GIVE ME YOUR BEER SUGGESTIONS!!

[the wicked child]

Just picked up a case of Anderson Valley Hop Ottin IPA. Was my favorite of the IPAs that I tried last night.

[shafnutz05]

Wife picked me up a Troeg's Anthology sampler (I've said this before, but one of the greatest values in craft beer. $32 at my distributor). Enjoying a Doublebock now, moving onto a Pale Ale and Java Head after.

[Kraftster]

I've come to like headwaters pale ale a fair amount. I'm really liking balanced beers like this and HopDevil with steaks. Coming around on Headwaters makes the Golden Monkey/Prima Pils/Hop Devil/Headwaters sampler even better.

[Loaf31]

This beer fest is awesome... The pierogies are tasty

[columbia]

Cash-strapped monks open brewery in Massachusetts
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[count2infinity]

That's pretty cool, columbia. At some point this summer I'm going to make an attempt at a strong Belgian ale. Might just do a 2 or 3 gallon batch since the Mrs. doesn't particularly care for that style.

Made a couple beers this weekend. One is a pale ale with nothing but citra hops. I'm interested to see how this turns out. The hop profile is (just as the name implies) super citrusy which is my favorite hop aroma. I also brewed an imperial stout that has some chocolate and cocoa in it. I only have one beer on tap at the moment, which is a nice IPA, but nothing fantastic.

[BigMcK]

Just picked up a case of Anderson Valley Hop Ottin IPA. Was my favorite of the IPAs that I tried last night.

Great choice.

[MRandall25]

New Belgium Snapshot Wheat Beer is also meh.

Also think Blue Moon is a better option than it, if I had to choose between the 2.

[OutofFoil]

The wife had to stop by the Bethel Giant Eagle earlier so I went in to check out the beer selection. Tucked on the bottom shelf and pushed back a bit amongst the other deuce-deuces were Pumking's! $6 apiece, we picked a few up. How in the Hades do they have Pumking's in March?

[the wicked child]

So beerfest. The venue and general layout was to my liking. Despite the number of people, I seldom had to wait any great length of time to get samples. I was disappointed that Dogfish Head mailed it in by sending 60 Minute and Indian brown (by comparison, they brought Positive Contact, Theobroma and Black & Blue to the Millvale Beerfest, and had Sah tea the year before). I do wish that the provided map was a little more organized... A couple times I was seeking out a specific brewery and either they weren't where I expected or seemed to be missing altogether from the map.

I made a couple stops at beers I had before (Couldn't resist getting some Simon Girty and Aureus from Draai Laag, for instance), but largely I was looking to try some new things. I didn't end up hitting all of the IPAs I wanted to try, but I got a few.

My favorite was the Hop Ottin IPA as I mentioned the other day, and inspired me to grab a case. I tried Green Flash's West Coast IPA. I enjoyed it, was probably around as hoppy as I would want... but the guy serving the beer really rubbed me the wrong way. He seemed visibly and audibly shocked and appalled that I wanted "only" the IPA, and not the DIPA. I have never had their beer, so I wanted the one that was most highly rated on BA. By comparison, The AV guy was ready to steer me to hop ottin, which was why I was there.

Interestingly, I really didn't care for the various Wits/Hefes that I had. They ranged from ok to meh. I really wanted to find Troegs near the end to grab some Dream Weaver to right that situation, but couldn't find them at that point.

At one point, we wanted to grab something to eat. We were looking for pretzels, but spotted someone with chips and cheese, which we determined were from the BRGR stand. We got 2 orders to split between the 3 of us. They ran out of their so-called "Crack sauce" so we only got one cup of that for the 2 orders of chips. It wasn't bad, basically was like a chili-cheese sauce kinda deal, but not really living up to its namesake IMO. The chips were good though.

Most interesting beer of the night was probably Sweet Baby Jesus by Duclaw. It is listed as a "Peanut Butter Porter". It smells like a peanut butter cup. The taste is unfortunately not quite on par with the AMAZING aroma. You could really taste the peanuts in the brew, but it didn't really deliver on the promise of peanut butter cups overall. Still a solid brew, one worth trying if you have a chance, but prob. not something you'd get a case of.

Froggy has also now been inducted into the Draai Laag cult.

[Froggy]

Yeah, I'm convinced they practice the dark arts to produce such a drinkable beer at like 9%abv.

[the wicked child]

Enjoying a Hop Ottin' in my IPA glass. It really does seem to allow the hops to smack you in the nose. Both of these were a wise decision.

[PghSkins]

Picked this up in a mix-6 pack tonight in Houston. They are calling this one a "Black Kolsch." Not hoppy enough and too malty for me. Love the label.

[eddysnake]

Enjoying a Hop Ottin' in my IPA glass. It really does seem to allow the hops to smack you in the nose. Both of these were a wise decision.

do you have that dogfish IPA glass? Where did you get yours?

[the wicked child]

Enjoying a Hop Ottin' in my IPA glass. It really does seem to allow the hops to smack you in the nose. Both of these were a wise decision.

do you have that dogfish IPA glass? Where did you get yours?

Yes. Ordered it from their website.

[eddysnake]

I was looking at getting that or a nice 16oz snifter glass from Bell's... tough decisions today

[Kraftster]

I would definitely recommend going with the 16 or larger tulip/snifter glasses. The smaller glasses effectively remove any benefit that you obtain from their shape unless you do multiple pours of a 12 oz. This is my go to glass right now:



On the other side of the glass is a 12 oz. line for pours from the tap. Portland was really big on that in general (this is a brewery up in the Hood River, OR area)--using glasses properly and having lines to indicate when to stop the pour.

[eddysnake]

I've been using my this and it's been great, but it's only 12oz.



Think I'll go with this

[count2infinity]

I'll post a picture of all my glasses this evening (I have a ton of regular pint glasses)

[eddysnake]

I started collecting different kinds of glassware from different breweries, but in all honesty, I prefer to use my tulip glass for most things (I usually drink high gravity stuff). besides the 16oz to 12oz, I'm not sure what the different would be from those 2 I posted

[count2infinity]

I started brewing the summer before my wedding so EVERYONE thought the best thing to get me as a present was beer glasses, so needless to say, I have a ton of them. I might start getting rid of some of them.

[KennyTheKangaroo]

this gentleman stopped at the libbey glassware factory outlet in toledo on the way home from the little ceasars pizza bowl. there was a wide variety of beer centric glassware for very cheap, but kenny the kangaroo settled on more generic pint glass. hindsight being 50/50, this gentleman should have splurged on a few snifters or something.

[MRandall25]

I have this

[Shyster]

I bought this glassware set from Bed, Bath & Beyond:
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The glasses are a little on the thin side (and I already managed to drop the wheat-beer glass and break it), but $20 isn't a lot of coin for six glasses. The smallest one is the tulip, but it's still 14 oz. or so. The thistle for Belgians and Scotch ales is 16 oz.

[MRandall25]

Having Tap Room 21's Wheat Beer tonight. Tastes a little hoppy/bitter for a wheat beer.