Are you a traditionalist or an explorer?

I'm pretty adventurous when it comes to food and beer, and will try almost anything once. That said, I have enough experience to know that if it has the word sour in it I'm not drinking it or if it contains organ meats, I'm not eating it

 

I personally do not go out of my way to purchase beers like "wine barrel aged stout with ghost peppers and gummi bears" but I like to sample try these sorts of beers; for example at beer festivals. I recently attended the Sierra Nevada Beer Camp festival in Philly and one brewery was serving a Peach Tripel and I thought to myself "that sounds intriguing" so I requested that beer. A bit to my surprise I thought that beer was very good to excellent. I would never have conceived of combining peach with the Tripel beer style but that combo really worked for that beer.

Most of my beer purchases are more on the traditional side of things but I think that brewers should follow their passions and brew the beers that they are interested in producing.

Cheers!

 

I can honestly answer neither. I'm only interested in well crafted brews no matter the style and if a gussied up version doesn't meet that standard I walk.

 

Really? I think with the estery profile of most well made tripels, that peach would incorporate seamlessly.

 

You get a BIG Like for this post. I will try the beer aged in the balsamic barrel please, but I will skip the ghost peppers and gummi bears.

 

Well-made "normal" beer beats crazy novelty beer every time, in my book.

 

Just like beauty, “crazy” is in the eye of the beholder.

Cheers!

 

Traditionalist. I very rarely feel the need to venture outside of pale ale and stout. Everything I want in beer is contained within.

 

Then again sometimes crazy is just plain crazy.

 

I will try any food and any beer. Never would have discovered I love iguana, pig tongue, beef tripe,and raw octopus otherwise. Same for mango gose and peach berliner weisse.

 

If there's a sliding scale, I'm probably 2/3 adventurous. I'll always look out for new beers/breweries and I'll drink most styles with most flavours. I'll draw the line at beers brewed purely for novelty value (was there one brewed with beard yeast?) or with flavours I won't like (looking at you, habanero pepper).

 

Dinner at your place sounds interesting.

 

Hard to get iguana up here but I make a mean curried tripe.

 

As a commercial brewer, I feel like if you master/learn the classics (of the styles you brew/love), then by all means feel free to explore your horizons.

 

With the new wave of brewers, I feel that this happens rather rarely. Plus, how many new brewery owners or new brewers actually attended school for brewing? At the most, they do short unpaid internships or work as an assistant brewer before striking out on their own. A great deal make the jump straight from homebrewing. I think that's dangerous for craft beer, from a quality perspective.

 

I'm willing to "explore" beers that fall outside of the traditional style but I prefer to drink traditional beers. Some beers with too many additional ingredients just turn me off and I won't even try them. I avoided IPAs with coffee and/or cocoa nibs added because I never thought they would taste good. I accidentally purchased a single IPA with coffee and cocoa nibs added and I did not like it.

 

But those meats are "traditional" somewhere....

 

If you are willing to give it a go I would recommend Stone Mocha IPA. I was a bit leery about the combination of cacao/coffee in an IPA but I enjoyed this beer.

Below is from the Stone website:

“Stone Mocha IPA

A style-defying double IPA with cacao & coffee

IPA with Mocha Indulgence

Clearly, style lines have been crossed. Is it half-IPA, half-stout? Not quite. It’s definitely all IPA, but it’s also the best of both styles, making this love child of a beer simply just a beautiful, pleasure-seeking meld of imperial IPA and mocha indulgence. How did we come up with this inexplicably delicious creation? Well, that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that it exists and that it’s here for you now, thanks to our deliberate disregard for brewing norms. Some things are not meant to be known, just enjoyed...thoroughly.”

Cheers!

 

Definitely explorer, for me personally its more exciting to try a variety of beers and experience something new as opposed to going back to something I've already had. That being said there are still plenty of crazing sounding beers that I probably won't try because it might not sound like its worth my money.