what beers are you drinking?

[AaronS]

ordinem ecentrici coctores (oec brewing) triskel oak fermented country style lager triskel is a pale lager brewed using a traditional german double decoction mash. brewed using czech pilsner malt and hopped with german tettnang. triskel's fermentation starts in open tanks for one week and finishes three weeks later in oak. after lagering it is dry hopped using french triskel hops - 4.6% abv. apparently triskel hops were developed in 2006 as part of an initiative to cultivate new hop varieties in alsace and are related to several varieties of english, french, and german noble hops. this is a pretty terrific lager - there's a clean set of pilsner malt flavors followed by grassy, lemony hop notes that have an impressive amount of depth for a low abv beer. I prefer this to the similar beers from threes, the hops really work well with the oak aging and so on. strongly recommended.

[StephanieL]

One of the advantages to living near Eastern European markets is having access to a selection of relatively cheap Russian and Polish beers in large bottles.  The prices encourage trying different beers.  One we cracked open was the Marochnoe unfiltered hefeweizen from Afanasy brewery in Russia.  It's....interesting.  Not bad, but definitely sweeter than your average hefeweizen.  At least it's only 4.9% ABV, so drinking a half pint hardly affected me.

[Sneakeater]

Russians love their sweet.  

[AaronS]

blackberry farm brewery ipa - 7.1% abv. this is the second beer I've had from the brewery associated with the famous resort in tennessee, I wasn't that into the saison I had from them a few years ago but this is pretty nice. it's unfiltered, which gives it a cloudy, golden yellow appearance that makes it look like it was made with older style malts. it tastes like that too, there's a nice mixture of peach and tea that has some citrus and resin in the background. this is a pretty neat take on the west coast ipa. this is a pretty good example of the exact kind of beer I personally want to drink nowadays. recommended.

[AaronS]

industrial arts brewing company state of the art series bro-1 west coast ipa/american ipa - 6.8% abv. their website and instagram accounts call this a west coast ipa, the side of the can says american, and whatever that means (or doesn't) this isn't the lower abv ne ipa single hopped with bru-1 they released at the same time. bro-1 is a newish hop from the yakima valley that's supposed to taste like pineapple and be ideal for newer style ipas. this has a ton of the pineapple that you're supposed to get with bru-1, and the orange marmalade that the commercial description promises, but the way the relatively low bitterness interacts with the malt bill is off and this is mildly disappointing given the way that industrial arts usually nails this kind of thing. maybe I should have got the ne style one. meh.

[AaronS]

deciduous brewing company kooperatíon festbier collaboration unfiltered german style lager collaboration with schilling beer company - brewed at deciduous in newmarket, nh, 5.5% abv. schilling makes some of the better lagers you can get around here, and this can features their logo prominently enough that you might think they made this beer if you were in a hurry. it turns out that's not a problem, this is a nice example of a festbier and has some well done malt notes followed by some straw and hay with a little lemon and tastes like it should be a more amber shade of yellow. mildly recommended.

[AaronS]

hubbard’s cave double chocolate brownie 2021-1 imperial stout with mega amounts of cocoa powder, chocolate chips, and vanilla beans - brewed at une annee brewery llc, niles, il, 12% abv. I picked this up because I liked the one I had above, which was made with coconut and vanilla, so much. this one is a little less enjoyable, there’s more apparent alcohol and some bitterness, and the result is that it’s not nearly as drinkable as the other one. there are the expectedly huge notes of chocolate and roasted malt, with some coffee, vanilla, and imperial stout underneath, and the finish has some impressively delicate cocoa and vanilla notes underneath along with some toffee and unexpected blueberry notes. there’s a really admirable amount of detail underneath the big flavors and I’m glad I picked this up. recommended to me.

[StephanieL]

Now that sounds like an awesome base for a beer float.

[AaronS]

torst has a nice dessert that combines almond sorbet, caramel, and a really boozy barrel aged imperial stout.

[AaronS]

une année le seul xviii american wild ale fermented with blueberry and passionfruit - 6.5% abv. this is the label that the brewery that made the two hubbard's cave pastry stouts I liked so much releases their european style beer under. this is an opaque purple color and smells mostly of brett, which is also the way it tastes. it's pretty tart at first, which gives way to some blueberry and some well done dry brett, but the finish is tart in way that tastes more like lacto than brett and there's a little bit of passionfruit underneath everything. this is pleasant and very easy to drink for something this tart. mildly recommended.

[AaronS]

une année quad abbey ale - 11% abc. this is a really nice example of a quad. it's got a big set of plum, molasses, and dark cherry notes with some dark bread and toast underneath them, and a decent amount of sugar in the finish. this is a really well made beer, there's a ton of detail, it's fruitier and less bread like than a lot of the classic european ones, and this tastes like it was once pretty hoppy but is aging well and I would be surprised if this was canned in the last year. recommended to someone in a colder climate.

[Sneakeater]

Birrificio del Ducato Brett Peat Daydream

This didn't taste lthe way I thought it would.

For one thing, I don't taste any peat.  Maybe a little smoke at the finish.  But I mean a little -- and I'm not sure I'm not imagining it.

But also, maybe it's just that I'm unfamiliar with the way Brett works in beer, but I wasn't expecting the onslaught of tart fruit at the start.  Apricots, of all things (but sour ones).  Cranberries maybe.  But LOTS and LOTS.  There's funk, but it's subordinate to the fruit.

Very pleasant cloudyish orange brick color.

You might not be able to tell this from the foregoing, but I'm really enjoying this (I LIKE that tart fruit!).

[AaronS]

evil twin brewing nyc tgi oktober '21 oktoberfest - 6% abv. this is a little bit maltier than the typical oktoberfest I've had this year, and has all of the bread, honey, caramel notes you associate with this type of lager. I probably had too many of these beers this year.

[StephanieL]

17 hours ago, Sneakeater said:

Birrificio del Ducato Brett Peat Daydream

This didn't taste lthe way I thought it would.

For one thing, I don't taste any peat.  Maybe a little smoke at the finish.  But I mean a little -- and I'm not sure I'm not imagining it.

But also, maybe it's just that I'm unfamiliar with the way Brett works in beer, but I wasn't expecting the onslaught of tart fruit at the start.  Apricots, of all things (but sour ones).  Cranberries maybe.  But LOTS and LOTS.  There's funk, but it's subordinate to the fruit.

Very pleasant cloudyish orange brick color.

You might not be able to tell this from the foregoing, but I'm really enjoying this (I LIKE that tart fruit!).

That's how I've experienced Brett in beers.  Funky and sour fruit heavy.

[AaronS]

grimm hypnopompic india pale ale mosaic, cashmere, simcoe and eukanot hops - 6.4% abv, brewed at grimm. we all know about grimm’s unfortunate transition from excellent beer that was extremely hard to find to distributed shelfie, but I didn’t make it out in time to get to my local beer shop and this was the freshest thing in the bodega by a long shot. this pours a hazy shade of yellow orange and drinks like the ne ipa it looks like, there’s a solid combination of orange with some bitter tropical stuff in the finish that so many of these beers have. saying this isn’t as bad as some of the stuff I’ve had from them post expansion isn’t saying much. yet another reminder that planning ahead is always best.