What Beer Are You Drinking Now? #4577

No Wheels Best Bitter from Barcelona's Garage Beer, after a tour of old Valencia and new Valencia. A very beautiful city. Cheers!

 

Home from a all manager meeting at Phillips bottling in Princeton, MN. Very interesting place, and the tour was fun, though, the safety glasses were giving me a headache. Home now, and enjoying this.

DDH Loon Squad - Blackstack Brewing - St. Paul, MN - American IPA - 7%

Tasty loon juice, and I'm burping up hops hard.
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/48592/644592/
4.02/5 rDev +1%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4
From a 16oz can with no date on it.

This beer has a pale golden color to it and is quite murky looking. There's a 1+ finger white head to the beer that is fluffy looking. The head retention is decent, and there's some lacing on the glass.
The aroma is dominated by the hops as expected. I get a good tropical hit to the beer as well as an earthy hit to the nose. The tropical has pineapple and melon notes to it.
Taste - There's a good hit of melon in this beer and it does linger in my throat. There's good pineapple notes that add a bit of bitterness to the beer. There's the earthy flavor that seems to come in toward the back with the bitterness.
Very juicy feeling. Soft feeling. Decent coating of my throat. I am burping up hops.
This is another good effort from Blackstack. Quite tasty.

Listened to this on part of the drive home.

 

@jmk been really enjoying your pics this week, thanks for sharing!

Onto round 2 and enjoying the last of Pisgah Brewing's Valdez coffee stout and more Sirius, still have memories of the first time seeing this video and how mesmerized i was by the unique take.
Cheers!
Tom
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Time to go to the dark side.

 

This is a Hefe I can get behind. Schilling Beer Co Schlaumeier 4.8% ABV.



Wow @Monkeyknife I thought I might be the only one of the thread that knew who Camper Van Beethoven was. Nice!

 

An Imperial Witbier? Interesting...

 

Wolf Spit...dangerous beer to brew no doubt.

 

Nope.The 80's post punk/alternative era was my sweet spot also not forgetting the last few punk years of the 70's.

 

Ignore the messy counter, today has been the first day I've sat down in a week. It's been 65 hours across 6 days and I was excited to have a moment to crack into this one. If I didn't have band practice in 2 hours, I'd have to validate my parking. Review below.



DDH 9th Anniversary DIPA
Southern Grist Brewing Co.

Reviewed by wmeckley44 from Tennessee

4.56/5 rDev 0%
look: 5 | smell: 4.5 | taste: 4.5 | feel: 4.75 | overall: 4.5
Canned 4/24/25, into a wide wine glass. This is a WEEK OLD and will be reviewed accordingly, but I will attempt to save a can for a later review once it's had some time to sit.

Pours an unctuous orange, completely opaque, with lovely white foam and tons of lacing. Aroma is nectarine and mango, super juicy, slightly creamy, a little sweet. Very pungent. Flavor sort of follows the nose. There's a ton of stone fruit and mango but it's really not that sweet. There's also ample lime zest and grassiness as well, and a decent kick of bitterness on top. The oats come through as a creamy, graham cracker-like sweetness on the back end, making this whole thing taste like a grown-up orange creamsicle. Body is medium-high, it's thick and dense, very complex and flavorful, but no alcohol presence or harsh flavors. The finish is sticky and bittersweet, not clean at all, and the lime zest bitterness lingers alongside that oat sweetness.

Overall, not what I expected from this beer. Usually Southern Grist excels at these citrus-forward juice bombs, similar to Other Half and Burial, but I've been really enjoying their NEIPAs that trend less sweet. It feels as though the brewery is still aiming for that same fruit character but not nearly as sweet, and letting their true dessert beers carry that. The past few IPAs I've gotten from them have been either dry or pretty heavily bittersweet, and this one is no exception. It's really beautiful in how juicy and grassy it is while still having a punch. 8% ABV completely unnoticed out of a little spice on the back end.

I think Southern Grist's reputation as a dessert beer and orange juice factory is undeserved. This feels like a nuanced, cutting edge interpretation of an oft-maligned and overhyped style.

 

Reminded me of my college days in Athens, GA, when I was enlightened to a lot of these bands. Great alt music town back in the 80's.

 

Turbo Reaper ~ 3Floyds


The Distance ~ Cake

 

It's okay - every now and then I enjoy a Blue Moon and it's refreshing. This one isn't really very refreshing, it's not bad but I wouldn't buy it again. Cheers!

 

Damn! I went to art school in Detroit in the early-mid 80s. We had a decent music scene, but it was no Athens, GA. Respect!

 

Thanks, you too, and your beer is better! Cheers!

 

Maibock! Ayinger Maibock too.
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Might as well stick with Alt music theme. This is an Athens, GA band that REM's Bill Berry once said was the best rock & roll band at the time.

 

1) Tradiční pivovar v Rakovníku (Pivovar Rakovnik) (3.8%): A Czech Dark Lager with flavors of dark grains, bittersweet cocoa. Smooth and bitter.
versus
2) Half Acre Ridge Tree (4.5%): A Czech Dark Lager from Chicago with flavors of dark malt, cocoa, light roast. Clean. (Correctly matched the two blind)

Czech Dark Lager Battle. First is Pivovar Rakovnik, an authentic Czech dark lager with dark grains, and bittersweet notes. A definite bitterness here, yet drinks smooth. As real as it gets.
Next is Half Acre Ridge Tree. A bit more cocoa and roast, yet very similar. A great representation of the style.
What a great style of beer from the Czech Republic.
Winner: Pivovar Rakovnik