what beers are you drinking?

[AaronS]

oec brewing obscura baltic porter obscure is a baltic porter brewed with debittered dark malts and hopped with fine european noble hops. a warmer fermentation starts in open tanks for one & a half weeks using a traditional lager yeast. finally it is layered cold prior to packaging. - 8% abv. this is the kind of simple beer that really benefits from the open fermentation that oec uses. there's one basic flavor - dark malt - but there's all kinds of detail here. you get dark malt, mocha, mint, dark cherry, raisin and a little bit of anise. there's a little brightness at the end that reminds me of champagne yeast the way that brett does sometimes, but other than that it doesn't really taste like wild yeast, although it's really rare to find this kind of detail without it blah blah blah. recommended plus.

[Wilfrid]

I don't drink much beer these days, but the sunshine yesterday demanded it. 

Saazy Saazbourne pilsner from Rochester which I really liked.

Thousand Stars pilsner from Sunnyside which I did not. Maybe it was the end of the keg; it was a bit flat and insipid.

[AaronS]

jester king bitter death extra hoppy belgian style pale ale batch #1 april 2021 - 5.4% abv. jester king is an austin, texas known for their open fermented wild ales, which are as good as any similar american beers I've had. this isn't one of those, it was apparently made with antwerp ale yeast and nothing else. I was pretty bummed to see that, because I expect beer to need brett to be good more than a year after bottling, but this is terrific. there's a really nice mixture of slightly bready malt, tea, a lot of fairly gentle noble hop spice and the accompanying bitterness, and tiny bit of citrus and sweetness in the finish. this is as hoppy as any ne-ipa in it's own way, but very few beers have this level of detail and this is one of the few american versions of a classic european style that's clearly better than the european versions I've had and so on. my strongest recommendation.

[AaronS]

kcbc beverly hills croc india pale ale simcoe, amarillo, idaho 7, mosaic, falconer's flight & warrior hops, malted barley - 6.9% abv. one of the things that I tend to forget when thinking about how uniform the ne ipas available to me are is how much better they are than the ipas that preceded them - finding a great ipa was exciting because it was my favorite beer style and because they weren't in every bodega and so on and on. so it's exciting that the variability of these new west coast ipas is a feature not a bug or whatever. this is pretty decent, it's got a pretty old school hop bill with one new hop (idaho 7) and two things that were around when everything changed (falconer's flight & mosaic) and has the clear, slightly amber color that these beers are supposed to have. this is surprisingly well done, there's a nice combination of malt, pine, resin, and a little bit of newer hop stuff. this is a lot better than the other west coast ipa they released recently, although the internet tells me the first batch of the came out last summer.

[AaronS]

jester king femme sauvage dry-hopped farmhouse ale femme sauvage is a dry hopped saison brewed with wild yeast and the 2019 pink boots society hop blend - batch #2, december 2020, 5.5% abv. the pink boots society was created to advance the role of women in the brewing world, their 2019 blend was a mixture of loral, glacier, mosaic, simcoe, and sabro. that's a pretty modern hop bill, and it really goes well with the mixture of brewer's yeast and wild yeast they used in this one. this has a terrific combination of white grape gummy candies, peach, melon, which is followed by some really terrific brett notes. the beer doesn't dry out the way that the best brett stuff usually does, there's some grassiness and there's some green apple, pear, and a ton of melon in the finish. the finish is pretty sweet for a brett beer, but this is really well put together and nothing seems out of place. this is even more impressive than the bitter death I had the other day, the brett notes are pretty distinctive, which isn't surprising because the ones I usually like are from much further north than austin, blah blah blah. my strongest recommendation.