Let's talk about Beer, man!

[bodia]

This is my fault. Or at least I'm part of the problem. I've always been and IPA drinker but this latest trend is crazy. I don't have more than 3 beers when I go out and I love IPA so much that when I do order a beer, i'll only order an IPA. Not I'm crazy picky about IPAs so I go somewhere where they have a large selection with a number of local beers. This demand is driving bars and pubs to carry an unbalanced amount of IPA's. (it's good for me, but even I can see it's obnoxious.

The same goes for breweries around here. If you are starting brewery in NE, you have to make a number of IPAs and always have 2 or 2 available or you are not going to make it. I suspect it's annoying to some of the brewers that want to make other stuff. ...so, Sorry@ I'm definitely part of the problem.

There's still plenty left for me to chose from! I can get on board an IPA like you mentioned your brother described a couple of posts up. I don't pay enough attention to the ones I like to remember what they are, but they're certainly cloudy, and not as bitter. As mentioned, more citrus notes than bitterness.

 

[John Beef]

According to my brother (who is a brewer/ hobbyist), what they do with standard IPAs and west coast IPAs is to overload them with hops in the brewing process. Boiling all these hops creates the bitterness. But the new England style changed the process to use a lower amount of hops in the mash and then add (or overload) the hops late in the brewing process which eliminates much of the bitterness from the hops but allows all the citrusy flavors of the hops to come through.

I've brewed several batches in my day and you got it mostly right.

You can have one kind of hops and get 4 flavor profiles. When you start the boil and throw in some hops at the beginning, the citrusy overtones boil off but the bitterness remains. When the boil is maybe 50 minutes in (generally 10 minutes before you kill the heat) you throw in some more, and some of the fruitiness stays behind. Finally you can throw some in after heat has been turned off, and all the citrus oils will stay in the mash. But since the boil is still hot, and some of those oils might evaporate, you can wait even longer. Wait the week or so you're fermenting, and when you get to the bottling/kegging phase, run the beer through a container with fresh hops loaded in it (and some filters of course). Back in the day this container was called a "Randall" and when you see the term "dry hopped" on a bottle, this is what it's referring to. That way you get all the best fruitiness from the hops and next to no added bitterness.

 

[Herr Squid]

Erdinger's gooood stuff! Had some in Leinsweiler, a little wine village East of Stuttgart several years back, and thoroughly enjoyed it.

When Mark, Hans, and I were in Innsbruck, a few years ago..............



............Hans and I drank a couple of these half way up the mountain. Good stuff! And, I had to bring one of these glasses home:

 

[Dirty_Boogie]

If anyone is passing through central Massachusetts, make sure to stop by Tree House Brewery. Only place to get it is at the brewery, and it's worth the trip, and the experience. Went yesterday for the first time, and it didn't disappoint. It's actually a great place to take the family (and the dog). This beer is beyound spectacular - there's a lot of great craft beer out there, but this stuff is top tier! Cheers!

 

[RallyFanatic]

If anyone is passing through central Massachusetts, make sure to stop by Tree House Brewery. Only place to get it is at the brewery, and it's worth the trip, and the experience. Went yesterday for the first time, and it didn't disappoint. It's actually a great place to take the family (and the dog). This beer is beyound spectacular - there's a lot of great craft beer out there, but this stuff is top tier! Cheers!

Julius is one my favorites IPAs! I remember when they opened if you weren’t there early, you weren’t getting beer. Glad I can pop in most anytime and snag some now, though it’s still a bit of a drive for me. Trillium is also excellent if you’re in the Boston area.

 

[pac90]

I love beer, just love it, and enjoy a good curry. I've been trying either low or zero alcohol beers for curry nights as its just not the same without beer. Found a few good ones. San Miguel is great chilled, and zero so handy for driving etc

 

[Parralax view]

I'm not really a picky beer drinker, I might have a Celebrator in the fridge and down that as well as a Pabst. I do love exotic beers and my bosses have been the pushers. They go all over the world in their yearly travels and bring me back something from most of the places they go. One recently went to ski in Park City Utah, and brought me back my least favorite of all, a Porter, called "Polygamy dark". It was in a can and I knew I would hate it so to the back of the fridge it went for beer famine time. I reached that one Sunday when out of Budweiser, I decided to try it. Man, it was delicious!!!! And I only had one....;-) I'm a fool for Warsteiner Dunkel, but can't find it any longer here and Kostrizer black beer. Great beers but virtually gone on Oahu...sadly.

 

[dmatthews]

Polygamy dark... bwahahahahaha!!!
Betcha can't have just one!
Oh wait... you did.

 

[Herr Squid]

I'm not really a picky beer drinker, I might have a Celebrator in the fridge and down that as well as a Pabst. I do love exotic beers and my bosses have been the pushers. They go all over the world in their yearly travels and bring me back something from most of the places they go. One recently went to ski in Park City Utah, and brought me back my least favorite of all, a Porter, called "Polygamy dark". It was in a can and I knew I would hate it so to the back of the fridge it went for beer famine time. I reached that one Sunday when out of Budweiser, I decided to try it. Man, it was delicious!!!! And I only had one....;-) I'm a fool for Warsteiner Dunkel, but can't find it any longer here and Kostrizer black beer. Great beers but virtually gone on Oahu...sadly.

It used to be that canned beer was largely crap, but those days are long gone. I've been surprised at how good some of the Utah beers are. One (one.. hah!) quirk of that state is that draft beers can't be more than something like 4% ABV. Pretty weak by today's standards, and one of their challenges is to brew something flavorful that has low alcohol content. Now I think the Utah brewers put their pent-up frustrations into their bottles, because those are not limited to 4%. I've had some very nice strong, malty, flavorful Utah brews out of bottles that run more like 8-10%.

 

[Bill SAS 513]

Haven't caught up over the last 6-7 pages of posts, but when any of you come to town, stop by the new Guinness Plant just outside BWI airport.
I'm not a big Plain-old Guinness fan, but they have a lot of off-shoots that are incredible.
Coffee Vanilla Stout, Espresso Stout, etc.. And the grub's pretty good, too.

 

[Bill SAS 513]

Thanks for the trip down memory lane!

About 30 years ago (cough, ahem, ahem!) I used to drink in a small country pub, in a village I lived in. Me and my friends all had tankards at the bar. Mine had fish as a handle. A couple of friends had ones with a glass bottom. So the story goes, the glass bottom was so you could see if an adversary was about to launch an attack on you, as you drank your real ale. This, I am told is from medieval times!

I bought a really cool wooden mug with my oldest while visiting him and his family outside Houston. Went to the big Renaissance Festival down there and had a blast!!!!
Wooden bottom, so I can't see imminent problems approaching, but the beer tastes good!!! LOLOL

 

[Alnus Rubra]

I bought a really cool wooden mug with my oldest while visiting him and his family outside Houston. Went to the big Renaissance Festival down there and had a blast!!!!
Wooden bottom, so I can't see imminent problems approaching, but the beer tastes good!!! LOLOL

If you have a beer in your hand there are no problems

 

[Outlier22]

Julius is one my favorites IPAs! I remember when they opened if you weren’t there early, you weren’t getting beer. Glad I can pop in most anytime and snag some now, though it’s still a bit of a drive for me. Trillium is also excellent if you’re in the Boston area.

I love treehouse, but I think it finishes a close 2nd to Trillium as far as IPA's go. There is just something about most Trillium IPA's that really only Long Live in Providence can match. I can't actually say what it is. But if I have a Long Live or Trillium before a Treehouse, it's just doesn't follow as well. ...actually I just saw some national brewery ratings (user ratings) and Treehouse finished 4th and Trillium 3rd. Hill Farmstead got first. not sure what site this was at this point but I had to mostly agree with it's ratings. ...but it was based on ratings and numbers so it left off some of the smaller breweries such as Vitamin C in MA and Long Live in RI and probably thousands of really good small breweries out there.

By the way if you read this Shawn, I picked up a good Long Live IPA I was going to ship down to you but of course it's not legal to ship alcohol so I would have had to package it up in something that made enough noise so that the sloshing of beer wouldn't have been noticeable. ...I didn't think it would be good idea to break the law AND ship it to you AT PRS! The more I looked into it the worse of an idea it seemed to be. So that's why you haven't received a few from me lol. Sorry about that!

 

[Shawn@PRS]

I love treehouse, but I think it finishes a close 2nd to Trillium as far as IPA's go. There is just something about most Trillium IPA's that really only Long Live in Providence can match. I can't actually say what it is. But if I have a Long Live or Trillium before a Treehouse, it's just doesn't follow as well. ...actually I just saw some national brewery ratings (user ratings) and Treehouse finished 4th and Trillium 3rd. Hill Farmstead got first. not sure what site this was at this point but I had to mostly agree with it's ratings. ...but it was based on ratings and numbers so it left off some of the smaller breweries such as Vitamin C in MA and Long Live in RI and probably thousands of really good small breweries out there.

By the way if you read this Shawn, I picked up a good Long Live IPA I was going to ship down to you but of course it's not legal to ship alcohol so I would have had to package it up in something that made enough noise so that the sloshing of beer wouldn't have been noticeable. ...I didn't think it would be good idea to break the law AND ship it to you AT PRS! The more I looked into it the worse of an idea it seemed to be. So that's why you haven't received a few from me lol. Sorry about that!

Breakin' The Law! Breakin' The Law!

I'm not going to say "do it", but I also won't say "don't do it", either.

 

[Outlier22]

humm….

 

[RallyFanatic]

I love treehouse, but I think it finishes a close 2nd to Trillium as far as IPA's go. There is just something about most Trillium IPA's that really only Long Live in Providence can match. I can't actually say what it is. But if I have a Long Live or Trillium before a Treehouse, it's just doesn't follow as well. ...actually I just saw some national brewery ratings (user ratings) and Treehouse finished 4th and Trillium 3rd. Hill Farmstead got first. not sure what site this was at this point but I had to mostly agree with it's ratings. ...but it was based on ratings and numbers so it left off some of the smaller breweries such as Vitamin C in MA and Long Live in RI and probably thousands of really good small breweries out there.

By the way if you read this Shawn, I picked up a good Long Live IPA I was going to ship down to you but of course it's not legal to ship alcohol so I would have had to package it up in something that made enough noise so that the sloshing of beer wouldn't have been noticeable. ...I didn't think it would be good idea to break the law AND ship it to you AT PRS! The more I looked into it the worse of an idea it seemed to be. So that's why you haven't received a few from me lol. Sorry about that!

now I have to go to RI for beer...

I also saw the list - Hill Farmstead is good, I think I prefer Trillium though. I was surprised San Diego wasn’t better represented, I had tons of great beer from tiny breweries there while on vacation.

 

[Outlier22]

now I have to go to RI for beer...

I also saw the list - Hill Farmstead is good, I think I prefer Trillium though. I was surprised San Diego wasn’t better represented, I had tons of great beer from tiny breweries there while on vacation.

I've had some great IPAs from Hill Farmstead, but I wouldn't say they were better than Trillum or TreeHouse. They all seem to be nearly on the same level. But Hill Farmstead is still one of the originals and are large enough to be well known and rare enough to create that "mystical demand". ...so it's gonna get more votes I think.

...and yeah, I would try to get to Long Live in RI when they have a DDH IPA release. Or maybe black cat or all seeing eye DIPA, or triangles IPA. They almost always have a good one so you probably can't pick a bad time. Also in RI, I'm a big fan of Tilted Barn. They have great IPA as well but I don't think on the same level as Long Live. ...a bit more bitter generally. But if they have a DDH Chosen One or DDH Other One, I generally try to get there to pick some up. While you're down in RI, you may as well hit Buttonwoods and Proclamation.

 

[Dirty_Boogie]

Beer is just like music... if you think it's good, then it is good.

 

[mark cassidy]

Carlsberg. Over here (Houston) there's a store in Pearland stocks the big cans but, for the real taste of it, a pint of draft Carlsberg back in the UK is almost worth the cost of a flight. I remember right Carlsberg is 5%. Carlsberg Special is 9%. In Canada I go with Kokanee Gold. It is very good. I have to say I like Fosters as well. Not a big fan of American big brewery beer but it is ok for a warm day for sure.

 

[Herr Squid]

I picked up some Big Barn barrel-aged Black Dog stout on draft. Brewed a couple hundred miles from here in Washington state, and it's darned good! Not quite as bonkers as something like Fremont Black Star barrel aged stout, but also a bit more drinkable.