Beer

Mikkeller 1000 IPA is surprisingly well-balanced. I was expecting a complete hop blast, but the malts are quite nice as well. Humans can't perceive much higher than 100-120 IBUs, but it's a pretty funny concept anyway.
 
Mikkel generally kinda sucks at making good IPAs from my experience. However, he rules at barrel-aging them apparently... had a bottle of Green Gold with Brett and aged in white wine barrels and it was fucking amazing. Glad to hear you enjoyed that one though... haven't actually had that but I've had his Simcoe one, Hop Bomb and a few others.
 
My tastes have changed over the last couple years. I used to love hoppy beers, but have been straying away from them for a while. I have been drinking Belgian Style Wit's lately for the most part. There is a newish brewery a few miles from my house called Cinder Block Brewery. I love their Weathered Wit & Northtown Native beers. If anyone is ever in the KC area be sure to check them out.
 
I did the Cigar City Brewery tour and went to Craft Beer Cellar today. I really enjoyed the tour, the beers and I'm looking forward to trying all of my new bottles.
 
Ah yes, I actually just heard Craft Beer Cellar opened a store down in the Floridian neck of the woods. The founders started out up here in MA and now it's franchised... I love my local branch. They always get super fresh stuff, the employees are all cool beer geeks who I trust with their suggestions for the most part, and the prices are very solid.

David, let us know if you do go and what you get. The website looks horrible and their selection is generic as it comes (other than that gluten free one, which could actually be good if the spices are done right!), but sometimes those places can randomly have excellent examples of certain styles. Definitely experienced that at a few random brewpubs myself. And then, of course, they basically invariably stop making the particular one I enjoyed :lol: Also, I found it weird that their pumpkin beer is available from Sep. to Feb... haha, wtf
 
So in one week Lagunitas has sold a 50% share to Heineken, and Saint Archer flat out sold out 100% to SABMillerCoors. The Saint Archer deal doesn't surprise me since it was largely run by douchebag skaters and surfers only interested in making money. They made two really good beers, and that's it. Nobody's surprised. The Lagunitas deal is a bit more interesting since it's supposedly to expand Lagunitas's footprint into Europe by distributing through Heineken. The owner of Lagunitas was always the loudest and most vocal critic against selling out in any way, shape, or form...yet there it is.

There's also the matter of Firestone Walker getting in cahoots with Duvel/Moortgat for supposedly the same reason as Lagunitas is with Heineken. I don't give a shit about Lagunitas and can count on one hand the number of times I've ever actually purchased their beer. But it is interesting to look at these latest developments
 
I really couldn't give less of a shit about LGNTS, and I've stood by that for years. Magee seems like an idiot and his outspokenness has gotten him in trouble with people many times. His beer is meh too, with pretty much its only specific positives being price and availability. Yeah, that's not really good enough for me if the beer is whatever. The whole thing where he was gonna sue Sierra Nevada over the term "IPA" was my last straw. Been done for years, hope more people will join me now that he just up and said fuck off to craft beer. Whatev.

Firestone Walker will continue to be good. Duvel/Moortgat has taken good care of Boulevard so far, and Duvel in general has been trustworthy to me ever since the Ommegang merger a while ago. If this means more Proprietor's stuff in my neck of the woods, I'm fine with it.
 
I think Lagunitas is a hypocritical company because they were so critical of Samuel Adams expanding and becoming so large and then they go on record saying that they are the ones who initiated the deal with Heineken for the exact same reason. I forgot that they tried to sue Sierra Nevada because of the Hop Hunter IPA label, which they claimed was designed to resemble their standard Lagunitas IPA label.

I think some of their beers are decent but I generally don't buy them anymore.

I've never even seen a Firestone Walker beer so if I get to try some because of improved distribution, that would be okay.
 
I will let you know. I'm also after Calm Before the Storm by Ballast Point. We only get Victory at Sea, Sculpin, Grapefruit Sculpin, Grunion and Big Eye with any regularity here.

Cigar City's most popular beer is Jai Alai, which is an IPA that has kind of a local legend status. The Maduro Brown Ale is also really excellent. They also have a Cucumber Saison in bombers that I think is pretty interesting.

What does Firestone Walker make that stands out?
 
almost everything. They're mostly known for their barrel aged beers. Sucaba (formerly Abacus) is a bourbon barrel aged barleywine, Parabola (bourbon barrel aged stout), Stickee Monkee (bourbon barrel quad), and Helldorado (a blonde bourbon barrel barleywine). Velvet Merkin is their next special release, which is their least impressive. Each yeah they come out with an anniversary beer, which is a blend of their barrel aged beers, and it changes from year to year. This year's version is due on Halloween.

They also have a wild ale sideproject called Barrelworks, which I'll actually be hitting up in October. That's where they showcase their sour ales and their bourbon barrel ales as well.

Last time I sent DwitD a bunch of Russian River beers, and he sent me some Cigar City...so I'm pretty familiar with the lineup. Jai Alai and Maduro are both fantastic. I have a Marshal Zhukov's from a few years ago hiding around here somewhere

Calm Before the Storm is fairly easy to get around here. It's nice. It's a blonde stout, which is becoming more popular here in California. It reminds me exactly of cream soda. It's crazy.
 
Founders Breakfast Stout is awesome.

unknown, thanks for the rundown. We also don't really see Russian River here and that sucks.
 
What Andy said. Vinnie Cilurzo (the founder of Russian River) is adamant about not expanding, so they've pulled out of a lot of markets and have even stopped distributing Blind Pig altogether. I go up there maybe once a year and just bring back as much of their sours as I can afford. Pliny is on tap all the time in SoCal and bottles aren't super hard to come by, but they're also not super fresh.
 
A medium-rare 20 oz Ribeye w/grilled onions & mushrooms, salad w/creamy garlic, a side of veggies and this equals paradise:


Beer_Amstel-Light_2.jpg
 
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