BEER: a thread
GHB, creepy shit. =/ I saw a guy on tv that had that stuff, he couldn't do anything anymore. He was just lying on the couch, drooling, saying things, non-existent words, like he wasn't able to speak.
< Homebrewer an beer geek.
Its funny this thread came up today because Im thinking about brewing a batch of porter this weekend, might head to the shop today and get the ingrediants.
I am a self professed beer geek. Most of the beers I drink are beers a majority of the population have never heard of. For instance, my top five beers goes like this
1)Russian River Pliny The Elder IPA
2)Deschutes 'The Abyss' stout
3)Triple Karmeliet
4)Trappist Rochefort
5) Dogfish Head 90minute IPA
Not all beer is created equal, an contrary to popular myth, America is leading the way when it comes to craft beer.
Any beer questions feel free to hit me up.
First answer- Blue Moon is a Coors product packaged as a craft beer. Its a great 'starter' beer for the Wit style, but their are much better Wits on the market, including Hoegaarden, New Belgiums Mothership Wit, The Bruery's Orchard White and Allagash White.
doesn't it defeat the purpose? i imagine it would be sickening.
if you want something sweet, go buy a cocktail. or a vodka and cranberry.
There are 'sweet' beers, but the style is a fruit lambic. A lambic is a sour ale brewed with certain fruits and aged for up to three years. The have plain lambics which are called guezes and are ultra sour in flavor and quite refreshing on a hot summer day.
The fruit lambic style is either brewed with raspberries, currants, apples or pears. They have a slight sweetnes but are really pleasnt and light especially as a desert beer.
Now there can be beers that are more malt forward versus hop forward and you can get a malty sweetness to some beers.
I maintain that beer geek = a good thing whereas beer snob = a bad thing.
And I really would like to try Russian River Pliny The Elder IPA.
(Had my leg broken at the Russian River. Holds a soft spot in my heart ever since...)
This is why we can't have nice things.
And I really would like to try Russian River Pliny The Elder IPA.
(Had my leg broken at the Russian River. Holds a soft spot in my heart ever since...)
Beer snobbery is never a good thing! Drink what you like. Beer snobs are very similar to wine snobs and NO ONE likes a wine snob!
Being a beer geek is being a beer advocate, and Im the kind of guy thats will tell you
"Hey you like x- brand of beer? Well then you will love y- brand and here is some to try!"
I want people to love beer and to help remove the old stigmas of American beer. Everytime I hear someone say that that American beer is weak or that there is no good beer in America, I chuckle and then educate.
Next time Im at my favorite beer shop Ill pick you up a bottle of PtE.
i swear we drank gallons of alaskan amber when i stayed up there. that is some good beer.
I love Alaskan Amber.
And yeah, I'll change my comment from earlier: I'm definitely turning into a beer geek, not a beer snob.
Alaskan makes solid beer. The Amber is top notch, their Summer ale is a pretty good representation of the Kolsch style, and their Smoked Porter is freakn awesome and gets better with age.
Beer fact #2- High ABV beers can be aged contrary to popular belief about beer in general. Some barley wines have been known to age up to 20 years!
!
This is why we can't have nice things.
Sam Adams consistently makes awesome beer.
In general yes, but their Cherry Wheat is an abomination! That stuff tatses like cherry nyquil. The cranberry lambic isnt very good either and its not even a true lambic.
But Jim Koch does know how to make a bock and every time they have made a bock it comes out fantastic. Sam Adams light is the best light beer going IMO and their Black Lager is really tasty.
Have any of you tried the new Sierra Nevada Kellerwies? They actually made a tradition German hefe that is just a good if not better than most German hefes out there.
we should exchange beers somehow. i could pick up same of the texas stuff.
i've never been disappointed by a sierra beer.
I rarely drink and when I do it's Vodka and Orange to start with, followed by a few beers, usually Miller Lite or Carlsberg to keep me topped up.
Actually I don't sit behind a PC, I sit infront of a PC, and if I'm honest I sit at a desk which happens to have a PC on it, not behind or infront of a desk, at a desk.
They have Miller Lite in Scotland? That's awful news.
Sounds good we'll hook it up soon. Ive done plenty of beer trades through the mail .
Good site for beer
www.beeradvocate.com
Miller Lie anywhere is awful news! Hahaha (sorry Frank)
Also if anyone needs beer and food pairing recommendations, Im your guy.
I was at the local craft brwe/grill the other day and they had a sundae topped with a stout reduction. The reduction damn near tasted like choclate syrup but with kick and lots of flavor. Yes, you can have beer on ice cream!
I tried to make a beer float once when I was like sixteen, I don't remember the beer but it was vanilla ice cream and it was the most awful thing ever.
[Edit] the stout reduction on a sundae sounds like it would be really good though
It's probably the only beer they sell at nightclubs which I find myself going to only when I'm already pickled.
Actually I don't sit behind a PC, I sit infront of a PC, and if I'm honest I sit at a desk which happens to have a PC on it, not behind or infront of a desk, at a desk.
Well if your already pickled it does not really matter. Your taste buds are dead, at that time its all about keeping the buzz going.
Fun Fact #3- Budweiser aka Anheisuer Busch (now InBev) tried at one point to get the Congress to pass an American version of the Reinheitsgebot passed. They wanted it to read that beer could only be made from Barley, Rice, Water and yeast and that if anyhtinhg else was in the beverage, it couldnt be called beer. They tried to do this to put other brewers out of business.
Your drinking the wrong beer. There are plenty of beers on the market with 10% or higher ABV's!
last night i tried some japanese beer, becks dark, samual adams cream stout, henry weinhard's blue boar pale ale, all pretty decent.
nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
Was it Asahi? We used to sell it in one of the clubs I worked in, except it was made in the czech republic.
!
When payday is approaching and I'm running low on $$ I go with the Steel Reserve ($.99/tall can across the street). If I have lots of green paper with pictures of dead people on it, I go with Arrogant Bastard Ale or Unibroue, or Blue Moon. There's this other one that's quite tasty I can't pull up atm oh yeah Drifter (citrus flavor, think it's a pale ale).
I like Blue Moon, but that falls under the Beers I Drink With Dinner category, not the actual Drink To Get Drunk category, which I prefer.
Weinhards makes a decent cheap beer, how'd you like the cream stout?
AB is a personal fav, but which Unibroue product do you like? Im a big fan of their La Fin Du Monde.
Drifter is a Widmer Bros product and its not citrus flavored, thats the hops they use! Hops come in many different varieties from mild to extremely bitter to piney to grapefruit. When Sam Adams say they use only Noble Hops in their commercials, it actually means something. Drifter is a pretty decent pale Ale, but if you like that, you'll love Descutes Mirror Pond, Firestone Walker Pale 31 or Stone Levitation Ale.
And if you like the citrus aspect of the beer and hops, you probably would enjoy some top notch IPA's.
Yeah Wit beers are not 'get drunk' kind of beers, they are really more a session beer. There are some Wits that have higher ABV's but most of them are great session beers
I like this beer guy. I wonder if he knows about other alcohols.... I also enjoy several scotches, some whiskeys, a very few bourbons, and a number of absinthes.
This is why we can't have nice things.
Im pretty good with bourbon and single malt as well. Absinthe, not so much, only had it once.
I'm drinking Oranjeboom in my underwear. Yep livin' the high life.
!
i enjoyed the cream stout, and i usually don't like sam adams cuz of the after taste. and the japanese beer was not asahi, although i have tried that i like this one much better, i'll get you know the name soon.
nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
Fun Fact #3- Budweiser aka Anheisuer Busch (now InBev) tried at one point to get the Congress to pass an American version of the Reinheitsgebot passed. They wanted it to read that beer could only be made from Barley, Rice, Water and yeast and that if anyhtinhg else was in the beverage, it couldnt be called beer. They tried to do this to put other brewers out of business.
That is seriously obscene of them.
Im pretty good with bourbon and single malt as well. Absinthe, not so much, only had it once.
I like beer guy too. Beer guy ROCKS.
Fun Fact #3- Budweiser aka Anheisuer Busch (now InBev) tried at one point to get the Congress to pass an American version of the Reinheitsgebot passed. They wanted it to read that beer could only be made from Barley, Rice, Water and yeast and that if anyhtinhg else was in the beverage, it couldnt be called beer. They tried to do this to put other brewers out of business.
That is seriously obscene of them.
Fun fact #4= InBev filed a lawsuit against Dogfish Head Brewery claiming that their beers weren't descriptive enough and therefore had to list all their ingrediants on the label. DFH had to hire lawyers and fight the claims. DFH stated that 'What , and Natural Light is a descriptive label?'
Which leads me to fun fact #5
The craft beer market is the only beer market that is growing by an average rate of 6% a year. The big boys aka BMC (BudMillerCoors) are actually losing ground to craft beer. They cant compete beer wise so they are resorting to frivolous lawsuits.
The after taste in Sam Adams is the noble hops. Your more a pale light lager kinda guy. Maybe a maltier beer would do it for you. You should try a Ayinger Celebrator dopplebock- its a strong malty beer with great flavor and a mild hop backbone
i'll give it a gander.
what is a maltier beer?
we should call you rossthebeerexpertguy. 
nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
[edit] reply to Fun Fact #4 and 5 (I forgot to quote and figuring it out is too much a hassle just now)
Good lord, I'm really appalled now. I'm going to have to recite all these facts to my other beer loving friends also.
I noticed your reply to someone else about the cream stouts and the after taste etc. I am particularly partial to cream stouts, and tend to find the after taste to be highly important in deciding whether I like a beer or not.
You said you brew your own beer, how fun is that, has it taken many years to learn the art? I want to learn how eventually.
what is a maltier beer?
we should call you rossthebeerexpertguy. :P
Beers are either balanced, malt forward or hop forward. Those are the three basic guages along with the nuances of other flavorings. Remember I said basic. Brewers are blurring the lines everyday. For instance, if you drank Lagunitas Hop Stoopid, which is considered a double IPA, the bitterness hop profile of the beer is completely overwhelming, you can almost tatset the stickiness of the hops. This is a hop forward beer.
Now if you drank Sam Adams Double Bock, this beer is a double version of a German bock beer, or 'strong' beer.This beer has lots of sweetness and very little hops, just enough to make it not overly sweet. This beer is called malt forward.
Now is you drank a Dogfish head 90 minute IPA, this beer would blur the lines. The industry calls it 'extreme beer', a name I cant stand but its their term not mine. DFH 90 minute is a Double IPA like the Hop Stoopid, but the hop profile is completely different and there is a lot of malt sweetness to the beer, not something normally in an Double IPA. The way the brewer infuses the hops continuously over 90 minutes (hence the name) gives the beer a complex flavor profile unseen in beer up until a couple years ago.
Also if you like a maltier big beer, try some barley wines int he winter when they usually come out.
if you drank Lagunitas Hop Stoopid,
DFH 90 minute is a Double IPA like the Hop Stoopid
why you gots to call me names ross?
that's good info, so with beers like guiniss (you know what i mean) it's thick because it's a malt forward type beer? less hops?
nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
Good lord, I'm really appalled now. I'm going to have to recite all these facts to my other beer loving friends also.
I noticed your reply to someone else about the cream stouts and the after taste etc. I am particularly partial to cream stouts, and tend to find the after taste to be highly important in deciding whether I like a beer or not.
You said you brew your own beer, how fun is that, has it taken many years to learn the art? I want to learn how eventually.
Fun fact 6- Miller and Coors merged to do battle with Bud because of AB's dirty tactics. Thats why AB's shareholder sold out to InBev to be even bigger.
Fun Fact 7- Sam Adams aka Boston Beer Company is the 4th largest brewer in the US. However, Budweiser spills more beer per year than Sam Adams makes!
There is a documentary coming out on DVD very soon called 'Beer Wars'. I went and saw it at the theater, they had a one night only live simulcast. Its about the dirty tactics of the beer industries big 3 with most of the focus on Anheuser-Busch and how they are trying to force the craft industry out of business not by direct competition, but by lobbyists, laws & legislation, support for higher beer taxes which the little guy cant afford, and illegaly giving away free beer to distributors and markets to carry more of their product.
I like to tell people drink what you like, but know what you support. I will never judge anybody on the beer they drink, I just choose not to support those companies because of their practice.
Aftertaste is very importatnt to beer, it can make or break a beer! For instance there is a beer by 21st Ammendment Brewery in SF that makes a Watermelon Wheat beer. I tried it and couldnt stand it, it smelled of jolly ranchers and the finish tasted of watermelon rind. Blech! (the company does make a stellar IPA)
Brewing beer is pretty easy but you can make it as hard as you want. You can do everything from a simple kitchen setup up to a full on mashing process!
You can make really good beer right off the bat, but to make truly outstanding beer, it takes practice and learning the subtleties of the ingrediants. A brewer is part chef, part mad scientist. Ifyou ever have the chance to talk to a brewery owner, most of them are a little nutty, they like the creative part of the process , coming up with new things (the chef side) but when they actually brew, its all about precision and timing(the scientist)
for brewing equipment, here are two great websites
morebeer.com
http://www.northernbrewer.com/
if you drank Lagunitas Hop Stoopid,
DFH 90 minute is a Double IPA like the Hop Stoopid
why you gots to call me names ross?
that's good info, so with beers like guiniss (you know what i mean) it's thick because it's a malt forward type beer? less hops?
Technically yes its a more malt forward beer. But stouts and porters are that way because of how the roast the malts.
Malted barley comes in many different degrees of roasting and malting.
Most if not all stouts use something called black patent malt and some use chocolate malt. There is no chocolate in the malt it describes the color of the malt after roasting.
These malts give the beer its black color and roasted/burnt taste. Guiness Draught is actually a pretty light beer taste wise compared to other stouts but its more palatable to more people because of its lightness.
Now the percieved thicknes of a beer has to do with its gravity. When beer is made, a brewer checks his starting gravity and final gravity. This gives you a guage of how much alcohol is in the beer and how 'thick' or 'heavy' a beer may be. Basically the more malt you add to a beer, with the right kind of yeast, you get higher ABV's but also a thicker beer due to their being more malt.
like that shit beer steel reserve, i always wondered why it said high gravity. they should call it rot gut gravity
nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it.
Yeah its a nice little marketing ploy by them, too bad its garbge!
Higher gravity means more alcohol.
Kinda like 'beechwood aging' . Most people have no idea what that means but it must be good right?
Beechwood has no inherent flavor to add to beer. All the beechwood does is create a greater surface area in the bottom of the steel fermenting tank ( they line the bottom of the steel tanks with beechwood chips) to help along the fermentation of the beer. Because of the greater surface area, the beer has more contact with the yeast and has a more complete fermentation thus making the beer clearer and crisper.
This also causes a faster turn around time for a lager beer, even though AB claims that their lager time is longer than other breweries. AB lagers for 3 weeks, Miller/Coors for two weeks.
Most German breweries lager thier beer for months
Good lord, I'm really appalled now. I'm going to have to recite all these facts to my other beer loving friends also.
I noticed your reply to someone else about the cream stouts and the after taste etc. I am particularly partial to cream stouts, and tend to find the after taste to be highly important in deciding whether I like a beer or not.
You said you brew your own beer, how fun is that, has it taken many years to learn the art? I want to learn how eventually.
Fun fact 6- Miller and Coors merged to do battle with Bud because of AB's dirty tactics. Thats why AB's shareholder sold out to InBev to be even bigger.
Fun Fact 7- Sam Adams aka Boston Beer Company is the 4th largest brewer in the US. However, Budweiser spills more beer per year than Sam Adams makes!
There is a documentary coming out on DVD very soon called 'Beer Wars'. I went and saw it at the theater, they had a one night only live simulcast. Its about the dirty tactics of the beer industries big 3 with most of the focus on Anheuser-Busch and how they are trying to force the craft industry out of business not by direct competition, but by lobbyists, laws & legislation, support for higher beer taxes which the little guy cant afford, and illegaly giving away free beer to distributors and markets to carry more of their product.
A brewer is part chef, part mad scientist. Ifyou ever have the chance to talk to a brewery owner, most of them are a little nutty, they like the creative part of the process , coming up with new things (the chef side) but when they actually brew, its all about precision and timing(the scientist)
for brewing equipment, here are two great websites
morebeer.com
http://www.northernbrewer.com/
Thats about what I am in the kitchen, chef/mad scientist, falling in love with my ingredients and trying to, if not accomplishing, create a masterpiece. I think brewing might be my cup of tea. Thanks for the link.
Do you know who put out the documentary?
Good lord, I'm really appalled now. I'm going to have to recite all these facts to my other beer loving friends also.
I noticed your reply to someone else about the cream stouts and the after taste etc. I am particularly partial to cream stouts, and tend to find the after taste to be highly important in deciding whether I like a beer or not.
You said you brew your own beer, how fun is that, has it taken many years to learn the art? I want to learn how eventually.
Fun fact 6- Miller and Coors merged to do battle with Bud because of AB's dirty tactics. Thats why AB's shareholder sold out to InBev to be even bigger.
Fun Fact 7- Sam Adams aka Boston Beer Company is the 4th largest brewer in the US. However, Budweiser spills more beer per year than Sam Adams makes!
There is a documentary coming out on DVD very soon called 'Beer Wars'. I went and saw it at the theater, they had a one night only live simulcast. Its about the dirty tactics of the beer industries big 3 with most of the focus on Anheuser-Busch and how they are trying to force the craft industry out of business not by direct competition, but by lobbyists, laws & legislation, support for higher beer taxes which the little guy cant afford, and illegaly giving away free beer to distributors and markets to carry more of their product.
A brewer is part chef, part mad scientist. Ifyou ever have the chance to talk to a brewery owner, most of them are a little nutty, they like the creative part of the process , coming up with new things (the chef side) but when they actually brew, its all about precision and timing(the scientist)
for brewing equipment, here are two great websites
morebeer.com
http://www.northernbrewer.com/
Thats about what I am in the kitchen, chef/mad scientist, falling in love with my ingredients and trying to, if not accomplishing, create a masterpiece. I think brewing might be my cup of tea. Thanks for the link.
Do you know who put out the documentary?
Here is the website for the movie
http://beerwarsmovie.com/
The lady who made it used to work in the industry and helped start Mikes Hard Lemonade and she saw firsthand how the big 3 try and keep people out of the market. Its a short doc but worth the watch.
Ross, you're awesome. If we ever get around to a No.Cal. meetup, I'm going to make you buy me a beer. Also, I'm going to see this movie.
I love me some beer. Lately my favorite cheap domestic has been Yuengling's black & tan. Pretty stout beer to be so cheap. I like it best when I'm using it to chase shots of whiskey.
Get on over to my website, young'un! www.subvertfromwithinrecords.blogspot.com
Sounds good my friend, we could hit up The Trappist in Oakland. Its a freakin beer Disneyland! They have over 150 beers !!!!
http://www.thetrappist.com/
Ah the legendary Yeungling, Americas oldest standing brewery. I have never had it because they dont distribute to the west coast, but I would love to try their beers. You guys back east swear by their beers for being tatsy and cheap, which is always a win-win in my book!
I'm drinking Killian's Red right now. Good stuff.
Ahh the memories of many a nights gettn drunk on the Red. I drnak a ton of that stuff back in the day.
Have you tried Full Sail LTD 02? Both styles are Red/amber lagers and the Full Sail is flat out delicious, the only down side is its a little pricey at 8 bucks a six pack.
I was only 19 at the time, so yeah, by the grace of God and whatnot...