Twin Cities Bottle Hunt - 2018

TW Minnetonka and the Haskell's nearby there both had it as of yesterday.

 

Anyone to know when pipeworks is coming? They said after February 5th it would be in Minnesota

 

No sightings yet. Still hoping to see it soon.

Looks like all Top Ten liquor locations is saving their BA darkness for Sunday with a limit of one for anyone who's missed out

 

Lake Wine had a little over 6 cases of BA darkness at 4pm. Limit 2

 

Anyone care to comment on how cans of Hopshifter are tasting?

 

Pretty bad. Glad I only bought a single can.

 

Anyone know the benefits of being a member at France44??....have been in there rather frequently in the last few months while visiting parents and always forget to ask how to sign up when they ask me if I am a member....TIA...

 

5% back on all purchases, they run like 4 promotions a yr when its 10% over course of a week or so

Totally worth it

 

As a bonus perk, if you let them know that you're a friend of @MNBeer1017 they will even sell you a bottle of infected BCBS!

 

Can't tell if you are serious or my sarcasm meter is on the fritz.

 

I'll give you my cranky old man take tonight.

Surly has always known how to treat a hop right, so I'm optimistic. And pretty jazzed they have finally decided to put something different out in cans.

 

Very serious. I picked up a single can ($3.99) to try it. Cracked it open when I got home, got a few sips in and drain poured the rest. I was really hoping for something new and exciting from Surly.

 

Does anyone know the reason or thought behind Clarity of Purpose by Surly & Fair State?

As far as I can tell it is just a basic non-Haze IPA. I know Surly's brewers have publically said they don't like the hazy IPA trend but Fair State has made a very popular hazy IPA with more on the way. Fair State is even adding haze to Pahlay'Ahlay next summer so they are obviously supporting the haze trend.

This just seems like a basic/boring collaboration to me when I should be excited for something from these breweries working together. Am I missing a new hop or something here?

 

I'll save my money and wait for Pipeworks to show up then. The Untappd reviews I've seen of the cans have been average at best.

 

Surly has been making Hopshifter as a one off series of rotating (usuallysingle hop) IPAs for a couple years now. This isn't something new it's just new to distribution. In my experience this line has always been good at the taproom but as it's a evolving series it changes as they use different hops.

According to the internet it looks like this batch is Chinook and Citra, which sounds delicious to me. What didn't you like about it?

 

I guess I had never really heard of it before. To me it did not have much of a hop profile. The malt flavor was too strong and it tasted too sweet. It reminded me of Grain Belt. Maybe my expectations were in the wrong place and I've had far too many super hoppy brews....

 

Weird, that is very different than my experiences with several past batches of Hopshifter. They've always been fairly straight forward west coast IPAs with very little malt character or sweetness and prominent hops.

 

On a diet? I generally only drain pour bad beer...not unexciting beer.

 

The west coast IPA style is what I was expecting. I really like Todd the Axeman. I do not have much experience with gluten free or gluten reduced beers but maybe that had something to do with it?