I've got some Dark Truth in the fridge now actually, good stuff. I really wish they would release Harvest Dance in four-packs. It's a Belgian-American wheatwine hopped with Citra ( ) and aged on oak spirals. Absolute heaven and at the least they better not retire it.

So you would definitely recommend trying it, huh? State monopoly's flagship store just started to store it recently, but it's ten euros for a small bottle and I was thinking of maybe passing it, but perhaps would be a nice thing for Christmas.

Duvel Moortgat is actually buying Boulevard, similar to the arrangement they have with Ommegang, so I would assume that within the next year you could get Dark Truth for cheaper or fresher (or both). Sixth Glass is also a worthy Belgian strong dark ale/quad; been a while since I had one and it wasn't mind blowing but it was pretty tasty and faithful. The abbey yeast character struck me as the most authentic part of it.


Apparently they aren't making Harvest Dance this year for space reasons, so it should be back next year. I would snap it up in 2014 if it reaches the cold white north.....or Yemen. Wherever you actually live.

How much do nicer US imports usually run you? It's fairly expensive here, too; I think I paid $16 or $17 for a four-pack, which is still nowhere near, say, expensive imports or really high-end US craft brew stuff, which can sometimes be around $10 for a 33cl bottle.

I can't help but recommend it though, definitely an incredible stout.

Dark Truth should be between $10.99 and $13.99 for a four-pack in the U.S. The Deep Ones are running a racket.

I live in a county that has wonky booze laws. Prices around here are usually on the order of 25% higher than surrounding counties, unless you buy from the extremely limited beer selection at the county-run liquor stores. Could be that distribution in this county is an extra hassle, or there's some additional tax, or something.

They just need the extra tax revenue to rebuild Y'ha-nthlei, that's all. Understandable.

Oh yeah guys, had been meaning to share, my local is now importing pabst blue ribbon.

...$56.99 per 24 pack.

huh...quite literally just bought a 12er for 6.99

Gah. Scotch ran low? At least you can get something out of the purchase and fashion a knightly helm from the box.

Man, Founder's Breakfast Stout is fucking good shit. Just tried it for the first time tonight. Excellent stuff, love the heavy coffee influence with that waft of dark chocolate on the nose. Looking forward to grabbing a bottle of Sierra Nevada Narwhal, too - just found a place that stocks it on Monday.

Also had my first bottle of Ommegang's Rare Vos yesterday, which was also really damn good. Pretty straightforward but delicious Belgian-style ale, but with a surprisingly dry finish that keeps it sort of... lush yet crisp. Good shit!

^ Both excellent beers. Try the Kentucky Breakfast Stout if you can ever get your hands on it.

Tried Flying Dog's new Imperial IPA - The Truth - earlier tonight. Reaaaaallly tasty. Super fucking hoppy but still really well-balanced. One of the best new IPA's I've had in quite some time.

ha, our local dan murphys is as well. one of my housemates is a yank and he almost exploded when he saw the price.... then got a slab, haha.

I'm aware of Moortgat's upcoming acquisition of Boulevard, but I doubt that will increase the availability of their beers here. Ommegang is pretty much non-existent for example. It's all up to the bigger European importers from whom Finnish importers acquire their beer from. Sixth Glass is available here as well, in those big bottles (I think they're 750ml, not the usual American 660ml), but it runs about 20 euros as does Double-Wide and the Tank 7 Farmhouse. Single-Wide and Pale Ale were about four euros in small bottles while Double-Wide is about eight in small and Bully! is six.

What other stuff runs for, well, it depends. For example Boston Lager is about three euros, Founders All Day IPA is a tad below four, all the Anchors have been a tad below four, North Coast's Old Stock is something like eight, Alesmith's Numbskull, Wee Heavy, Grand Cru and Speedway have been about 27 while YuleSmith is 17. Hibernation is four fifty while Rogue's American Amber is six. Stone's PA, IPA, Ruination, Oaked Bastard and Double Bastard were either six or fourteen, depending on the bottle size.

So the pricing is a bit all over the place depending on which of the three monopoly selections they are in or whether they fit the grocery store bracket (<=4,7% ABV) and who the importer is.

Yeah, I had one like that awhile back as well, it was just a crappy adjunct lager with a pepper in it, but it was very spicy.

Barbár, Cluysenaer, Oersoep, Orval and some I.P.A. I can't remember the name of (it's the wrong glass). That was a fun night, until the guy in front of me fell asleep, headbutted his chalice of beer over, spilling it all over my crotch.

Heinous beer crime!! Boo!!

Going with some vale IPA, Big Eye IPA, Monteith's black beer and more of that delicious Sierra Nevada northern hemisphere harvest ale. I'm starting to realise more and more just how much I like these harvest ales, both north and south varieties - they are just fantastic beers.

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/sail-ancho ... es/236992/

just got this- pretty rare someone local tries a barleywine. Except something extremely uncreative but fairly solid, like every brew S&A do. Otherwise, Emu Export and Hollandia! yay

Have you tried their Jack Tar Imperial stout casp? I have yet to buy one simply because it's a Sail & Anchor beer.

Yeah, I've had a few. Basically I would rather have almost any other imperial but it's the only option in my town. Doesn't deviate from the generic-as-hell S&A line. Better than warm VB, I guess?

Hmmm suspicions confirmed then. Yeah gotta be better than warm VB.

I've been having the Brew Free Or Die IPA by 21st Amendment Brewery this week, which is fantastic. Nice and balanced, disguising it's 7% abv. Tried that after being impressed with their Back in Black IPA, which has a really unique and smooth dark malt finish. These guys definitely know what they're doing, and I like breweries that use cans.

Also have a large format bottle of the Blue Point Rastfa-Rye in the fridge...tried it once before, very tasty brew.

tried this last night. couple thoughts:
- no subtlety to the flavour at all. granted, that's hard at 11%, but at $18 for ONE 600ml bottle, i'd expect more. overbearing in the same way that so many 10%+ beers are. it's been super-hopped in an attempt to mask the boozy flavour, but been made sickly in the process.
- why is this only available in 600ml bottles? it took me about an hour to drink one third of it, and then i shared the rest out. stupid. 330ml please.

on a happier note, just had 3 x hofbräu festbier, and now feeling appropriately half-sozzled. even those were a little too strong, actually, but i powered on through. think i prefer the regular.

Last night I had Victory's new winter beer, Winter Cheers, which is a hefeweizen with some subtle clove and a bit more aggressive hopping. It was pretty decent, which is high praise from me since I'm not usually much into wheat beers at all.

I also knocked back a bunch of Great Divide's Rumble, which is an oak-aged IPA. I was a bit hesitant about it since strange things can happen to IPA's when you don't drink 'em fresh, but this was surprisingly subtle in the vanilla and woodiness but just enough to notice while still tasting quite fresh and suitably hoppy.

Hollandia? Ugh..

Krotchbier.

Had Dogfish's new one, American Beauty, which is an imperial IPA brewed with granola apparently. Pretty dark, hazy beer but the granola added a lot more intense sweetness of a kind with their Olde School barleywine and 120 Minute IPA. A super powerful tasting beer all around, with loads of citrusy hops to balance the sweetness and of course massive malt. Kind of surprised this was only 9% as it easily could've been 12-15% given the giant flavors.

La Trappe Quadrupel

Buy this beer. It's delicious, hearty, and unassumingly works its worth 10% apv. I liked it at once: a wide swath of flavors strolling through light milk chocolates and cream, shifting seamlessly into the back half of the 30 second taste profile into an orange and tangerine poured into the bottle over an oak stake wrapped in well-oiled leather. It was served with that glass, and normally I'd expect that wide a mouth to dim the experience. This beer doesn't have much of a nose, which isn't a problem. It's a rich experience (without being thick), and a concentration of head would interfere with the flavors. The design is a good one: heavy glass with a reinforced stem balancing the beer with the vessel. It's nice to sort of dive at the wide pool of beer for a sip. The palate rears and moves gradually, taking plenty of pleasurable turns. I broke the pours into rough thirds, which seemed to help, and with that many flavors, I spent around 45 minutes with the one bottle.

That's funny. Have you ever tasted an orange and tangerine poured into the bottle over an oak stake wrapped in well-oiled leather? I've always had problems with these kind of descriptions. "For a short while, it tasted like the scent of a 37 year old man riding a steed, the leather saddle being moist of the warm winter rain".

The latter is significantly more purple, but no, you've got me there. Still, how else would all these tastes get into a beer? Just some normal fermentation process involving some rinds and barrels and a lot of boring time?

So .. yeah, sorry. I sipped it repeatedly and every time I did so I tasted some stuff. It was kinda citrus, a little leather, and some kind of wood thing that might have been oak. But I don't know for certain, as I've never chewed on oak.

Wyrm that is one of my favourite beers in the world right now, and I always usually have a few in the fridge to sit on in the evening after work. Absolutely delicious. I also have a bottle of the oak aged version that I have yet to sample.

As Grave Wyrm already pointed out, it is just a more prosaic way of saying orange and tangerine with some oak and leather presence. Makes for a better reading definitely. It's definitely not as non-descriptive or obscure as your stated example. I don't think many people have actually tasted smoke, peat, ash, leather or oak if you really wanna get down into details.

I'm not criticizing it, but I just don't like that way of writing. Well, I definitely tasted smoke, peat ash, leather and oak, though. Why did I taste the leather? Biting down on my wallet when my hands are full

I know it's getting hot down there this time of year, but maybe you should look into getting your AC fixed. A man must have his dignity.

Unfortunately I haven't seen La Trappe Quadrupel for sale anywhere around me, or else I'd snap some up. Ooooh OOOH that reminds me, there's supposed to be some big beer shop that opened up a few subway (chube) stops away from me recently. MUST GO

Anyone able to pick up some Bourbon County Stout this weekend? It was hard to come by, even living just outside of Chicago. I was lucky enough to find the Proprietor's and Backyard Rye variants, along with the regular stuff, but didn't see the coffee stout or barleywine anywhere.

I was able to pick up a four pack of Backwoods Bastard, too, which I had been looking for for some time

I mostly live out east now but I was in Illinois for the holidays, so of course I sought out the various Bourbon County releases.

I didn't make the standard BCBS a priority because in my experience it is much better aged than fresh and my basement/cellar is already overflowing with beer, but if I run across some for a decent price I'll probably buy a pack. The stuff sits on the shelf here over by the east coast, quite a bit different from the Midwest. Also, FYI, there were at least three batches released at the same time: two that were 14.9% and one which was 14.2%.

Was hoping to find Backyard Rye back in Illinois or out east, but no dice by the looks of it; Goose really spread it too thin. By contrast, Coconut had a narrow distribution but a really small batch size; you're lucky you found any at all. Out of around 2300 barrels of Bourbon County Brand ____ this year, less than a hundred were filled with the coconut variant. I didn't even bother looking for it. I also didn't bother looking for the coffee variant, I've never understood the hype behind it. Now that you can get it in smaller bottles I may pick one up if I can find it for a decent price, but I won't be bothered if I don't get the chance.

The barleywine, by contrast, I looked for and managed to score six bottles. I expect I might be able to find more too. It's fantastic, by the way. It isn't as good as fresh King Henry was but I would pick this over any other barrel-aged barleywine on the market right now. I'd pick it in a heartbeat, in fact. Outstanding value too when you consider a lot of the other barrel-aged barleywines out there these days are in the neighborhood of $20+ per bomber (so $40+ for the equivalent of four 355ml bottles). Bourbon County Barleywine is abotu half that.

Right, Coconut was only limited to 88 barrels, if I recall correctly. The Backyard is also supposed to be limited to the Chicago area. I'm debating on whether to age these or drink them fresh.

Amongst other drinks, I purchased a four pack of this for my birthday (which was on Saturday). It's the second most I've ever paid for beer, but hot damn was it worth it. I'm not going to be able to add anything that someone else already hasn't, so I'll just say this: There's beer, then there's beer.

How old would you say is good? I've had a couple fairly fresh (less than a year) and I still have a couple in the cellar (I think 2009 vintage, might be 2010) and was pondering when would be a good time to pop one open.

You know, there's enough batch variation with that beer that it's hard to give a firm peak estimate. I've had two different batches from the same year at 12 months that didn't taste very similar, for example. A lot of folks seem to think it peaks in the 3-4 year time frame, but I think the 2008 remains the runaway favorite year ever and people still love it, so it can obviously go over that.

The 2009 or 2010 should be good now. I had a bomber of 2009 at around 25 months old and it was delicious (that was the only year they released it in bombers as well as four-packs). The 2010 never had the same reputation as other years but I never had it so I can't comment.


What are the bottling dates on the 2012 ones you have?