Saint Archer

Have you ever pondered what a negative person you are?

 

Picking up this one tomorrow. Along with Tongue Tickles. Hammerland on Friday. Still haven't gotten the newest Enjoy By. Some Green Diamond cans next week. What else? No time to drink them all.

 

The mosaic DIPA has a great nose, but that is a candy sweet like DIPA right there. Finishes dry, but there is a pronounced sweetness.

 

Catchy's choice of avatar suggests he has definitely pondered on that.

 

There is another thread just above this one that talks about having a dislike button. He would have a for sure case of Carpel Tunnel syndrome if they had one of those

 

I have a feeling that breweries had to re-think bottle dating once they realized that 4 weeks old was considered not fresh by the type of person who checks for bottle dates in the first place. I've been guilty of it too, but I do see why breweries go for the more vague "best by" date rather than a bottled on date.

 

Just tried the Mosaic DIPA tonight. I'm sold. Will be trying more St. Archer in the future.

 

I'd drink their IPA all week long if I could ever get a packaged date on the box... (Yeah i know it's in the works, but they tweeted me they had fixed it like over a month ago)

 

You keep telling yourself that, slappy.

 

If Catchy were in San Diego, he'd be "meh". Sounds tough, but in the core seems pretty cool. Maybe. LOL

 

Mosaic was legit.

 

I agree, I hope this is made fairly regularly.

 

Had Mosaic DIPA and Hammerland DIPA at BWSB this past Saturday. ESBC Hop Tanker and BW's Dominator were on tap as well. Mosaic and Hammerland both killed it over HT and Dominator. And for me I would have too say they were both neck and neck. Giving the day old Hammer a .5 winner for me. But damn that Mosaic was pretty damn good. My favorite SA beer to date. I would say Hammerland is ESBC's best to date, but it's a BIG 8.6 and thats getting a bit big for me these days. It's a def 2 person bottle for me. 2 bottles down, 4 to go. I got 2 bottles of Noble's TT waiting for me to get back from the Big Apple. Still haven't tried this years batch and still haven't tried the latest Enjoy By 4-15-15.
Who needs ABC beers when you got all these other great IPA/DIPA's in your backyard? And a diamond is a craft beer guys best friend when it's green.

 

I'll be another voice in the chorus cheering Mosaic IPAs name. Fantastic double IPA. If you like mosaic hops there is no reason you won't love this beer. St. Archer has won me over with their recent new beers.

 

The Mosaic IPA is amazing.

 

Mosaic is the real deal. Though I still maintain their regular DIPA is, at least according to its BA ratings, frightfully under-regarded.

 

Confirmation bias. I see the Mosaic is getting sky high ratings, though - also a bit of confirmation bias in the other direction?

I saw this at our Trader Joe's (one of the closest ones to their brewery, FWIW), and snagged a bomber. It was very, very good IMO. I had to double and triple check on the DIPA categorization and the ABV - seemed quite a bit less than reality. One of those sneaky ones...

 

Most likely, in both cases.

There's probably not a way to say this without sounding like a douche, but it seems to me that local beer ratings are often riddled with confirmation bias. Not just SD, of course -- it's everywhere. But when a local brewery puts out a bunch of different styles/releases and every last one gets lofty ratings...count me a skeptic.

 

St. Archer is bigger than local, aren't they? Or are they so ubiquitous around San Diego in bottles and cans that I am assuming they are distributed outside the area as well?

I think they've been chronically underrated due to their marketing. Modem Tones seemed to get past that rather quickly, but not St. Archer yet.

 

I think they're just California (I kinda used local loosely, as even though they're elsewhere in CA, I'm not sure they're so ubiquitous outside SD). I've got a beer nerd friend in Berkeley that swears he can't find them there, though I read some press releases from October saying they were up there.

I think Modem Tones is a great comparison, except for that I don't think they had anything to get past -- their marketing/branding was really well packaged from the get go, and I think, again hopefully not sounding douchey, their ratings reflect that. Saint Archer's marketing/branding was, at least to us beer nerds, suspect to start. I think you're right that they haven't really got out of that hole yet with the nerds. I don't know what their sales data is like, so I'm not sure how the more general beer drinking crowd feels, other than sort of generally surmising that they must be doing halfway decent with the distro expansion to the Bay Area.

I feel like I'm getting a little too meta here -- I mean, how much can any of us quantify the impact of good branding on our perceptions of a product? I know I really like Modem Tones classic/minimalist white cans. I know I really like Girl Skateboards and that Saint Archer did a "collab" with them. I'd like to think I can separate my aesthetic tastes from my palate, and judge the resepctive brews accordingly, but who can really say?