The "grass is greener" mentality

there's a single brew place in san juan (yes, PR) that had bells. Actually, they had a very impressive selection of brews. better than any place I've gone to on LI. Obviously, not as good as torst, so we NY'ers still have a tiny edge over PR

 

if I start spilling the beans about great CO beers all you grass is greener ba's will want to get your hoarding little hands on it. With that in mind... colorado makes the worst beer and I trade for stuff like fff, cc, and st all the time. Just know that colorado beers are not the ones you are looking for. *waves hand in proper jedi form* THESE ARE NOT THE BEERS YOU ARE LOOKING FOR.

 

This premise can be summed up by many philosophers of the past. Here's a couple....


"Absence makes the heart grow fonder"
- Roman poet, Sextus Propertius

"Better to light a candle, than curse the darkness"
- Peter Benenson (Amnesty International)

 

Yeah, Stone is a totally pedestrian brewery, hardly does anything well.

 

When I think about the fact that I complain about a 1 hour drive to Ft. Collins? I remember how awesome it is here!

 

Pedestrian, no -- but outside of IRS (1/year), Double Bastard (1/year), and Enjoy By, I don't buy anything they make anymore. Their last few years of Anniversary beers have been terrible, Vertical Epic ('05 and onward) were awful, the Odd Beers for Odd Years thing was a failure on all fronts except Espresso IRS, their collaborations are 90+% forgettable, and their barrel-aging program hasn't produced anything of note. Wasn't the BA IRS infected out of the gate? They've had a lot of misfires for a company with so much brewing history.

Stone IPA is all right. Ruination is pretty good but I rarely find it fresh.

 

Where do you find those in Philly?

 

Given the amount of rain we get here I'd say our grass is actually greener.

 

I'm with you Bill, my hunting days are over. There's too much quality brew available locally to be bothered hunting.

 

Not much other than weeds in Mississippi with a few small patches of grass.

 

always greener in cali

 

I was just looking back through some emails from Capones.

 

On this site seems like BA's either label you to be a homer or a grass is greener type.

My feeling is that I like beer no matter where its from. I enjoy trading beers people want to try to them and vise versa (I only trade for dollar amounts not rarity but I do give rare things and I usually get similar things in return). I don't see why I can't just be both so while people debate which is better I'll be here in WI enjoying my locals and the fruits of my trades.

 

Should be pretty easy to get BCBS we where drowning in 2012 can't imagine people are asking a lot for it. If they are hit me up I got some.

 

The grass is pretty green when you live about 5k away from Cantillon and less then 30k from the other geuze brewers and blenders. Not to mention Struise at about an hour drive away...

 

Sounds like a smart move to me

 

I've noticed this. Michigan has some great breweries and great beers, but I find myself seeking out brews from other states and trying to get my hands on stuff that isn't distributed here. In my defense, I don't really like porters/stouts and, even though I like IPAs, I prefer other styles...so a lot of Founders and Bells' best brews don't appeal to me. I realized my 'grass is greener' mentality when I went to Belgium and how so many people contacted me for trades and asked for a lot of stuff I see every day on the shelves at my local beerstores and how excited some of them were when I gave them said brews.

I'm trying to correct this. I've been to a few local breweries in the past few weeks and have been more open minded to beers and styles I normally wouldn't drink. Also plan on a two or three day trip with the gf to the other side of the state to visit Dark Horse, Founders, and Bells...and will be keeping an open mind on trying different things. I've also began drinking Oberon and Centennial IPA as my 'every-dayers' as opposed to some of the other beers I enjoy slightly more from out of state (60 Minute, Flying Dog In-Heat...although I still drink a lot of German Hefes and Belgian Ales at home too).

 

Maybe so, but straight legit here in Washington. Boo-ya.

 

I'm generally pretty oriented to my local area, but this year, I did a bunch of trading. Being an IPA hound, I wanted to try a lot of the best IPA's out there and see how they compared to what I've been able to find around here. I would say that what I found is that the OP is mostly right. Many, many of the best IPA's on the BA list are not good enough for me to want to spend the time/money trading. Some of them were even downright mediocre (which was really surprising to me). However....... there were one or two that were special enough that I'll probably keep trading for them from time to time. The most notable of these was Kern River citra.
I say stay mostly local, but branch out here and there. It's fun!

 

y'all did beat us to it, thats for sure