Oh, snap. I forgot to list the 1x Avery Black Tot (imperial stout aged in rum barrels. Only 350 cases made).

EDIT: Holy crap. I've never counted how many beers I have at my house before. I have 101 bottles of beer in my home right now. Sheesh.

See... I'd have a party and they'd end up all getting drank in one night by me and my guests. That's why I let my wife control the wine cellar.

I hate, absolutely hate, getting drunk. I rarely have more than one beer a day.

I'll have more than one but I too hate being drunk. Mainly for the loss of feeling in control but I do appreciate a buzz every once in a while.

Also, Reaper, I hate you. Your beer list is incredible. Where do you find people to trade with?

Ah, so you noticed that like half of the beers on that list are from breweries that don't distribute to the KC area. Heh-heh. I set up all my trades with posters on BeerAdvocate.com.

Better question: how do you decide what to drink? I mean if you only have one of something, you might not drink it for a while because it'll be your last for a while...

Well, I age the beers that will benefit from aging. Anything hoppy gets consumed immediately.

When do I pull something out of the cellar to enjoy? Usually I do it with one or two friends. I love sharing these beers as much as I love drinking them myself.

Thank you.

As a beer hobbyist, why is there so much hate for my beloved Corona? Out here, it's a very common beer. I dont meet many that dont like it. but whenever i mention it on this forum, people act like it's awful.

I know nothing about beer. Just know what tastes good IMO. What is your opinion on Corona and why is it so disliked? Like i said, out here, to the average joe, it's a great beer.

It's probably because it (and most popular beers) are fairly watery and diluted in flavor. It's like asking a lover of hot sauce what he thinks about ketchup.

So I should probably go buy another Goose Island bourbon County Stout and age it....

That beer only gets better with age. When the 2009 came out my friends and I did a 4-year vertical tasting. By that I mean we drank one bottle from each year of 2006-2009. The 2006 & 2007s were Godly. All that alcohol heat is completely diminished and the barrel flavors become so well-integrated with the malts. Luxurious.

For me, Corona tastes perpetually skunked. Plus it has the whole sour corn thing going on from the corn used as an adjunct. (Corona is categorized as an adjucnt lager because it uses a lot of corn and rice as adjuncts to the barley in order to produce less calories. Malted barley, water, yeast, hops are the ingredients of beer; anything else is considered an adjunct). I really just think that most adjunct lagers taste awful. The only adjunct lagers that I can stand are PBR and Schlitz.

Nice collection! Some in there I'd definitely love to try.

What's up with cellaring Hopslam, though? That won't age well...

Its the last bottle of the case that I bought. Basically, I figure that there is enough malt content and the ABV% is high enough that it can undergo some changes with age. I think it has a chance of becoming an interesting malty beer after a year-and-a-half to two years.

I've not tried anything from Bison Brewing. I'm not sure they distribute to MO.

Not even a good buzz?

Nope. The buzz just pisses me off, usually, because it means that I need to stop drinking soon. I hate the effects of alcohol because 1.) my dad was a physically abusive alcoholic and 2.) because I simply don't like not being in full control of my mental capacities.

Very understandable. And I'm sorry to hear about your dad's past.

A few years ago I would have agreed on two out of three, but I've lost my taste for stouts. I'd have to go with:

1. Beligian trippels and dubbels
2. American IPA
3. Pilsner

Gotta say my favorite style of beer is IPA. Can't say I've hit the lists here like others partly due to having a restaurant/brewery less than 5 minutes from my house and they change their beers very frequently and have 6-8 on tap and partly due to me being more partial to pot. The brewer knows his shit and won the gold medal in the world beer cup for Viena Style Lagers for 2007 (maybe 06 or 08) and just won the silver for the same beer and class.

Ommegang's Hennepin was delicious and makes sense on the list but not in the top 6.

Hennepin is pretty meh to me. Well, no, its better than that. But I never buy it; there are plenty of other saisons that I greatly prefer.

Sorry to hear about #1 and completely agree about #2, though that usually happens to me when I'm drunk rather than buzzed.

That said, it is an astute observation that one should stop drinking when a buzz occurs. :)

Also, I'm curious if you rate Stouts below Imperial Stouts or just don't like such a broad category as one of your favorite styles.

Other than Tank 7 (which I love) what other Farmhouse Ales do you recommend/would be popular?

Weird, because I absolutely hated Boulevard's Saison. I much prefer the replacement, Tank 7.

Now, having said this about the Hennepin, I'm not sure I'd go out of my way to drink it like I would, say, Young's Double Chocolate Stout, Boulevard's Imperial Stout, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Seeyoulator or a bunch of seasonals from various breweries.

I love Tank 7. Only can grab it when I'm up in KC though as I haven't seen it down here in Texas yet.

Imperial Stouts are usually more complex with a more satisfying mouthfeel. But there are some of regular stouts that I love (Sierra Nevada Stout, Rogue Shakespeare Stout come to mind).

Saisons that you should drink posthaste, available in KC: BLVD Saison-Brett, Saison Dupont, Dupont Floret Organic Saison, Goose Island Sofie, Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere. Outside KC: The Bruery Saison de Lente, The Bruery Saison Rue, Pretty Things Jack d'Or, any beer from Fantome.

Yeah, Rogue's was pretty good and I haven't tried Sierra Nevada's yet. So is Imperial Stout a style to you or a subset of Stouts in general? I just thought it curious you listed your favorite style with Imperial Stout rather than stout being that I thought Imperials were a subset. Which isn't that weird, I guess. Yeah, I'm rambling.

Noted.

Imperial Stout is definitely a style (and some people break it down further. On BeerAdvocate.com they distinguish between Russian Imperial Stout and American Double/Imperial Stout). Just like India Pale and Double/Imperial India Pale Ale are distinct styles and not just simply pale ales.

I haven't had a ton of Saisons, but I really enjoyed the St. Feuillien Saison...

Local beer store was offering a 20% off sale, so went and bought a few things:

- Deschutes Jubel 2010
- Deschutes Black Butte
- Goose Island Night Stalker
- Unibroue Maudite
- New Belgium Eric's Ale
- 21st Century Monk's Blood

Pretty good take, IMHO. I was told to try the last two by a friend, so figured I'd buy them at a discount, lol...

Nice Stouts. I absolutely love the Shakespeare. Harviestoun Old Engine Oil is the bomb. Bell's Expedition holds up very well.
Just recently quaffed a Saison Dupont at the Foundry and was impressed. I'm not a huge Saison fan but the Saison-Brett is special. I like the farmhouse ales such as the Tank 7.
Surprised there isn't any Bell's on the list. My heroin could easily be the Hopslam.
The list obviously ignored the Upper Midwest. New Glarus has several that should be considered. I recently had a buddy from Wisconsin send me a few Sprechers. The Scotch Ale was lovely.
Damn, now I'm thirsty and all I have is Moose Drool.
Great thread BTW.

I agree, but just to clarify Old Engine Oil is not a stout.


Also, Reaper, I'm equally surprised you group Saisons and Farmhouse Ale's together whilst separating the stouts.

That is an awesome name for a beer. I need to get some.

They're grouped together because they're the same style. Technically the style is called "Saison/Farmhouse Ale." If I wanted to go very specific, then I could tell you that there are two different styles of beer that qualify as farmhouse ale - Saison, from Belgium, and Biere de Garde, a more malty farmhouse ale style from France.

And while I'm at it, the distinct stout beer styles as recognized by the BCJP are as follows: American Stout, American Double/Imperial Stout, Foreign/Export Stout, Irish Dry Stout, Milk/Sweet Stout, Oatmeal Stout, Russian Imperial Stout

It's also an awesome beer...

Finally getting around to trying some Boulevard Tank 7 tonight. I have had several of the Smokestack Series and for the most part loved them. Tank 7 is great stuff and I enjoyed it as much as their tripel and quad.

The guy at the beer store was also raving about Lost Abbey Red Barn but the Tank 7 was on sale for $7 so I went with it. Probably try the Lost Abbey next.

Where'd you find it for $7?

Edit: reeruned, you live in Denver.

That would be a bit of a drive for a beer run.

I've got a Lost Abbey Red Barn in the cellar. I'm currently in the beginning stages of a book-length project on Saison. I plan on drinking a shit-ton of Saison in the next three weeks to spur on my rough draft of the non-travel, non-interview/profile segments of the book. I'm talking LA Red Barn, Bruery Saison de Lente, Bruery Saison Rue, like 4 different Fantomes, Jolly Pumpkin Bam Noire, New Glarus Imperial Saison, Saison Dupont, Dupont Avec Les Bons Vuex, Boulevard Saison (now retired), Boulevard Saison-Brett, Boulevard Tank 7, maybe more.

Nice project. IMO it seems like Saison isn't that well know outside of the beer geek world but has slowly been getting more popular. I don't even think I tried one until a few years ago.

Just read an essay in the OA about this brewery:
http://www.fullsteam.ag/

Sounds like they have a cool philosophy and some interesting beers. Anyone familiar with it?

Had one of these last night. Pretty tasty.

http://www.bearrepublic.com/images/o...pack_small.JPG

I haven't heard of them before. It doesn't seem like they've released any beers into the market just yet. Sounds exciting though; link me to that essay if you would be so kind.

Racer 5 is damn solid. Bear Republic makes another IPA called Hop Rod Rye that is probably in my top 10 favorite IPAs.

I don't think it's online. Here is synopsis and title, though:
http://www.eatmedaily.com/2010/03/ox...-adhd-edition/
Edit:

Actually, here's the article in its original form:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/...-southern.html
Suds straight from the Southern soil
ARTICLE
COMMENTS (3)
EmailPrintOrder Reprint Share: Yahoo! Buzz Text
BY WELLS TOWER
Unless you want to see a man upset, do not ask Sean Lilly Wilson, president of the nascent Fullsteam Brewery in Durham, what he thinks of sweet tea.

"People talk about sweet tea as though it's a distinctly Southern beverage, but what is it? It's Camellia sinensis, a Chinese shrub! What's Southern about a Chinese shrub?" Wilson asks.

Wilson, 39, grew up in Pennsylvania but radiates an ardor for Southern foodways that borders on the extreme. In Fullsteam's mission "to brew farmhouse ales that celebrate the culinary and agricultural heritage of the South," Wilson and his brewer, Chris Davis, have tried, with varying results, to make beer from sweet potatoes, figs, rhubarb, pawpaws, persimmons, scuppernong grapes and, daringly, the roots, stems and flowers of kudzu vines. An emphasis on locally grown ingredients, specific to the South, is at the core of what Wilson describes as Fullsteam's "plow-to-pint" philosophy.


"As more people like me move down here, it's easy to worry about the South losing its Southernness, but at the core of Southern life is the climate, the things that grow here," Wilson says. "We're fermentation opportunists. All we're trying to do is to ferment what we farm and forage - as brewers have been doing for thousands of years - and to create a new approach to a Southern beer style."

Backed by about $1 million in investments and loans, Fullsteam aims to launch production this spring and to begin pouring pints in a taproom at the brewery, which stands on an improving block in Durham's resurgent downtown, by mid-May. Fullsteam's inaugural lineup will include a porter brewed from hickory-smoked malt, designed to complement the hickory-smoked meat of Carolina hogs; a tangy-tart Berliner-weisse fermented with locally grown rhubarb; a sweet-potato ale; and Fullsteam Carolina Common, the brewery's yeasty, crisp flagship beer, which surprisingly fulfills brewer Chris Davis's ambition "to make a beer that tastes like biscuits and fresh bread."

It is the sort of menu that might strike fear into your heart if you have been let down by syrupy, Smuckers-ish raspberry hefeweizens and blueberry ales. In the small-batch offerings available on the day of my visit to the brewery-in-progress, however, Wilson and Davis's beers were studies in graceful restraint. The pawpaw ale was devoid of gooey sweetness and broadened on the tongue into a dusky earthiness, a flavor of soil that could inspire you to eat dirt. The sweet-potato ale, in which sweet potatoes constitute 25 percent of the fermentable mash, was crisp and supple and entirely dodged the expected pumpkin-pie-spice bouquet.

"Traditional Southern food doesn't bash you over the head, and we're not trying to bash you over the head with our ingredients," Wilson says. "Just to make beers that work tastefully and subtly with Southern foods."

That said, Wilson is busy plotting future projects that hardly seem the essence of subtlety and taste, among them a stout decocted from the Southern "workingman's lunch," MoonPies and RC Cola.

"No idea if that'll work," says Wilson, who doesn't much mind that a cola-and-MoonPie beer would send the average craft-beer snoot into fits of peristalsis. "Beer is and should be a respite from connoisseurship. I'd like our beers to be a joyful celebration of the land we live on and the foods we eat. I know it sounds a little cheesy, a little lofty and unattainable, but so what? I'm an optimist. Full steam ahead."

Wells Tower is an award-winning short story and nonfiction writer who splits his time between North Carolina and New York. This article appears in The Oxford American magazine's 2010 "Southern Food" issue, which is available at most bookstores and newsstands nationwide. The Oxford American is "The Southern Magazine of Good Writing," and more information is available at www.oxfordamerican.org.


Read more: http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/03/...#ixzz0mbFhHuXP

Hmmm.....I may have to try some of these. Only thing is I wonder if I can even find many of these around here.

And this.....wth?

$150 for a 24oz bottle? :eek:

Yeah, Utopias is a super-complex, 27% ABV strong ale.

BTW -- in case anyone likes Goose Island's Nut Brown Ale or Oatmeal Stout, I wanted to let you know that they are discontinuing them. They've made those beers for decades but the market is pushing towards bigger, more complex beers and Goose Island has decided to remove these two session beers from their bottled lineup altogether.

The crazy thing is that it usually sells for a premium over that because it is so hard to get. I have tried it at the Great American Beerfest and it is really interesting but I was expecting more for at that price.

Since this thread became a general beer lovers discussion, I thought I'd just post this into it. Follow the actual link to see pictures of all the pretty bottles.

http://www.bonappetit.com/blogsandfo...evolution.html

It's like they changed it or something. I still love their Abbey and 1554 offerings but I can take or leave everything else.

We have that on tap at my favorite hole.

Twilight by Deschutes, summer in a bottle. Really enjoyed the 6 pack I had this weekend.

http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/63/17984/?ba=bros

Tried Brooklyn Lager the other night and thought it was very good. Looking forward to trying the stout.
If you want something that gives you a kick in the pants try Maudite or La Fin du Monde.
http://www.unibroue.com/en/home/
Their Blanche de Chambly is the best white beer I've ever tried.

I just bought a bottle of Maudite the other day. Haven't cracked it yet, but looking forward to it...

As I always lament when it comes up: I really wish we got Deschutes down here.

Ranger IPA is great.

If you need to be somewhat productive after keep it to 1 bottle.

You've fallen victim to marketing. Expand your horizons and start making up your own mind. If I tell you 2 dozen times a week that boar piss tastes delicious and post some pictures of sexy ladies next to a bottle of boar piss does that make boar piss delicious? Of course not. Ask Saulbadguy how he came from a beer hater to somebody who appreciates a quality crafted brew.

But Corona is fairly innocuous. It doesn't taste bad... it doesn't really taste like much at all. I think that's one of the interesting things about the anti-Corona fervor. Something so mild and inoffensive creates such passionate hatred.

1. They charge "import" price for it.
2. It comes in a clear glass bottle, which skunks it.
3. It comes with a lime.
4. It's a product of superior marketing. It is clearly not much different from Bud Light, but people think it is.

I don't hate the stuff. I just don't buy it. For $2 extra, you can buy a sixer of something amazingly delicious.

What's maddening is i've only drank 3 beers on that list. Looking over Reapers cellar/fridge, i've had maybe 4 or 5 of those.

...and i've drank alot of beer.

However, I don't go to the liquor store that often. It's too difficult to make a choice.

I agree completely. It's overpriced and it's not a good beer. I don't call people idiots for drinking it, though.

You should start immediately.

Very well.

You Corona drinkers are idiots. :cuss::cuss::cuss:

I'm so infuriated that I'm currently typing this blind because I got so mad thinking about people drinking Corona that I put my fist through my monitor.

Honestly though, people who drink Corona aren't idiots. They probably think McDonalds has good hamburgers too. But people who drink Miller Lite are just plain dumb.

Then there are those idiots who think Shiner is the end all/be all of breweries...

I recently tried that Shiner 101 which they advertise as a Czech Style Pilsner. The beer wasn't bad... but it didn't really remind of me Czech Style Pilsners at least not ones like Pilsner Urquell or Staropramen (which I assumed, maybe erroneously, represented Czech style pilsners).

Shiner fans are at least drinking respectable product.

It's not but it's a decent product that is better than anything produced in St. Louis, Golden, & Milwaukee. It used to be a really good value in MO because they kept the price at $8 for a twelver but now it's $11-12 so I don't drink it very often.

New additions to the cellar today:

1x Cantillon Gueuze
2x Fantome Saison D'Ereze'e - Printemps
1x Fantome Black Ghost
1x Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Ken & Fritz's Ale (Imperial Stout)
1x Goose Island Nightstalker (Imperial Stout)

Nightstalker is great - I have one of those cellared myself. I also picked up a bottle of that SN a month or so ago, but haven't cracked it yet. You planning on drinking that one soon?

This. Miller lite is terrible.

I'll drink the Nightstalker soon, to take advantage of its hoppyness. I've had it once before on-tap at Goose Island's brewpub on Clybourn St in Chicago. The 30th Anniversary I'll probably put a few months on at least.

Bought some Lagunitas Wilco Tango Foxtrot this weekend. Recommend.