Official FOBAB Countdown Thread

My favorites (missed out on the Cherry Rye, but think I got most of the other good ones)

• Perennial Blueberry Flanders (this randomly was my first and best beer of the session)
• Tartare
• BA Abraxas
• Wine Barrel BCS
• Apple Brandy BCS
• Sex Syrup
• Hansel & Gretel

Disappointments

• All Destihl sours (specifically Hawaii was one of the worst beers I had there)
• Raspberry Wild One (not bad, but expected a bit more)
• Lagunitas Little Sumpin Gooze (not really close to sour)

Overall Perinnial was a huge winner for me and was very disappointed with my first exposure to Destihl after hearing so many good things.

 

This...

All Abraxas has cocoa nibs, vanilla beans, anchos, and cinnamon sticks in it.
Vanilla Bean Abraxas has 5 times the beans, and we have only made 2 1/6bbls of it for special events.
BA Abraxas is just Abraxas in barrels...
This past weekend we had BA Abraxas at FOBAB, VB with extra chiles Abraxas at FH, and Abraxas at West Lakeview and SmallBar.
Glad to see that most seem to enjoy our hard work!

Cheers,
Cory King
Head Brewer
Perennial Artisan Ales

 

Low storage

 

Did anyone else notice that the pour line was well over 2 oz (3.5 according to my measurement, after the fact.) I'm sure most folks would be thrilled with that, but I definitely paid for it Sunday.

 

Damn that sounds fantastic, didn't even notice that one in the program. I agree that the Destihl beers weren't as good as last year but didn't think any of them were bad, Sour Hawaii was my favorite.

 

2nd session - had the Apricot and the Strawberry - Apricot was definitely amazing.

 

Agreed. I'm a huge De Stihl fan... But the Flanders wasn't very good... Apricot was amazingly rounded and delicious.

 

Extra Vanilla or "Extra anything" is hard to quantify.. and really something.. as far as a beer database standpoint.. that really opens a big loophole that any site should try to avoid. The beer is the same in ingredients.. it just has some "extra" of something.

Sounds like an alt, fwiw.

But then again, everyone has their own opinion.

The way I think of it is it's like saying "This batch of Coffee BCS has EXTRA Coffee".. would that really be a new beer? No.. it's essentially a tweak to a batch. I'm sure it tasted great.. but from an organizational approach, it would be hard to seperate that specific beer out.

Certainly if it were an entirely different adjunct, treatment, or ingredient.. then ok, let's seperate that out. But I don't think it's as cut-and-dry here as some may think.

 

A pinch off topic but does anyone know why the one dude was thrown out from the early session? Inquiring mind(s) want to know.

 

Did you check this post out?

"All Abraxas has cocoa nibs, vanilla beans, anchos, and cinnamon sticks in it.
Vanilla Bean Abraxas has 5 times the beans, and we have only made 2 1/6bbls of it for special events.
BA Abraxas is just Abraxas in barrels...
This past weekend we had BA Abraxas at FOBAB, VB with extra chiles Abraxas at FH, and Abraxas at West Lakeview and SmallBar.
Glad to see that most seem to enjoy our hard work!

Cheers,
Cory King
Head Brewer
Perennial Artisan Ales"

Hard to argue with the brewer.

 

second session. was excited to try it. unfortunately was overly acedic for my tastes.

 

You know I can't read, Dan.

FWIW, we frequently do differ from a brewer's interpretation..

5x is quite a bit though.

 

I was first session. Did not like Hawaii at all. Apricot was good, but didn't feel it was special. Tried the other two near the end when my palate was destroyed so I won't comment on those.

 

If a beer is marketed as something other than the original and it has a different recipe then it should be listed as a a different beer. If it is marketed as coffee bcs and there is more coffee then it is just a batch variation and should be noted but no much more than different vintages of the same beer. Pretty simple if you ask me.

 

It was definitely interesting and I'm glad I tried it, but it's pretty hard for any beverage to live up to that name.

 

Apparently using the woman's restroom.

 

Big disappoint for me with Destihl this year. Hawaii and Strawberry were both letdowns. Gave up after those two.

Anyone else?

 

I loved BA and regular abraxus and had every intention of going Sunday to small bar...until I woke up Sunday.

 

But dosvidanya was pretty damn tasty. So was their super rye forward barleywine

 

Just wanted to add another, "Great event!" comment. Towards the end, I finally managed to put some faces to BA usernames -- sadly, it was towards the end and my mental retention was, uh, compromised something terrible by then. Still!

I really enjoyed the BA Abraxus -- very strong on the cinnamon, and I doubt I could ever drink more than 6oz., but what a fun beer. I had no idea Avery made wild ales and I loved what I had from them. The Lost Abbey beers, too. I definitely hit a wall early on with BA stouts -- possibly why something like BA Abraxus sticks out more, or the wilds/sours. More than anything, it was just fun to try new/different/oddball/crazy things. I don't know if I would ever buy a glass of Cigar City's Peach Humidor IPA at a bar, but I'm damn glad I got to try it at least once.

I ran into one group of guys who managed to try every single beer between them. That takes coordination. And dedication (sounds like new names for Russian River sours).

The program was a bit of a mess, though. I think it's fine to have everything listed by style, but then you have the description at the back, grouped by brewery. There was a lot of awkward flipping once I got to a particular table. Or maybe include something on the piece of paper that was used to identify a given beer number? Minor quality-of-life comments, though.