what beers are you drinking?

[AaronS]

lawson’s mad river maple amber ale - 8% abv. I picked this up because it was a part of their year round line up for a while, which  made me curious enough to overlook my dislike of amber ales. there’s something about the taste of malty beer this shade of brown that I really don’t like, and while I guess I’ve enjoyed a lot of older double ipas that are more or less this color they usually taste like hops and caramel malt. this smells strongly of the malt taste I dislike so much, but that taste works surprisingly well with the maple syrup and the small amount of piney american hops I get in the finish. this is pretty well put together - it’s not as sweet as real maple syrup or a lot of stouts, it tastes like really good maple syrup, there’s no apparent alcohol, the finish has a nice mixture of honey, grapefruit, and mint tea, and so on, but if you’re only gonna have a beer every once in a while you should like it more than this and so on.

[AaronS]

to øl yule mælk rum barrel aged 2019 imperial milk stout - brewed at de proef in belgium, 15.1% abv. this is probably the best example of the post shelton brothers new old stock that I've had, while the few to øl city beers I've had have been excellent it's hard to believe that they'll make a better version of something like this. this has a really nice mixture of beer flavors (albeit ones I don't normally associate with stouts) and rum flavors, it starts out with a nice mixture of raisin and dried fig with some oak and a tiny amount of apparent alcohol in the finish. this tastes more like a barrel aged quad than a stout, but it's delicious. mildly recommended.

[AaronS]

other half brewing 9th anniversary triple india pale ale - brewed at other half on okie street in dc, 10% abv. I've posted about a lot of their previous anniversary beers over the years, mostly when I was drinking a ton more other half stuff and I almost always thought that they managed to save their best recipes for the anniversary releases. they rebrewed the 3rd, 4th, 7th and 8th anniversary beers for this release, and I was really surprised how little I enjoyed the taster of each I had when I picked these cans up. it's hard to know what changed, of course, but I'm pretty sure the previous batches of those beers were much better made and the beers I had yesterday were mostly syrupy messes that didn't have any of the detail I remembered the first time around. the other half dc location, which I think was the second one to open outside of new york city, has a reputation for making shitty beer and I'm surprised they brewed this, but... this one has citra, citra incognito, galaxy, belma, and cashmere cryo and is a lot better than the stuff I had on tap yesterday. the side of the can definitely gets this one right, there's a set of giant lychee and peach flavors that are pretty sweet, which are followed by some bitterness and a little bit of dankness in the finish. there's a little bit of apparent alcohol in the finish, but apart from that this is pretty well put together. I no longer drink enough of their stuff to know if it's better or worse than their average nowadays, but this is enjoyable enough and so on.

[AaronS]

sierra nevada ruthless rye ipa - 6.6% abv. I drank this one a lot just before other half opened, I don't remember if it was a seasonal or a part of their regular lineup at that point but the bravo at bedford and kosciuzko had it reasonably fresh for 9.99 and I was excited to find it in a variety pack at costco. this is about as far as you can get from the other half beer above it on the ipa spectrum in a lot of ways, but it did feature citra and eukanot back then as well as the chinook and nugget that are found in a lot of the older sierra beers. maybe they changed the recipe, yadda yadda yadda, but you'd think something from this time period would be a lot more bitter than this and it's easy to see why they put some rye in something that starts out so sweet. this is all sweet malt at first, which is followed by a mixture of rye spice and some bitterness, along with a little bit of dankness and citrus. there's not a lot of hop character here, which isn't surprising in 120 day old beer, but there's no off flavors at all and it has the drinkability that the good sierra stuff has. I expected to get a little bit more nostalgic enjoyment out of this, but drinking it after the very different other half beer was pretty interesting.

[AaronS]

sierra nevada hop bullet double ipa - 8% abv. this one goes back to 2017 and if memory serves their press release claimed it was the first mass produced beer to use lupulin powder, which breweries like other half were going nuts with at the time. this beer used the cryo form of magnum, which is found in stone ipa, sierra nevada pale ale (iirc), a lot of the classic west coast ipas, and exactly none of the beers the smaller breweries using cryo were making at the time. this is a lot lighter than the typical sierra beer but doesn't really have any less sweet malt flavor than the beer above it, although there is a lot more citrus than the beer above it. sierra often uses new hops, and this has the at the time new idaho 7 as well as cascade, centennial, chinook, crystal, and the aforementioned magnum, and having read that there is a little bit of the distinctive idaho 7 bubble tea flavor on top of the classic pine and resin that goes so well with sweet malt flavors. this is pretty well put together, like most sierra beers, and it's more enjoyable than a lot of the recent local attempts to make a west coast ipa blah blah blah.

[Sneakeater]

This was good to read, cuz I'm frequently ashamed to enjoy Sierra Nevada releases as much as I do cuz, you know, Sierra Nevada.  So thanks for the validation.

[joethefoodie]

5 hours ago, Sneakeater said:

This was good to read, cuz I'm frequently ashamed to enjoy Sierra Nevada releases as much as I do cuz, you know, Sierra Nevada.  So thanks for the validation.

But there is nothing wrong with Sierra Nevada, according to @AaronS !

[AaronS]

I've always loved their beer. do you not like it?

[Sneakeater]

I totally like it.

It's well-distributed enough that I thought I wasn't supposed to.

[AaronS]

I think it's the only widely distributed beer I'm still excited about. and three floyds I guess.

[Sneakeater]

Well, Genny Cream.

[joethefoodie]

@AaronS - We had a few beers at this place last night; evidently, there are a number of locations. 

Craft + Carry

Know anything about it?

[AaronS]

I went to the one in chelsea a few years and didn't like it, they didn't have that much interesting stuff and the pricing was bad. I just looked at the craft & carry website and it won't really show you their inventory but the pricing on what you can see is worse than a typical brooklyn bodega.

[AaronS]

lawson’s finest liquids double sunshine ruby red grapefruit double ipa - brewed by lawson’s in waitsfield, vt, 8% abv. this is at least the second time they’ve sent this version of double sunshine to new york, unfortunately I didn’t try it when it was around last year. double sunshine and sip of sunshine share the same mixture of columbus and citra, but this has a much larger sweet malt presence that makes it a lot closer to an older ipa. the fruit juice works really well with the hops here, there’s a pretty classic set of slightly dank american hop flavors that end with some mildly bitter grapefruit, but I think I’d be hard pressed to guess that this was made with juice. this a really nice example of exactly the kind of old school beer I’ve been into recently and so on. recommended.

[AaronS]

brewar starpoolskie chmielne beer open fermentation method starpolski brewery in zdunska wola city 1892 - 5.5% abv. I went to netcost today, which was pretty awesome, not least because I saw a cooler full of unfamiliar beers for the first time in a really long time. I picked this one because it said open fermentation and I figured googling chielne would be fun, but unfortunately I can't find a website for the brewery and the only hits for chmielne are places selling this beer and don't really say much other than it was made with polish ingredients. beer advocate says that it's a dortmunder lager, which is somewhere inbetween a helles and a pilsner if I understand correctly. this is a semi opaque yellow and looks like it's unfiltered, which is contradicted by the label. this is mostly sweet malt flavors, with a nice mixture of straw and honey and a slightly bitter finish that has a lot more malt in it and the kind of detail you expect from open fermentation. this is pretty nice for what it is, it's super clean, has a good depth of flavor, and so on. mildly recommended.