Topping Goliath (2023)

Cellarmaker collab release details

 

TG is doing fine. Their hoppy beer is still better than 99% of stuff on shelves and readily accessible. I’d love the price point to be lower, but if I have to pay a few bucks more to know I’m getting a quality beer vs some other chancy brand that could be a drain pour.

 

Proxies for an IP release?


Okay

 

And No limit IP release

 

Fair enough. I've been getting pretty sick of taking a chance on some of the new beers out there nowadays but maybe I'm just an old man stuck in my ways at this point. Most notably I grabbed one of those advent calendars from Costco of 24 beers and nearly puked my nuts out 24 times

 

Sucks the original single hop Pale Ale's and IPA's not names Sue appear to be mostly over. Miss NugMo & MoZee. Will buy fresh Pompeii when available and a 4-pack of Scorpius each Spring.

Want nothing to do with anything Fandango or chasing over priced Stouts. Been burned by the uninspired and muddled likes of Dolphin Sparkles, Soul Hunter or Sun Reaper too many times to buy the multi hop imperial's anymore either.

 

i thought soul hunter was decent but i do miss thresher, sol hunter, 1492, etc.

 

This is so true.

I pick up Sue, Pompeii or other options when they hit the CLE market and I want to buy some good IPA's. One huge win for TG is the fact their hoppy beers are so shelf stable. I can dig into months-old Sue (literally, 4-5 months...) and it still tastes great. I can buy a ton of local options super fresh that already taste oxidized only a few weeks later. Huge quality perk to TG beers that I appreciate. So many breweries can't hold a candle to the shelf stability of TG, IMO, especially for IPA's.

Price wise, they tend to always be cheaper than most other similar styles we have access to and at least I don't have to worry I'm buying a drain pour. I'm a huge fan and also think they are some of the best options on the shelf for hazy/NE style IPA's. I stick with Fat Head's for my WC IPA, but TG is my go-to for Hazy options.

And of course, their other beer styles are great, too..

 

I also thought the new Soul Hunter was meh... What I would do for a fresh batch of any of those classics, especially 1492.

 

Glad to hear they are doing well. My local store has definitely scaled back the TG shelf space, which oddly enough has been replace by Revolution Brewing which has really been growing in my area.

 

X-Hops Gold would get a “bring it back vote” from me. That was my favorite of that series.

 

Can’t reinforce this enough. It’s mind boggling to me how shelf stable their beers are. Props to the brewing and packaging teams at TG. Not sure how many people really understand this or even care but they’re top tier in the country in my opinion when it comes to packaging shelf stable highly hopped beer. Hard to top Sierra Nevada but they’re not far off.

It’s rare that we get drops of their beer in the Intermountain area but when we do I’ll always buy it. Rare that I will purchase any hoppy beer at a store that’s more than a month old unless it’s Sierra or Firestone or TG.

 

Looks like the barleywine they teased at some point is being released April 21-30. They're doing a lottery for it - $50 for 22 ounces. Beer is called Meteora.

https://www.tgbrews.com/events/meteora-barleywine

 

They debuted it at the Dark Embrace festival on Saturday (capping off Tampa bay beer week). It was just listed as “BA BW” on the poster I saw, but doing a search on untappd shows that these are the same.

Lukewarm reviews (4.35 average). Easy pass @ $50. If it was, $5-10 a can, sure I’d try one (if in distro), but a $50 bomber you have to drive there for? Absolutely not.

 

What? Don't want to drive to Iowa for ONE bottle of BW? Do you even like beer? I'm shocked the bubble still hasn't popped on these TG releases.

 

It's batshit crazy bananas that they are selling this as a lottery. It's a 4.35. Who the fuck is going to drive for this beer that isn't local(ish)? And who the fuck wants to pay $50 for 22oz of a beer that is only rated a 4.35?

Listen, ratings sometimes need to be taken with a grain of salt, but in the aggregate they asymptotically approach a real mean, even if that mean is enjoyment and not "true to style". In this way, the rating is not only a proxy for our own enjoyment/rating, but also for the "quality" of the beer. If I'm going to pay $50 for a beer, it needs to have an overall rating of ~4.6 or higher, because at that point pretty much everyone thinks it's absolutely amazing. Under a 4.5, and you often get a lot of variance due to inflation associated with homerism, barrel and/or brewery and/or limited (release) hype, or deflation associated with not enjoying a style, and so on.

So, yea, who the fuck is buying this except locals? (I'll consider local anyone within 2-3 hours). There aren't even proxies allowed.

 

Love the most recent check-in:

"Not good enough to make up for bringing flippin pseudo sue to dark embrace"

lol

But seriously, no description of the beer on the UT entry for Meteora?

 

Haha! Toppling never brings anything good to beer festivals.

 

but according to TG that rating is strong



I honestly can’t believe they would bring up UT with a score that low on a beer that cost $50, oof

 

They cited an UnTappd rating? My oh my...

They could just as well cite Hern N.

"Didn't like it. It wasn't my favorite."

0.25

Current rating is down to 4.34.