like Arrogant Bastard and Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout that were good, and after a long time have recently concluded that India Pale Ales are overrated. Why make your beer bitter as shit on purpose?