BEER

Unlimited beer samples sounds awesome. In Texas the law puts a limit on how much beer festivals can give away, so they limit you to 24-36 ounces and then you have to buy the right to sample more. Like, you'll get a card worth 12 3oz samples, and when that's used up you can buy another card for something really cheap. Like two bucks, usually.

Not that 36 ounces of often strong beer is anything to slouch at. In fact it's often more than enough.

I go to this place about once a month with pals. Last night I had two Falcon Cloak Golden Blondes. Crisp and light drinks for a spring evening. They were fab. My bff had a N3M3S1S and a Smoked Porter that doesn't appear on the site's brew list. There's two breweries in this light industrial strip of Woodinville. Both are nice, and relatively close to my home.

I drink a lot of fruit beers and ciders in the summer, so here's what I've had lately:


21st Amendment Hell or High Watermelon - a wheat beer with great watermelon flavor at the end. It's got some lingering sweetness, but it's not sickly sweet. Would be great for drinking around the pool.
5 Rabbit Paletas Guayaba - also a wheat beer, with tons of guava, it's super pink and creamy but NOT very sweet. Great flavor. Love the paletas series.
Ace Pineapple Cider - this is pretty sweet, but in a pineappley actual fruit sort of way, not Kool-Aid-y.
Abita Strawberry Harvest - one of my favorite fruit beers, although it tends to appear in Feb/March before I'm really ready for them!

I also like Anderson Valley's Summer Solstice and Big Muddy's Blueberry Blonde a lot.

The fudge in my basement, which is entirely dedicated to booze and mixers, is filled with about 20 bottles or so of San Miguel, Sapporo, and Peroni. 

I'm very happy about this. 

I agree, the pineapple was strong, it was definitely more pineapple than apple.

I've seen Blushing Monk for sure, I'll pick it up next time if I can (I think Rubaeus sold out pretty fast around here? But I'll keep an eye out)

Anniversary dinner at my favorite craft beer bar on Sunday. Between the two of us we tried 14 beers. Don't worry, flights were involved. I doubt I'll remember them all, but I'll remember what I can.

Avery Uncle Jacob's Stout - No doubt sensing our budget and celebratory good nature, the server wisely brought us their cellar menu. Rare, aged and expensive stuff. At $25 for a 12-ounce bottle to share, Avery Uncle Jacob's Stout was worth every penny. A profound bourbon barrel-aged stout, immensely complex with bitter dark chocolate, coffee, roast and bourbon, evolving over minutes on the palate, with a linger of walnuts and bourbon in the back. At 17.4% ABV, you want to tackle it more like a liquor  Drinking this beer felt like an event. We spent as much time sipping our half-glasses of this as we did each finishing off a five-beer flight. I would consider this a top 5 beer of my lifetime so far. If you see it, order it. If you see it in a store, buy it. Age it. Live it.  (Pedantic Editor Type, seriously, find this beer.)

Finnriver Habanero Cider - Effervescent, slightly sweet cider with an undeniable habanero kick. It burns. This was Mrs. Snape's 2nd favorite of the night after the Avery, and I really liked it, too. I think it would stand up on its own, but no doubt part of its appeal was that we happened to be sharing a plate of braised pork cheeks at the time, and the pairing was perfection.

New Belgium La Folie - I've seen this so many times in the store, but I'm not a big fan of the art so I've always overlooked it. Big mistake. This is a classic sour brown ale, bringing just the right amount of sweet, malt and pucker. If you want to get into sour ales but aren't quite ready for stomach acid, this is right in pocket.

Prairie Artisan Evil Twin/Bible Belt - Another big, complex stout with chocolate and roasted notes for days. Mrs. Snape though it tasted like chocolate milk. Yeah, chocolate milk with 14% ABV. Would easily have been the star stout of the night if not for the Avery.

Great Divide Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti - The classic Yeti is one of my favorite imperial stouts, because it matches those classic stout warm flavors with more bitterness and hops than I find typical. This pour was good, but the mouth feel was kind of thin, and it was frankly outgunned by the other stouts of the night. Then again, this is a stock stout, imperial but not over the top. It's probably not a fair comparison to the Avery or the Prairie, which are much more rare, expensive and special beers.

To Ol Nordic by Nature - My 2nd favorite of the night. This bizarre IPA from Denmark's To Ol is made with juniper berries and seabuckthorn. Unlike any IPA I've tried, Nordic by Nature was all about citrus and sugar, with the hop bitterness playing a decided backseat role. It's nothing like an American IPA, though I do think it still satisfies the category.

Stone Pale Ale 2.0 - Maybe after you get really into IPAs, your appreciation of traditional pales diminishes. Not sure. This is blah. Nothing in the back.

Virtue the Mitten - Bourbon barrel-aged winter cider. A nice sweetness and good complexity from the barrels. We didn't get any bourbon, but hints of vanilla, oak and burnt sugar add character to the proceedings. Good.

Brooklyn Wild Horse Porter - A porter that's been through a full fermentation with brettanomyces, the "funk" yeast. As the name suggests, this beer is pretty wild. The classic notes of a porter are there, but what stood out to me were the funky, kind of wet hay qualities with a strong smoky kick. Most of the flavor was in the back. Cool to try, but I don't think I'd want a glass of it.

(512) Tripel - This Texas local was a disappointment. Blindfold me and I'd swear this was a wheat beer. Powerful with banana, clove and band-aid. Not a good tripel, and not a good beer. Disclosure: I hate almost all wheat beers, because I don't like the banana/clove thing, but if you do, you might like this beer a lot.

Destihl Adambier - A sour that I remember liking, but memory is hazy on this one (surprise, surprise). The 2nd beer I've had from Destihl's sour series now, after the Here Gose Nothing, which I prefer to this.

Well, 11 out of 14 ain't bad. I know I had another IPA I didn't like, and I can't remember the other orders at all.

Oh, I remembered one of them:

Prairie Artisan Wine Barrel Noir - A dark and rich stout with a lot of dark fruit and berry character. Raspberry, in particular. Mrs. Snape says you could mistake it for a sour. I just call it delicious.

I've also got a bottle of Victory Sour Monkey at the house, which is a soured version of their Golden Monkey tripel. Haven't tried it yet, but I'm excited about it. I like the base beer quite a lot.

This is like porn to me. That'd be about 90 dollars US, or about $3.75 per bottle. A little high for something like the Storm King over here (though great beer, you're right) but an excellent price for something with any rarity at all. I'd buy up one of these in a heartbeat.

So, this past weekend, Ma Freshenmeyer and I (and some other friends in tow) went on a brew crawl in which we would visit a brewery or brew pub in each of the five boroughs of New York, with the understanding that, even if they offered alternatives, we were to only have the beers brewed on premises. The only place we could find in Manhattan that would fit our schedule offered Cask Ales.

So, basically, if anyone can explain to me: What's the deal with cask ales? What's special about it?

There are so many beers and breweries on the market that sometimes you have to decide what to drink and what not to drink for stupid reasons. For example, I don't like the name Smuttynose - I know what it refers to, but I just don't like the word - and for no reason more than that I've all but avoided Smuttynose beers. BIG MISTAKE. This past weekend I took the plunge on their Finest Kind IPA, and I think it's one of the best single IPAs out there. Bold and bitter, hoppy and verdant. If not for the fact that it's 3-4 bucks more for the 6 pack, it would replace the Saint Arnold Elissa as my go-to "just chillin" IPA.

I looked up their beers while enjoying a bottle, and now there are a bunch of Smuttynose beers I want to try.

Comparatively, what does this do for a beer that has been filtered and pasteurized? Should I taste more of the malts, or the hops? 

There's another place near me that, when they come down to the last of their supply of a given beer in their inventory, they'll put it in their cask pumps -- by which, I mean, they don't have their own cask ale, but they take something from their inventory (last I checked, Blue Point's Toasted Lager) and serve it cask. If I could have asked to have one from the tap for comparison, I suppose I'd know better. 

I got a lot of interesting stuff this week but right now I'm drinking the best one. It's Boulevard's smokestack Imperial Stout with Aztec chocolate. It's big and boozy and a little spicy and so, so good.

I don't believe I would like it on account of it being a wheat beer, but that's a beautiful color.

I'm super bummed that this will be the second year in a row I'll miss FOBAB. It was and is my favorite beer event in the country and I had been making it a point every year to head out to Chicago and attend. But man, there's nothing like opening a craft brewery to make you lose track completely with the craft beer world and craft beer events. . .