I brewed a bunch of beer with my neighbor a few years ago and they were really good. I actually won a competition with one. Yeah it was that good. Home brew can be so tasty. Good work Knope, now start your next batch!

I know I'll be doing a little batch this summer.

I like to listen to mellow music when I sip this. That album Chris posted is doing a fine job.

Saturday after having sushi, no water, mixing, Capn n coke, vodka tonic, and beer.. I felt like shit all day Sunday. One must remember to hydrate. The body prefers having liquid in it other than alcohol

double espresso

I don't know how so many(read: nearly all) other brewers get a super hoppy IPA so very wrong, while these guys get it so very right.

9% though, like a fucking hammer. IMO, the only downside.

Well, that, and $12 for only four of them. That is like the dollar equivalent of like eighteen PBRs?

This of course, is why i can't have nice things.

You might as well be having wine at that point.

Yarr, and compared to what i have been lately sort of assuming to be *maybe* 2-3% on the Pabsts, it is properly wrong for my skullspaces.

Mad delicious though. And unlike wine for me, no mindsplitting headaches.

I will have to check if that is available at the local beer store I frequent, Special Brews, looks interesting. I am into the IPA thing, which is lucky for me as they are THE Pacific Northwest sig brew. They are plentiful as fuck in the "local" section of this store.

Re: The PBR, over here they seem to be just about or a bit below the listed alcohol percentage which is 5% or something? I'd believe 4% or 4.5%, it's certainly more potent than Coor's Light.

As an aside, the other week I went to the Mac & Jack's brewery in Redmond which is about a 45 minute drive from here. They don't bottle nothing, but they have their shit on tap in bars here, Idaho and Oregon. Their typical flagship brews are pretty good, but when I was there I got a growler full of some limited run vanilla bean porter. Mother of fuck, still a decently heavy-ish dark beer in terms of alcohol percentage, but it was probably the finest tasting brew I have ever drank. Still totally manly ass beer, but practically candy at the same time.

On a slightly related note, this was yesterday. I had a Ninkasi Vanilla Oatis oatmeal stout and some black ale I can't remember the name of but the former was fantastic.

Yo, there is a really good chance that the Dogfish 90 is available to you somewhere.

IMO they it is by far the finest generally-widely-available hefty IPA around. Brutal on the hops without being mean with them. That is the balance that IMO most brewers fuck up. It has a heavy alcohol content, but it doesn't taste so much like it either, which is another tricky trick of theirs that i am into.

I tried the 120 min IPA once, but it was all wrong, kind of bad/evil, actually. The 60 min IPA is a solid cheaper, good normal-ish IPA.

But the 90 minute is some sort of magical shit to me. I drink maybe four of them every two years. That works out to be about right for me.

Vanilla bean porter sounds delicious. There's a restaurant I go to when my folks are around that has a chocolate stout brewed on-site that is pretty snazzy. I've had it a couple times. And I'm not a beer person at all; I have them very rarely, but that kind of stuff is delicious delicious.

I have occasionally enjoyed very hoppy IPAs. Basically, on the off chance I will have a beer, it will not be an American lager sort. It's gonna be something serious.

It really was incredibly delicious. I ended finishing the growler starting the next day at about 11AM. It was pretty hilarious talking to my parents while chugging down delicious beer and them not really caring too much.

Chris, on the subject of brutal hopsiness, have you have an Arrogant Bastard or a Double Bastard? That is some truly gnartown shit. The double is something like 11.7% or something. I have had stuff that is nearing 10% that is deceptively tasty and kind, this lies on the exact opposite end of the scale. It is like, all out taste bud warfare. Definitely not something I am down to drink regularly. Will get you trashed in a jiffy though.

I just bottled my second beer yesterday. A simple brown ale I brewed with a certain friend of mine. She is in the Air Force ROTC and she graduates this May, so some time during the summer she is leaving for California with her girlfriend. Her favorite beers are brown ales, so this is like a small going away brew in her honor.




I agree with Chris that most IPA are just rather underwhelming and unbalanced. Lots of bitterness, some aroma (if I can find one fresh in PR), and very little flavor (mostly bitterness rather then flavor). I great IPA should just be a bitch slap of hop aroma and flavor. Like you friend opened one up and you can smell the hops from his beer plus a crisp clean flavor with the appropriate perceived bitterness to match, and not just a fuckton of bitterness to be cool (IBU to perceived bitterness is like watts and loudness, it all depends). I'm going to brew an IPA with some crazy hop schedule like DFH does with their beer to combat the incoming summer heat next. I'd love to get my hands on a 90 min but there is only so much variety that the craft beer bars bring to PR. I'll just have to brew what I want to drink

While you guys have been drinking the finest of ales I've been sneaking a flask full of whisky to shows. In my sock, y'hear. A couple domestic brews to wash it down and it's good times.

A proper bootlegger.

Done it myself.

Anywhere less than a 1000-capacity theatre around here they don't czech, so I'll walk in with whatever in my pockets and just consume it in the shitter, same as everyone else. By which I do not mean in suppository form. It's rock-and-roll, after all. Bigger venues, on the off chance I go to one, the closest is directly across the street from my studio. I have the keys to the building and 24/7 access. Hmm...

The arrogant bastard is pretty solid, but i have not been as into the Stone stuff as most people seem to be.

In troof though, when i hit thirty-two-ish, my system started to dislike most "good" beers. I didn't realize it exactly until a bit afterward, but yeah, in general they make me feel kind of lousy and hung-over, even if i only have like one/16oz. I dunno whathefuck that is all about, but considering that i have no fucking problem whatsoever with the American Adjunct Lager style beerz, i wonder if it might be some sort of a mild allergy to a specific type of nice hop, or i don't know, some sort of problem with lots of malts?

Shit is weird. But whatev. It mostly just means that the main acceptable option for me, also conveniently happens to be the absolute least expensive. It could be worse. I would be pissed right off if i ever developed a gluten allergy or something.

Raleigh happens to have a ton of fantastic breweries in the city and surrounding areas. Natty Greene's has some tasty beers that go great with their bowl'o'chips (tried that out with Cameron when he was hereabouts) and they are constantly switching up their selection of seasonals.

Cameron also had some Boylan Bridge Brewpub beers that are also pretty fantastic and you can drink on a bridge over train-tracks with a view of the Raleigh skyline. The food is pretty meh and the service can be shitty (bunch of hipsters working there) but I go there for drunken bridge shenanigans.

Unfortunately we didn't get a chance to go to my favorite brewery in town, Trophy Brewing Co., which makes some really interesting brews. Little Backstory, the owner of Trophy owns an awesome bar downtown called Busy Bee (my band is playing their upstairs bar called The Hive on the 13th as a matter of fact) where they serve a bunch of great local beers. Well when they planned to open trophy they had a night where if you brought in a trophy, you got a free beer. So now Trophy Brewing Co. has awesome childhood trophies everywhere, which they use as their beer tap handles.





Best part is the wife and I are hopefully moving into a place withing like a five minute walk from all of these places .

Also, had Old Grand-Dad Whiskey the other day. Not bad, not bad at all.

Old Grand-Dad is not bad at all. Not my favorite, and I prefer the 100 proof- and not 'cause it's stronger- but it has a unique flavour. I like that they show a wine glass of it, neat, in the picture.

Re: Stone, I liked their porter, as I am wont to do. Arrogant Bastard, I don't recall if I've had.

There is a local beer around here, Flying Bison Rusty Chain I've had on occasion, and it is good stuff.

Beer is too close to food for me to have much of on the rare occasions I have it.