Stone Sour Fest

Cascade elderberry, Cascade l'agent orange, Cascade pink pixie sticks, FW Sloambic, and congratulations to Smog City for their first Sourfest appearance and an excellent beer with the Tempest. Great selection this year, and continued improvements to the mechanics. You can tell lots of thought, planning, an hard work go into these festivals. The bottleshare is expanding to the point of local clusters rather than just one area.
One of the best parts of Sourfest now is the attendees. A really great group of knowledgable afficianados, industry folks, and new faces as well. Good fun, and I like the move to wrap it up at 4 rather than 6.

 

The Highwater Berliner Reisse and Golden Road Berliner were both great, I hit both of those twice. From the Cascade barrels Pink Pixie Stix was great and Elderberry was fairly good. The lambics and Cascade bottles everyone knows are good were good. Special mention to Hanssens Scarenbecca... underappreciated beer that in my book is definitely on the level of Schaerbeekse or my homeboy Lou Pepe.

 

• The Trois Dames Sauvageonne was quite good as well.

 

The Cascade Pater and L'Orange definitely were the winners in my book. SLO-ambic and Brux were the biggest disappointments in my mind.

 

sloambic and all the cascade live barrels were my faves, especially the l agent orange.

 

SLO-ambic was so much better a year ago... I shared your disappointment.

 

I had a taste of Sloambic from one of my friends, then when I got my own I noticed that it was notably darker, less hazy, and less tart than his. Might be some keg variation going on?

 

You think they had more than one keg of it?

 

I wouldn’t think so, but I’m not sure how else to explain the differences between our pours (his was about 5 minutes before mine). *Shrug*

 

I would agree that the Brux was the biggest disappointment for myself as well.

 

Here is a pic of three Nelsons poured in a row. The round after was clear again. All were delicious.

 

I'm a fan of Cascade but I'm surprised by all the raves about l'agent orange. I though it was way too sweet, and I found it hard to drink. I love that cascade has 'live kegs' and previews their sours before official release but I felt this was way under-attenuated/young. Each to their own though, right?
Pater and pixie stix were great as expected.
All in all great festival.

 

I thought L'Agent Orange was way too syrupy. It was like they poured canned oranges into the beer and left the syrup in

 

My biggest complaint was being second in line and heading to secure the table next to the pea gravel lounge only to find a dude who got in early sitting there saying the whole table was reserved.

 

Pater, Lou Pepe Gueuze/Kriek, and the direct pour of Kona Coffee Macadamia Porter with a crazy lacto twist from Ken Schmidt's growler by the home brewer god himself, were my favorites. "Try this, it'll make your taste buds do a little tap dance." Too true Ken, too true.

 

The two High Water beers were my favorites of the day. I thought Brux was very good, though it doesn't necessarily fit in with all the overtly sour and funky beers of the day. Not sure why people are hating on it, perhaps just not what they expected?

Missed out on Pixie Sticks, but thought the other three Cascade beers were just okay, though L'Agent Orange was easily the worst of the three.

My least favorite festival beer of the day was easily the FiftyFifty beer. I like a lot of their stuff, but that was just awful.

 

Everyone who liked Cascade L'Agent Orange needs to refamilarize themselves with what nailpolish smells like. That thing was an acetone bomb.
'

 

Lol I don't know why people even try anymore, the same group has had that table for several years. Plenty of good tables around, as well as Dr BIlls bottle share area.

 

Got that table for Oakquinox for some reason. Anyway, got a good enough table as it was.

 

We must have had 2 separate beers. There was no acetone in the beer I had.