Beer! Glorious Beer Thread!

[Qalbert]

went to a friend's party and tried a bunch of different stuff he and some of his beer friends brought, here's a shittily pasted together list

[Tokitoki]

I just got back from my trip to northern VT and brought back a decent haul.

Did you go to The Alchemist's new cannery? Going up between Christmas and New Years again for some snowboarding; trying to figure out if I should hop from shop to shop on delivery dates or just head to the cannery.

[Xerlic]

Did you go to The Alchemist's new cannery? Going up between Christmas and New Years again for some snowboarding; trying to figure out if I should hop from shop to shop on delivery dates or just head to the cannery.

Yeah. It's really nice. I went once on the day I arrived in vt right before they closed, but they only had focal banger available. I went the next day at around 11 and got a case of heady, focal and crusher. Imo focal is the best of the three, so I dont mind having double the amount.

If you show up when they open, you should be able to get a case no problem.

If youre able to make the drive, I recommend heading over to hill farmstead. Everyone talks up heady (rightfully so), but I find hill farmstead's beers more interesting and tasty.

Theyre on unpaved roads, so I dunno how it is in the winter. The grounds are really nice though. If my wife wasnt pregnant, I would have stayed there the entire day drinking drafts and staring at mountains.

[Tokitoki]

Awesome. That'll be my plan then.

[Dook]

Hill Farmstead is a totally sketchy place to drive in the winter, Those roads just become frozen slip and slides with nothing but corn fields for miles. Definitely don't attempt it in anything that isn't ready for it. If you're in the Stowe area of VT I highly recommend hitting up Lost Nation in Morristown. They brew mainly Belgian style beers but their Gose is one of the best of the style and the food is an absolute homerun.
That's a mighty fine haul from the northern lands though! Focal is tasting righteous from the new place, I just hope John Kimmich brings back Bezelbub or petit mutant from the old brew pub days.

[Tokitoki]

Hill Farmstead is a totally sketchy place to drive in the winter, Those roads just become frozen slip and slides with nothing but corn fields for miles. Definitely don't attempt it in anything that isn't ready for it.

I've got a Subaru with winter tires I can add spikes to, but I didn't go on any slip and slides. After you mentioned them, though, is it a place I should try to stop by? Says it's about 3 hrs to go from where I'm staying to Hill Farmstead to The Alchemist; The Alchemist alone is only 1 hr 45 min.

[Dook]

I've got a Subaru with winter tires I can add spikes to, but I didn't go on any slip and slides. After you mentioned them, though, is it a place I should try to stop by? Says it's about 3 hrs to go from where I'm staying to Hill Farmstead to The Alchemist; The Alchemist alone is only 1 hr 45 min.

Hill Farmstead is a really gorgeous place to visit and the beer is really top notch stuff, Especially if you're into saisons. Personally? Unless they have Everett or Earl in bottles available I usually avoid the place on my trips north. You can find their beers almost everywhere on draft and Vermont is full of gorgeous views that don't involve dirt roads and 0 cell phone signal.
Shit, If you really want a good food time/drink time I'd head to Montpelier for Three Penny or Skinny Pancake for breakfast (and beers) or Waterbury for Food/beer/cocktails (Prohibition pig) or general beer shopping (Craft Beer Cellar, Across the street from ProPig) and save the trek time from Hill Farmstead. I haven't been to the new Alchemist Brewery but I'm sure by Ski season they're gonna have the place cranking. Last I heard they're producing around 30% of their capacity at the new place due to scaling up.

[Xerlic]

We ate at lost nation, but I didnt pick up anything from them since their cans are available locally. Their gose is certainly good, but I prefer westbrooks more. The food was really good. My wife got this pork belly sandwich that was amazing.

We stayed in waterbury, so we also ate at propig and blackback pub. The food at propig was better than blackback, but blackback had a much more extensive tap menu.

They actually had singlecut's laughter on tap. I told the bartender I was surprised they had it on tap this far north and she tried to get me to try it, but I told her i'm from the nyc area and was here to try the vt beers haha.

[Dook]

We ate at lost nation, but I didnt pick up anything from them since their cans are available locally. Their gose is certainly good, but I prefer westbrooks more. The food was really good. My wife got this pork belly sandwich that was amazing.

We stayed in waterbury, so we also ate at propig and blackback pub. The food at propig was better than blackback, but blackback had a much more extensive tap menu.

They actually had singlecut's laughter on tap. I told the bartender I was surprised they had it on tap this far north and she tried to get me to try it, but I told her i'm from the nyc area and was here to try the vt beers haha.

The tap menu at ProPig has shifted more towards focus of their own beers which is pretty understandable. My last experience at Blackback sucked but that's because it was right after their ownership change. My cheese plate was the same thing you would expect from an Airline (plastic lid on black plastic etc) and the tap list was weaaaakkk. Best thing on at the time was a Rock Arts beer.

[Tokitoki]

Started my first homebrew yesterday. Caribou Slobber from Northern Brewer.

Boiled over a little bit as it was my first time using this propane burner, but I got it down to a nice soft boil with some fiddling. Dog is afraid to go down the stairs now; guess she thinks there is a monster or something (the carboy is under the stairs).

I liked the smell of the Liberty hops the kit came with. May have to keep that one in mind for a pale ale or something as another brew.

[Pirian]

Started my first homebrew yesterday. Caribou Slobber from Northern Brewer.

Boiled over a little bit as it was my first time using this propane burner, but I got it down to a nice soft boil with some fiddling. Dog is afraid to go down the stairs now; guess she thinks there is a monster or something (the carboy is under the stairs).

I liked the smell of the Liberty hops the kit came with. May have to keep that one in mind for a pale ale or something as another brew.

Fellow homebrewer here and if you ever feel like experimenting on your own then I highly recommend using a tool like BeerSmith. I do all my beers completely from scratch, ie. grains>mash>wort>ferment etc. and once you get past the small learning curve of making you first mash then it is really tough to fuck it up. BeerSmith is a great tool to use to calculate all the specific measurements that you may want to track across your brews, but is also great just for staying on style while trying to make a beer. Pirate versions exist out there but if you like it then I would recommend buying it (they also have a 21 day trial)

[Tokitoki]

I think someone (maybe you) had posted this earlier in the thread as well. I'll take a look at it, but wanted to get at least these two kits I got as gifts out of the way first. My wife also got me this book and her uncle (another homebrewer/judge for homebrew competitions) recommended I get a book by Charlie Papazian to check out before I go off on my own.

My mother-in-law got me a bourbon stout recipe kit. I don't expect it to be amazing, but that's the next one I'll do; likely when I start the current batch on its second fermentation. After that I wanted to do a pale ale or something along those lines.

[Auspice]

Seconding Beersmith; I've been brewing for over 7 years and it's an amazing tool. Palmer's book is one of the best; Papazian's is nice but it's sorta dated at this point.

[Xerlic]

Last year I had pumking and thought it was gross. This year I picked up warlock thinking I might have better luck with a stout. Nope. I'll never understand the appeal of pumpkin beer.

[Tokitoki]

I like Pumking. I understand the ravings it gets, but it's pretty good as far as pumpkin beers go. I used to like Punkin, then realized it was also overhyped after tasting more, better beers.

I think I'll stick to pumpkin pie and whoopie pies and skip all the other pumpkin shit.

[Tokitoki]

Found several Mosaic Promise at the store. U feel like I was underwhelmed with last year's batch. Hopefully this year is good.

[Tokitoki]

Triple post!

Got two 4-packs of Pile if Crowns from LIC Beer Project. Saw it yesterday in the store, but had already checked out. Only two left just now. Never heard of the beer or brewer despite living in NYC, so I had to look it up. It got good reviews and a couple said it rivaled the other New England greats. Excited to try it.

[Xerlic]

My wife finally said enough is enough and reclaimed the fridge, so I had to buy a a beer fridge.



I haven't been buying a whole lot of new stuff lately since I wanted to get through my stuff from my trip to Vermont last month and those IPAs are getting old. Still delicious, though.

Toki, have you ever made it down to Other Half for one of their releases? A buddy of mine traded me a can of Greenprint and Topical Depression. Both were amazing, but the idea of driving down to Brooklyn from Rockland is so discouraging lol.

[Tokitoki]

I havent, no. We were planning to do a Brooklyn/Queens brewery crawl one weekend. I wanted to get down to Barrier too. They have a couple good Pale Ales and IPAs. One was Money IPA, forget the other's name.

I feel the Rockland thing. I grew up in Rockland and my dad still lives there. He and his fiancee want to find an Oktoberfest and I suggested we go to Brooklyn to Radegast or check out one of the breweries, but they didn't want to travel that far.

[Boyiee]

Idk why but I'm obsessed with shock top pretzel.