Dear Lagunitas...

What I was getting at is that lagunitas is still and always has been pretty much hops only. Stone used to have a lot more diversity and has gotten rid of it. Stone's output is just like lagunitas nowadays, at the expense of the beers I used to actually buy from them.

 

Well hold on there slick you know they will bring some other stuff too.
Perhaps you just need to move a few hundred miles south
Seriously they're the least of your worries, I feel that lagunitas is always there in the background

 

I really don't care what anyone says, Lagunitas will always be a good buy . They do reasonably good beer at great prices and that has not changed since Heineken bought them . Of course their bomber production has gone down but that is because of consumer demand. Plis nothing wrong with going to a gas station at 1 am on the way home from work and getting 2 x stovepipe can of Lag. IPA.
And Tony Magee deserves that huge sale price.

 

I like Heineken. Smart and final has it on sale occasionally for $10.99 a 12 pack as well as lagunitas ipa. I always choose Heineken. Well as long as they are cans and not the green bottles.

I’ve been looking for Willetized but no luck. Glad to hear it was found in a gas station recently so maybe I’ll get lucky soon.

 

I find it to be a similar drinking experience to High West Victory at Sea, which is also available relatively cheaply in NY of all places.

Also enjoy a Heineken here and there and could care less who owns what at this point.

 

Kings and Convicts is based out of Highwood Illinois, but they do own the Ballast Point brewpub in Chicago.

I like Lagunitas beer, but typically only buy beers on draft when visiting their Chicago brewery, their Willetized stout and also fresh brand new releases. I would buy more from Lagunitas if their package dating were clear.

I really like their flagship IPA and several other offerings. Perhaps one day they will transition to a more consumer friendly package date disclosure.

 

At one Lagunits had some diversity:
-Imperial stout
-cappuccino stout
-Olde Gnarleywine
-Hairy Eyeball
-Lucky 13
-doppel weizen
-doppel sticky
-brown shugga
-censored
-cherry jane
-dark swan
-Eroica
-Sonomica
-Czech Pils
-undercover investigation
-WTF
-Willitized/Westified

but for the most part I agree that they are almost doing what stone does now.

 

I guess I don't like it when people bring that stuff up in a thread about Lagunitas Sucks being year round. Popping in only to make a Heineken comment is kinda rude. Same as when people pop into a new release for Founders to discuss racism. It is just off topic to the beer as the thread is not about the brewery as a whole or its practices.

However, I will also say I was being rude and ornery so I apologize for that.

We always need to keep in mind that if we had this conversation in person, we might still argue the same but it would be clear we are just being passionate about beer and have no ill will. So cheers!

 

Well they still do a handful of those, sonomica is on shelves right now, and I saw pils, hairy eyeball, and lucky 13 within the last year. And of course, willetized is out. I used to stop by their Petaluma spot 8-10 times a year and they always had all kinds of interesting stuff on beyond their hoppy core.

Really, the two breweries share a very similar arch. They are both early adopters of the all hoppy everything approach. I was commenting more on my personal experience of the two brands. I drank a lot of stone beer, but it was a lot of their dark offerings and one offs and they've pretty much shut them all down. Lagunitas was a go to for hops for me for years, and they still make most of those brands, but now I pretty much only buy stouts from them.

Just a little drunken insight into how differently I've experienced two brands who are very similar.

 

I haven’t seen that in a little while or I stopped noticing it. That is a good beer and what I recall like $12/$13 for a 4 pk. It used to sit on the shelf at my local Whole Foods. I’ll have to keep my eyes out for it. Cheers.

 

Lagunitas rocks!

 

I read years ago Stone had a problem. This was even after the expansion next door They could run their equipment 30 hours per day, 10 days per week, 520 days year and still not not satisfy the orders they have for IPA's (or some numbers like that).

Lagunitis has money from Heineken to expand and now has a brewery in the Chicago area according to their web site. They have the capacity to diversify. As always, follow the money.

Interesting, never once on their website do they mention Heineken.

 

I misunderstood your initial comparisons then.

 

I don't think you're alone, 12 hours of Christmas quaffing capped by a 13% willetized probably isn't the best formula for the coherent conveyance of ideas

 

But it a heck of a way to celebrate the holidays!

Cheers to that!

 

[shrugs] I always liked the Pils, in addition to the BA stouts mentioned by others here. (to be fair, it IS a pretty hoppy pils I guess)

 

I pretty much agree. I miss seeing Stone beers like smoked Porter (and the variants) and coffe milk stout. The only non-hop themed beers I’ve seen from Stone lately are Xocoveza and Woot. I think at this point you could add Sierra Nevada to this group as well. Especially after the cancellation of summer fest.

 

Ya I hadn't looked at their line up in a while and the new "thing" brand thread encouraged me too. Damn shame. I drink a lot of their dark beers as well as some of their hoppy stuff so my perception of their portfolio balance was waaaaay off.

Like I said in the summerfest thread though, its rising to meet niche demand that isn't worth the big guys time that has fueled small, craft breweries for ever. So for every stone, Sierra, or lagunitas we lose to the allure of the markets we will get a fairy ring of local brewers popping up to provide the styles that don't pencil out for the big boys

 

In the history of beer in the US one style became dominant, low hopped pilsner. Along came the craft beers. They pulled a lot of market share but low hopped pilsners still remain dominant. I wonder if we are coming up to another major split in the beer market. Highly hopped beers have become dominant in the craft market, both ales and lagers.. And then there are all the other styles Will the craft market and the breweries split? Maybe it has already or is just starting. Still, there are no big craft breweries known for the other styles. Maybe we are not ready for the craft, craft wave.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by this. There are lots of breweries.known for styles other than heavily hopped ales. There's the big stout and fruit smoothie sours for starters. Then there's breweries like jacks abbey, notch, bierstadt, etc... known for lagers/old world styles. Then there's the likes of De Garde, floodlands, homage, etc... known for mixed fermentation stuff.

There's definitely a dominant presence of hoppy ales but there's also no shortage of diversity of styles available if you leave anywhere near any decent sized city (and often even if you don't)