AaronS

my ex and I went on an early date there too.

some truly amazing stuff on facebook about her life in the 80s.

abomination brewing co love letters from hell milkshake style triple India pale ale with candy hearts, sprinkles, marshmallows, milk sugar, vanilla bean, strawberry, ice cream & artificial colors - brewed at the 12% brewing project in north haven, ct, 9.7% abv. I don’t know what the artificial colors are about, this looks like a typical hazy ne ipa. you wouldn’t really expect it to taste like one, but this more or less works like a triple ipa despite all of the adjuncts. there’s an artificial set of sweet vanilla and strawberry notes, followed by a little bit of hop burn and some lactose. this isn’t as well put together as the omnipollo or mortalis stuff but it’s more or less what I hoped it would be.

my local has a basically identical proffer and while good is clearly worse than the seneca.

the willaimsburg one is very good. there’s a few places that I think are better.

Where should I go in Clinton Hill? Sailor is closed today.

msrp is 5500 new.

omnipollo eliphas double india pale ale - 8.1% abv, brewed at the 12% brewing project in north haven. this is a relatively new omnipollo recipe that uses a mix of "the juiciest hops they could find" that can't be googled. this is pretty solid - there's a slightly thicker than average mouthfeel, more bitterness than usual, and the hop profile is something like tangerine pith and mango creamsicle. this is better than the last couple things I had at finback and so on. mildly recommended.

fat orange cat less more new england style double india pale ale - 8.4% abv, brewed at the 12% beer project in north haven. 12 percent llc has a lot of brands I don't really keep up with, the key food has a bunch of their stuff at the moment, this is the second freshest one after the omnipollo beer I had last time, and I didn't remember that the last thing I had from this one was terrible until I left the store. this is a straight up the middle north east ipa. it was made with citra and ahtamun hops, which is a combination you don't see much although I think ahtamun is used in beers like jai alai. this is pretty bitter with a simple citrus hop profile underneath - I would have have guessed this was mostly mandarina bavaria or one of those german hops that's never that interesting. meh.

the seneca is good too. better beer than rolo’s.

no, the franny’s of ridgewood is rolo’s. it’s worth going to if you’re in the area.

franny’s wasn’t a pizzeria. didn’t I learn that from you? I’m kinda shocked you haven’t been. the first time I went I overheard the one of owners interviewing a potential cook and he said they were trying to be franny’s. I think it’s one of the better nbc places I’ve been to, and the multiple vernaculars thing kinda works.

wine goes better with most food. would have a beer with their burger I guess.

the franny's of ridgewood has it on tap!

the metal coverage went from ok to bad over the last few years.

omnipollo nebuchadnezzar imperial india pale ale - 8.5% abv, brewed by twelve percent, north haven, ct. this is one of the oldest omnipollo beers and the de proef version was definitely the first omnipollo beer I had. this makes an interesting contrast with last night’s beer - this has an older hop bill (columbis, centennial, simcoe) but has flaked oats and it’s not surprising that the next beer they sent to new york was a north east ipa, even if I didn’t know it at the time. this is slightly hazy and has a combination of peach and grapefruit that’s reasonably bitter at first but has some layered soft citrus flavors in the finish, and it tastes a lot more modern than the hop bill sounds. I haven’t seen their beer around much lately but this is the first beer I’ve had that was canned in 2024 and there was a batch of this that I missed somewhere between haloween or thanksgiving. hard to say how much nostalgia is at play here but I like this a lot more than anything I had from a local haze merchant blah blah blah. recommended.

three floyds artic panzer wolf imperial india pale ale - 9% abv. nostalgia is undoubtedly the main reason I go out of my way to drink three floyds, but when their stuff is good it’s really good and I’m glad I bothered to go to the UES to pick this up. (the met was worthwhile too.) this is a terrific old school double ipa - there’s a bunch of sweet peach and white grape flavors that have the carmelized/marmalade character I like so much with only a little direct malt flavor. the finish is a little bit drier and has some citrus and nz hop like greenness, although the can says they only use american hops. if the year round beers that are so easy to find were anywhere near this good I’d buy almost nothing else. it may help that I’ve looked at stuff from the guy who did the can art everyday since 2000 without getting tired of it blah blah blah. strongly recommended.

I also only know one person (a couple I guess) and they don’t have connections and wouldn’t bother to go somewhere that wasn’t easy to book.

tired hands only void imperial stout - 11% abv. tired hands is a main line philadelphia brewer that's a few years older than the similar breweries in this area. I haven't had that much of their stuff, they've been distributing here for at least a year but it's always the same few things and the majority of what I've had has been on tap at special events. I remember being floored by this at a tap takeover at covenoven about nine years ago where I was unable to try any hoppy beer because we showed up an hour or so after it started. this is a pretty credible americanized russian imperial stout - it opens with a bunch of bitter roasted notes that have a lot of nuance - espresso, dark chocolate, but also some grassy hops, creaminess, anise/molasses stuff, and some booze, and there's a nice mix of toffee and mint in the long finish. this is exactly the kind of huge but nuanced beer I've always liked, and the way the apparent alcohol is integrated with the other flavors reminds me a lot of the older evil twin recipes I liked so much. recommended.

$50 if you get a cheeseburger.

sierra nevada bigfoot barleywine-style ale - 9.6% abv. this is the bigger version of my other favorite sierra beer - it's got a higher abv than celebration but uses the same six ingredients. I had a slightly older one recently that was terrific - it was still hoppy, had some really well developed malt notes, and the beginning of the classic orange marmalade and caramel flavor profile you get in the good examples of english style barley wines. this doesn't really have any of that yet - the caramel and citrus are there but there's a lot of malt on top of them and this isn't as pleasant as the way I remember fresh ones. recommended if you hold onto it for a few years.

walking around upper manhattan is always a little weird to me - the lower part seems so flat and devoid of nature that walking up a hill serves as a weird reminder that upper part wasn't always the way it is.

industrial arts brewing power tools west coast style india pale ale bold & evergreen - 7.3% abv. industrial arts has had a beer by this name the whole time they've been open, although I think it had slightly lower abv at first and was simply an american ipa at first. I've always been a little bit frustrated by this beer, it's one of the few non-hazy ipas from a good local brewery and peekskill made a lot of great examples of this kind of beer when the industrial arts guy was there. I don't know if this changed when industrial arts moved to the larger brewery in beacon or how different the recipe is, but this is better than I remember it. you can see by looking at it that it's not a real west coast ipa, but the hop profile isn't that far off and there is some grainy malt underneath the bitterness. the basic mixture of pine and citrus with some pineapple, mango, and a little bit of peach which sounds pretty close to the way I'd describe eastern standard or one of his peekskill beers but tastes worse, probably because it doesn't walk the line between west coast and hazy ipa styles blah blah blah and another hundred blahs. still enjoyable and could be recommended to people with shitty bodegas and so on.

poor man's speedball? caffeinated beer is usually good.

am actually mildly curious about the alcoholic monster energy drinks you see in bodegas.