Alternatives to Rare Beers

Sit on it for two or three years. Just trust me.

 

I love bringing beer to my parents' house for family gatherings (my siblings and dad don't follow craft beer but enjoy drinking it). I pour some really 'rare' beers alongside off-the-shelf favorites of mine. It's amazing how often the more available beers are favored. I entirely agree that our minds play some crazy tricks on us.

 

Fair enough. It gets tiring to read all that!

 

Since you just had a CW BB stout, I'm curious. Did you find it a little... thin? That's the one thing I remember from that beer, just thinking, sure it tastes good, but this is not an imperial stout. I was just surprised to see that one compared to BCBS etc. on here...

 

I'm still drinking it! It's on the thinner side, I'd agree. I think that it works given the rest of the flavors, though, at least for me.

 

Honestly, my "alternative" is to just get more beers to try. Yeah, maybe KBS is in a league of its own for what it does, but even if I could find it for some of the prices I've heard it going for per bottle, I'd rather just get an entire six pack of stuff I have yet to try and also heard great things about. I'm still new at this so I have no issues getting six great experiences for the price of one. Maybe once I start approaching a millennial on craft brews and everything starts being a bit more "been there, done that" I'll be more anxious to try these rares out, but for now, just not worth it.

 

I have my own opinions on the topic but, above all, it's refreshing to see everyone being civil and keeping within the OP's intentions, cheers!

 

the sad thing (well, depending on how you look at it, it's either only a little / not sad at all, or VERY sad) is when people put in tons of effort to get sought after beers, and post stuff like

"i don't know... i just don't "get" these barrel aged beers. i think something's wrong with my palate. i don't understand."

ie what's wrong is that you just don't like that (kind of) beer. see also: wild ales.

it's great to fall in love with those styles (i have). but not everyone likes the same thing... personally, i think the psychological / emotional stuff is VERY sad (caps just to reflect the earlier use), when someone feels bad about not liking something because they want to fit in. it's like the tip of an iceberg of mistakes.

i mean, disappointment sucks. but be disappointed in the beer, not in yourself. doing the latter really is kind of weird, and you should say to yourself, "snap out of it!"

 

Heh! I never expected the meme to take a life of its own. Black Xantus is not the worst imperial stout I've had; I just thought it was disappointing considering the hype before it came out, and I made fun of it in over-the-top ways.

As Levitation mentioned, I WAS fooled by a blind tasting and gave it a higher score out of the bottle. That was 2 years ago; maybe they've improved it. You've certainly got me curious. But I'm sure I'll get to try the new batch when alfrantzell opens another "Kaggen" with me.

 

it probably won't knock your socks off, since obviously it's not the BBA stout for your tastes, but i think it's a great beer.

however, for every bottle of black xantus i easily buy off the shelf (be it due to the meme actually affecting demand, or pure superstition), i'll make a mental note to include 1 additional extra if you and i ever trade.

 

I am finding Palate Wrecker to be similar to PtY. It's a bit less refined and complex but very comparable IMO.

Also I'd like to add that regular offerings are more often than not just as good as the rare stuff with some subtle but obvious differences. However as avid beer drinkers we get a little bored with drinking our regular offerings all the time. So when something rare and different comes along everyone goes a little crazy for it because we all want something aside from our easy to get beers we see on the shelves week after week.

 

I am lucky enough to travel to San Diego at least 1x a month so I get my fill but I have to be honest I cannot compare anything to PtY. It was definantly worth every penny and its hard to compare it to anything else right now. It may be cause of its rareness or just my evolving palate. I do have a great oppurtunity to buy great beers being from NJ but the one thing I am so jealous of is that there are not many craft beer bars here, I basically have to go to a liqour store for my purchase. I would have to travel to Jersey City or Atlantic cityto find a decent craft beer bar. If Im in San Diego I can go to a pizza place and have a better selection than anyplace here in NJ. Maybe I am being bias to PtY!

 

To me beer is a hobby. So if I were to collect baseball cards instead would I want to have a collection full of all common cards? No.

 

If you drank more Ovaltine they might send you a decoder pin...

 

They should be dead outside of the trading forum.

Central Waters
Bourbon Barrel Aged
Bourbon Barrel Stout
Bourbon Barrel Barleywine
Peruvian Morning
Goose Island
Bourbon County Brand Stout

 

That seems like a bad example to go with. You're not digesting your cards and literally depositing them in the toilet when you're done with them, are you? =)

I do kind of disagree with the sentiment though, just from a personal standpoint. I have read comics for twenty years and I just have never been much of a collector, though I get why people do it. There is a certain thrill about knowing you have a piece of memorabilia or what have you that only a certain amount of other people do and so on. But, comic books, in my opinion are there to be "consumed." It's one thing to have a rare book, it's another to have to lock it up in case or keep it sealed in plastic and basically never to be used in the context it was designed to be: to be read. Right now THE WALKING DEAD the TV show is a big hit and because of it some issues of it are going for hundreds. I've seen the first issues - which only had about a 5000 issue first print run - hit over a thousand. Now for some fans, that issue is probably a promised land that they just have to have somewhere in their home and I do genuinely get that. But for that thousand dollars you could instead have, well, the entire run of the series in hardcover format. Actually, you can have that for about a fifth of what that first issue is going for. And another entire run of another Robert Kirkman series, INVINCIBLE, in hardcover. Oh and a run of EX MACHINA in Hardcover. And the Absolute Editions of WATCHMEN and THE SANDMAN. Etc. Literally thousands of pages of some of the best stories a medium has ever seen, and you can have either them or one really nice collectors item you can't really enjoy as intended.

And I extend this to beer, again personally, especially since I am pretty new to craft. It would be great if I could throw out $70 for a bottle of CBS and finally get to enjoy that beer, and at some point I hope I can/do, but I don't see how that one $70 experience, because it is a rare one, somehow makes it that much more important/impressive/whatever than the literally three dozen (or even more) experiences you can have of even just "standard" affair by piecing together a half dozen sixers of assorted breweries and beers. Basically, I do not really feel that one really rare and pricey 10 experience somehow trumps upwards of 40 experiences that any number of which could also be a 10. But as a person with occasional collectors tendencies, I can see why the sentiment exists.

 

I agree with you for the most part but I think for a lot of BA'ers, once they've had all easy/cheap to acquire beer, they want to move on to bigger and better things, even if they know they can get 40 bottles of great beers instead of 1 bottle of amazing beer. People like variety.

This type of mentality is common with every hobby. Does a $5000 set of golf clubs increase a golfer's experience more than a cheaper $800 set of clubs? Maybe a bit, but not nearly enough to warrant the price tag - unless you're a golfer who loves the sport and enjoys spending money on their hobby.

Am I crazy for dropping thousands of dollars a year on beer releases and events? To most people, they would say yes, but I think beer releases are really fun and worth it. It's not just about the beer - it's about going to an unfamiliar city, meeting new people, drinking good beer, and eating good food. The bottles are just icing on the cake.

 

Now this I can get behind because I do go to cons as well, and there's nothing better than being huddled together enjoying the same hobby. Y'know, as long as everyone bathes (which is a problem at comic conventions still, sadly).

 

White Rajah has got to be one of the most under appreciated beers brewed. Agree with Expedition, as well.