what beers are you drinking?

[StephanieL]

Rogue Brewing's Pineapple Party Punch: what you get if you mix a hazy IPA with a pina colada, and take away most of the latter's sickly sweetness. Very hop-forward, like many hazy IPAs, and clocking in at 8.4% ABV.

[AaronS]

three floyds artic panzer wolf imperial india pale ale - a dry and stupendously dry hopped, medium bodied imperial india pale ale brewed with canadian 2 row malt, dextrose sugar, and lots of american hops. artic panzer wolf has superior aromas of marmalade, white peach, pine and apricot all mixed with intense american hop bitterness. alc 9% by vol. - as the side of the can says this is an old school american dipa where everything is very bitter and very sweet, and there is a really nice set of caramelized stone fruit along with all the bitter pine. I really love well made examples of this kind of beer and have yet to have anything like this from a local brewer that’s anywhere near as good. strongly recommended to nostalgists.

[AaronS]

hoof hearted brewing xxxtra powder key bump triple dry hopped triple india pale ale with el dorado, mosaic, motueka, & simcoe hops added - brewed at the 12% beer project llc. the combination of motueka and american hops sounds like your typical other half hop bill, and this is more or less a slightly inferior version of an other half tipa, which is what you get from other half a lot of the time nowadays. meh. (review from last night.)

[AaronS]

sierra nevada big little thing imperial ipa - 9% abv. this is sierra’s new year round iipa, which probably replaces their fantastic thing iipa. it’s got a mixture of magnum, which is the cornerstone of a lot of west coast ipas, along with crystal, chinook, idaho 7, columbus, cascade, and mosaic, which is two newer hops combined with a lot of old school ones. that sounds great, but this really doesn’t taste like much other than the weird apple juice combination of sweet malt and these hops. look for a glowing review of one of their beers tomorrow.

[AaronS]

sierra nevada bigfoot barleywine - style ale - 9.6% abv. like the just out of season celebration ale this is another sierra recipe that goes back to 1983, and while this seems like it’s more than just a bigger version of celebration the sn website gives an identical list of malts, hops, and yeast. this was one of the original “big” beers that I fell in love with, and I can remember my old boss complaining when they changed the recipe around 2003. (I also remember drinking a six pack of this and puking in front of almost all of the people I supervised around the time they changed the recipe, blah bleh blech) this is a much deeper red than celebration, and has a much richer caramel and toffee malt profile that comes before the big burst of american hops (cascade, centennial, chi hook) you get in the finish. this is the first time in several years that I’ve been able to find the current release of bigfoot, and it’s easy to forget how hoppy this is when it’s remotely fresh, but this is in old school red ipa territory at this point. this should be drinkable for the the next decade or so, etc, etc, etc.

[joethefoodie]

Serious question here. We like the occasional beer (i.e. we're far removed from the days when Significant Eater had a part-time Friday night job at DBA; back when it was the game in town - so like, late 90s - very early 2000s).

In any event, I like to have a minimum of 2 beer choices in the fridge. One of them always tends to be Guinness - the stuff in the cans  - Draught Stout. The other is where I vacillate between beers like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Anchor Steam, Duvel, et al.; that is, we (I) don't wanna be challenged too much with beer, as I tend to slam one when I'm cooking, or when a bottle of wine isn't in the cards for the evening. And there are times when I purchase large-format beers to share in lieu of wine.

So - what other plain-ish but high-quality stuff, based on what's mentioned above, can you recommend to have on hand? Top Hops is very close by, if that matters.

[AaronS]

I just mistakenly deleted a most about the grand delancey and how joe should get some suarez there.

[AaronS]

threes brewing + allagash brewing company consider the opposite american wild ale brewed with maine blueberries and aged in wine barrels - 6% abv, brewed at threes. allagash makes some of my favorite american wild ales, their brett strain has long been one of my favorites, but unfortunately it’s been a really long time since since I’ve seen their more interesting beer around. I think I missed a collab where threes used their yeast, but this one was fermented in threes foudre using maine air, aged in wine barrels, and then spent some time on top of maine blueberries. this pours a deep purple brown that looks like carbonated wine, which is kind of how it tastes. there’s a straight forward combination of blueberry and vinegar like tartness at first, followed by some leathery red wine flavors and maybe coca along with more berries, and the finish is mildly tart. my initial impression was bad natural wine, but there’s some depth of flavor here and it’s growing on me a little. 
 

eta: this is probably the last bretty wild ale I’ve ever had.

 

[Sneakeater]

43 minutes ago, AaronS said:

I just mistakenly deleted a most about the grand delancey and how joe should get some suarez there.

Oh!  That was a good post!

[joethefoodie]

6 hours ago, Sneakeater said:

Oh!  That was a good post!

Yes - where the hell is it? Must be in the tubes somewhere?

[mitchells]

6 hours ago, joethefoodie said:

Yes - where the hell is it? Must be in the tubes somewhere?

I remember it. He said get a six pack of Stella and a six of Molson. 

[AaronS]

ok I said that it looks like top hops larger location is closed and they don’t have top hops to go’s inventory on line. 
 

grand delancey has theirs on line and joe really can’t go wrong with the majority of the can list and the regular bottles. I especially recommend the canned suarez beers and the suarez porter they have on draft, but apart from some of the bigger ipas they have the kind of stuff of stuff joe posted about.

the reserve list is equally impressive but is mostly the kind of beer joe doesn’t want. the cantillion bottle they have as a part of the adventurous palates sampler is one of the very best beers of its kind and that’s only the second time I’ve seen that beer in a retail shop in the last 10 years. 

the list they have online is clearly better than any bottle shop in brooklyn except for maybe gold star and covenhoven, but has much better prices than either one.

[Sneakeater]

The first version was better.

[StephanieL]

Almanac Beer Company continually turns out some amazing, complex aged beers.  Dream Sequence is a farmhouse ale (not a sour) that I think is the first "blended" beer of theirs, and maybe the first one I've ever had that's done with care and thoughtfulness.  (Think of a good blended Scotch that uses fine single malts as the base).  This was super-dry and got especially funky after it had come up to near-room temperature

[AaronS]

off color brewing socks wild fermented saison style ale with black limes and african dried lemons aged in foudre - 6.2% abv. this is a lot closer to what I want from a wild ale than the threes + allagash collab I had last night - there’s lots and lots of brett! every aspect of this is pretty well done - the citrus flavors are nicely layered (lime, kumquat) and mildly tart, there are some well done wheat flavors, and the finish is long and has a little hot of sweetness, a nice mixture of tartness and a little funk, and the combination of brett and fruit (and probably the modern hops they used) is really pleasant. the finish has a lot of lime in it, there’s a lot of complexity here, and so on. recommended.