Notable Releases - DC/NOVA/MD

Dawsons in Severna Park had Cuvee D'Industrial, limit 1.

 

$25 per bottle is absurd

 

My wife said 4Beans was at Rodman's this weekend. $14 for a 4pk. No thanks, plenty of better brews priced reasonably.

 

Did anyone go check out Bluejacket's new bottle shop this weekend? I didn't make it until today so they were out of Whiskey Barrel Double Mexican Radio bottles, but they had it on draft and it is awesome. They still had bottles of regular Whiskey Barrel Mexican Radio and a lot of their fruit/sour beers were really good. I got bottles of the Blue Velvet, Sub Rosa, The Jam, and Planet Strawberry.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if that's standard though. Wasn't BA IBB about $25+ per bottle?

 

Most places I ever saw BA IBB, it was $30

 

Wait are the cognac bottles 11.2 or 22 ounces?

 

Yeah I made it to the Blue Jacket Bottle shop opening it was pretty cool. Greg was there pouring beers and talking to ppl and the Triple Smoke Wake and Double Barrel Mexican Radio were amazing. The different Gose they had were very good as well. The handed out "the JAM" for free to the first couple of ppl in line and it was very good had a bright pink color.

 

I'm not sure "awesome" and "amazing" are the words I'd use to describe the BA Double Mexican Radio. Sure, it's good, and there aren't a lot of good barrel aged beers coming out of the area, but it's not exactly a beer that could compete on a national level.

 

I think that this is probably our best bet for bonafide trade bait in the next year or so. Bluejacket has been the beneficiary of some incredible hype to date. Wings, Double Duckpin, SOLAR are all excellent, but as previously mentioned they get little national attention. Even the Hardywood stuff won't bag you anything huge. Beyond the inconsistencies, Adroit is too small to make anything that will garner much national attention.

For now, cross your fingers Bluejacket puts something crazy hyped in a bottle and maybe you'll land that Jester King/Hill Farmstead/Funky Buddha.

 

I disagree with that, I think its at least as good as Abraxas and Supreme Leader, two of the best of the style that I've had.

the only problem with trading their beers is the rope-around labels. People could easily switch the labels on Whisky Barrel Mexican Radio and Whiskey Barrel Double Mexican Radio, for example.

 

Abraxas? Damn, haven't had that yet but I hear it's phenomenal. Never heard it compared to Mexican Radio (double barrel).

 

Well I also think Abraxas is a little over-praised as well. Its a very good beer, I love it, but its not blow-your-mind great. To me the spicing on Xocoveza was done better, but Abraxas is just a big, thick, stout, which is its main selling point vs others. The BA DMR had just as nice of a mouthfeel imo. It was thick and hit all the right flavor notes. Mostly cinammon and chocolate, then whiskey barrel and a little bit of heat at the end, and everything comes together perfectly. I'm sure others will say Abraxas is better, but they are at least in the same conversation.

 

Double Duckpin got sent out late last week, correct? Very much ISO

 

If you don't want to wait on the Double Duckpin, Old Line in Beltsville has got some on the shelves.

 

You think this is an issue as far as trading goes? I've shipped a bunch and I usually just put a little piece of tape on the neck to keep the twine in place. Just curious what you see as the issue?

 

I see a potential for dishonest traders to mis-label beer. If you keep up with the Bad Traders forum, there have been numerous examples over the last few years of people refilling/rewaxing bottles and other shady shit. Bluejacket's labels would make that very easy. They already have 2-3 very similar beers between the different versions of Mexican Radio, with the Barrel Double version seemingly in higher demand than the other two. There's not much reason now to mislabel any of their sours, but if they ever brew something in relatively higher demand than the rest, it could be hard to tell if you were actually getting what you traded for.

 

Granted I do most of my trading on the "other" site, but god damn. Trading may have jumped the shark.

 

Thanks. Union just tweeted that we should be seeing it here this week.

 

Need to make it over to Ocelot, hung out with the Director of Sales for Ocelot this weekend for Phish at Merriweather, solid guy, and my local buddies are raving about their beers, had Idle Hands on tap at Leesburg Public House last Friday, good beer, more of a tart than sour imo, I enjoyed it.