Beer

since Andy was raving about Grand Teton the other night on facebook, I decided to have a Grand Teton Sweetgrass Pale Ale last night at the bar. Holy fuck was it good. It tasted like it came from a cask. Nice, piney, good malt backbone and SWEET. It was amazing.

Followed it up with Stone's Belgo Imperial Russian Stout (made with anise). Now having had both, I think I prefer the Belgo IRS to the regular. It doesn't seem as hot/boozy as the regular IRS and is much more drinkable. It was quite tasty.

Girlfriend had two New Belgium La Folies. Good stuff. Stone Sour Fest is Sunday...fucking stoked
 
had this over the weekend for the first time, damn delicious. Best way to describe it is a Hefe/Wit. Went down extremely well on a nice night, i could have put away quite a few of them and at 1.25 a pint i'll be picking more up soon.

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So Sourfest was fucking amazing. By far my favorite beerfest I've been to. Within minutes of getting in, one of the beers I really wanted to try, Cantillon's Cuvee des Champions, had already gone; they only had three bottles of it. I got to try pretty much everything else I wanted to. Standouts were everything by Cascade Brewing Company (great sours!) and The Bruery. I was also excited to get to try three beers by Cantillion: their Classic Gueuze, Iris and Rose de Gambrinus.

It was a great day. The weather was perfect. Drank sour beers all day with my girlfriend while we played cards. Then drove home and had mexican food while watching It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. What a great/lazy day
 
yeah it's not for everyone. I was pretty put off by it the first time I had it. After a few tries, it became one of my favorites though. Pretty much if you don't like hoppy beers, stay away from Stone (except for their IRS and Smoked Porter)
 
yeah it's not for everyone. I was pretty put off by it the first time I had it. After a few tries, it became one of my favorites though. Pretty much if you don't like hoppy beers, stay away from Stone (except for their IRS and Smoked Porter)

I don't know much about how the different ingredients affect taste of beers, except that I love wheat/+honey.

Shiner's Double Wheat and Henry Wienhard's Honey Heff were pretty much sex.
 
That's the quad right? I've been meaning to track down a Westvleteren quad as well.

Good luck with that...only totally legal way is to go to Belgium and buy it in one of 2 places. There are "gray market" online places to get it from for a pretty penny now and then. But it's not the sort of thing you just walk into a beer store and ask for, in case you weren't aware of that :)
 
Last week I went to a bar before seeing Winter and they had a Goose Island event the previous night. They don't distribute to NJ and I've been wanting to try the Bourbon County Stout for a few years and it lived up to the hype. It was a little boozy at first but got better as it warmed. It's right up there with Founders KBS and the Souther Tier stouts as the best I've had.
 
Arrogant Bastard was love at first sip for me.

Arrogant Bastard got my beer tongue back oddly enough.

I've been drinking a few Goose Island brews lately as well, but none of their specialty beers. I drank their English Bitter style called Honker's Ale. A bit simple but it certainly was drinkable as hell. I also tried their 312 Urban Wheat Ale and I wasn't too impressed with it.

Probably going to try some Sierra Nevada Glissade or Kellerweis tomorrow.
 
had these two the other night. Port Brewing's 5th Anniversary DIPA and Cascade's Kriek. Pretty much anything by Cascade is fucking outstanding. This is their most easily obtained beer. I was pretty excited to find the Port beer since I had tried it on tap and loved it. Unfortunately, the bottle wasn't very good. Or maybe it was just too much. a DIPA at 10% is pretty big

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Yeah Schmidt, Honker's Ale is pretty damn drinkable. I was at a wedding a few years back that was open bar & they had that so I took advantage.

I have now tried Stone's Levitation Ale. Pretty good shit. Very tasty & plenty of hoppiness for a low ABV beer.