Your 2015 Beers in Review

Wisconsin local here

Best Beer: 2013 Project Noyaux from Cascade. Absolutely blew me away in every possible way. Petit Desay is a close 2nd

Best Surprise: Repose from JK. Brewed with hay? This thing smelled and tasted like a barnhouse floor but in the best possible way

Most Overrated: CBS by far

Biggest WTF Moment: My palate shifting away from anything big or Barrel Aged and more towards the 4-5% abv range.

Up-and-comer: Karben4

Old reliable (non-whale): New Glarus Fat Squirrel, or Bells Best Brown. Thank god its fall.

Old reliable (whale-ish edition): Any R&D releases from NG

 

best beer : Other Half Mosaic

best surprise: Fremont - received a number of Fremont goodies from @kemoarps and found each of them to be terrific. I have to admit this as my "surprise" because sadly enough, I didn't' really know squat about them prior to the mail

most overrated: Probably Habanero Sculpin, but I could easily let that one slide to "most Polarizing" instead. As a close second, I offer Lunch. Not saying it isn't good, but I was expecting a unicorn ride at the time of decant.

biggest wtf: Went to my first release. Ever. 3.5 hour wait.

up and comer: Answer Brewpub. Ask me this time next year and I hope to say Veil.

old reliable (non whale): This has suddenly been reset since two breweries are suddenly distro'd here now - Alpine Nelson and Alesmith IPA. The fact that these can be had at any time is just amazing!

old reliable (whale ish): My once a year BA GBS will always be (as long as I can snag them) my most predictable "special date" (Thanksgiving) beer.

 

Domestically, 2015 has been all about Casey for me.

 

Best Beer: This year's batch of Peche 'n Brett was unbelievably juicy. I was shocked at how much more peachy it was this year than I remember 2014 being, given that I drank my 2014 bottle much closer to botting date than I did the 2015. Honorable mention goes to Artaic--probably my favorite beer from Trillium.

Best Surprise: Sierra Nevada BA Maple Stout. I know this was released in late 2014, but I opened my bottle not too long after the whole CBS world tour thing back in March and while I thought CBS was fantastic, I was stunned at how well BA Maple Stout acquitted itself given its relative anonymity compared to the vaunted CBS.

Most Overrated: I hate calling things overrated, so I'll rephrase this as "beer that most people seemed to like a lot more than me" and give it to Bell's Uranus. Don't get me wrong, it was a very good beer, but I saw several comments about it being the best in the Planets series and I didn't think it was *that* good. I also considered answering No Rules. Another beer that I actually really enjoyed, but not to the levels of its 98 score on BA.

Biggest WTF Moment: Suing Blue Moon for not being craft but advertising themselves as such. If you are into the scene enough to care who owns the company that brews your beers, then you are informed enough to know exactly what Blue Moon is. Suing them was a ridiculous stunt to make a point about the "craft" vs. "crafty" debate.

Up-and-comer: Witch's Hat. They do some of my favorite Michigan hoppy beers in Train Hopper (NOW IN CANS!), Big Doedish (stinky in a good way), and Rez Gets SMASHED. They have a fantastic coffee kolsch that needs to be canned like yesterday, and while all the attention goes to Dragontrax and the other barrel-aged Night Fury variants, they have delicious cinnamon bomb of a take on the "Mexican/Mayan/Aztec/etc" stout substyle in Angry Ginger, and an even better barrel-aged version in Furious Ginger. Oh, and Night Fury itself might be as good as any of the barrel-aged variants...

Old Reliable (non-whale): For the first half of this year, my answer would have been Tank 7. But now that I've moved to Boulevard-less Michigan (well, Boulevard-less for another couple months, anyway), I think my go-to tends to be Bean Flicker from Odd Side. It will probably be back to Tank 7 in 2016.

Old Reliable (whale-ish edition): Hard to say, but I think it would have to be Julius. I know that leans more towards "ish" than "whale", but I can't call something reliable if my only experience with it is a 4 oz taster at a ticketed tap event or bottle share.

 

Best Beer: Born Yesterday Pale Ale, Lagunitas. Cool concept, great beer

Best Surprise: Trying CBS at EBF. Worth all the hype.

Best Brewery: Tie - Founders/Lagunitas/Victory/Sierra Nevada. Reliable favorites and strong new releases from them every year.

Most Overrated: Whales in general

Biggest WTF Moment: Starting to lose interest in pumpkin beers. Pumking, Warlock, and Greater Pumpkin (Heavy Seas) are the only ones worth it in my opinion.

Up-and-comer: Jack's Abby. Haven't had one mediocre beer from them.

Old reliable (non-whale): Loose Cannon (Heavy Seas). Never lets me down.

 

Best Beer: Tree House Haze. Forget Julius, this was easily my favorite TH beer this year. Probably now my favorite overall IPA.

Runner Up: Cascade Bourbonic Plague. Still leaves me thinking about it like 6 months since I had it. Need to get my hands on another soon.

Best Surprise: Evolution Nouveau Rouge 4. I tend to be pretty hard on local breweries, and overall I've found Evolution to be solid if not spectacular. I picked this one up without a lot of expectations and was blown away by how good it is. Easily my favorite Flanders ale. Grab it if you can find it!

Runner Up: Epic Sour Brainless on Peaches. Another fantastic sour that eclipsed my expectations based on the brewery.

Best Brewery: Trillium. Nailed every style I had from them this year whether it was saisons, IPAs, sours, or stouts.

Runner Up: Firestone Walker. Another brewery that nails every style. If I had to choose between one of these two to have exclusively I'd have a really hard times. Parabola remains my favorite overall beer.

Most Overrated: Logsdon Peche N Brett. I'm a big fan of Seizon Bretta, and had very high expectations going in, but I found this to be highly medicinal and really artificial in its treatment of the peach.

Runner up: 3 Floyds Gumballhead. I don't understand the hype here at all. Granted, I'm probably a little low on wheats against the mean in general, but I can't imagine this being distributed under a different brewery name and getting nearly the same level of reverence.

Biggest WTF Moment: Paying $60 for VIP entry to Snallygaster (DC beer fest) only for BA Abraxas to kick within 5 minutes and about 60 pours max. I totally understand limited capacity for this beer, but it's kind of a bummer for it to be advertised so heavily in the run up to the festival, only for less than probably 10% of VIP entrants being able to try it.

Runner Up: Sixpoint Jammer. Given my high opinion of every single other beer I've had from Sixpoint I was pretty shocked by how underwhelming this was. Not even sure if really qualifies as a gose.

Up-and-comer: Lost Rhino. Their sour program is legitimately top tier. If they can hone the rest of their offerings a little I think you're looking at an elite brewery.

Runner up: Not sure this counts, as they've kind of already arrived, but I still think they're pretty underrated/under the radar, so: Jackie O's. Oro Negro is the best Meixcan Stout I've had, and the rest of their BA beers are fantastic as well. That's not to discount the number of great standard options either.

Old reliable (non-whale): Rochefort 10. I think easily the best beer that you really don't have to go too far out of your way to find any time of year.

Runner Up: DC Brau OTWOA. Alright, so it's not readily available for everyone, but for those of us in the DC area they did a great job of producing a lot of this in 2015 while still maintaining the fantastically high quality. Stacks up with any IPA out there as far as I'm concerned.

Old Reliable (whale-ish edition): Firestone Walker Parabola. Not quite a whale per se, but hard enough to get that I have to go out of my way and it never fails to impress.

Runner Up: Bruery Melange 3. Was lucky enough to get a couple of bottles this year and would still love to trade for more.

 

Top Beers 2015:
Deschutes Jubel 2015 (On-tap) (4.74)
Green Flash Cellar 3: Silva Stout Feb 2015 (4.68)
AleSmith Old Numbskull (4.67)
Avery Uncle Jacob's Stout (4.65)
Odell Barrel Thief Oak Aged DIPA (4.63)
Great Divide Chocolate Oak Aged Yeti (On-tap) (4.6)
New Holland Dragon's Milk Bourbon Barrel Stout (On-tap) (4.6)
Uinta Crooked Line: Labyrinth Barrel Aged Black Ale (4.6)
Deschutes Black Butte XXVI (4.58)

Cheers!

 

New Best Beer: It's impossible to name only one. There are too many amazing beers happening these days. Some of my favorites from the year ...

- De Garde Beaucoup Violet, Nectarine Premiere, Broken Truck, The Duo. Odd chiming in with De Garde since most beers are new beers but these stood out as particularly phenomenal. Roseberry is an honorable mention; all the jamminess you expect from De Garde with a phenomenal herbal element. Note these are NOT Bu; all those seeking Bu exclusively are missing some of the best beers.
- Casey Dry Hopped Oak Theory. Of all the phenomenal Casey beers I've had, this one stood out.
- Cycle Nooner 10. I'm usually let down by Cycle stuff - it's usually really good, 4.25ish to me, but overhyped. This was great. A bit one note, but gigantic coconut creaminess ... with chunks of coconut floating in it ta boot.
- Tired Hands Mosaic Mago Tago. Probably the best fruited IPA I've had.
- Side Project Orviamo. After Oude Fermier and Black & Wild B1, probably my favorite SP beer.
- Ale Apothecary Dry Hopped La Tache. Labeled simply as La Tache this was a special beer. Dry hopped and aged in pinot barrels. Took the already excellent La Tache to new heights.
- Grimm Afterimage. There are a lot of great IPAs / IIPAs out there. I often feel like I know what I'm going to get going into them so no matter how good they are, I feel like they're simply meeting expectations. This far surpassed expectations. Top notch.

Best Surprise: Again, many pleasant surprises ...

- Odd Sides Ahh Nuts. This was hazelnut deliciousness.
- Bottlelogic Fundamental Observation. Exceeded expectations.
- Kuhnhenn Big Tony's and Solstice Stout. Were those from this year? No idea ... but they are incredible.
- Hardywood Trickery / Foolery / Ruse. Incredible beers.
- Transient Buckley. What CBS should have tasted like ...
- Lagers from Metropolitan and 3 Floyds; the Chicago area has some sleeper lagers that are killing it.

Most Overrated:

- Pipeworks Sure Bet. So inferior to Square Grouper (and no contest with Tired Hands Mago Tago).
- Founders CBS. Everyone says the first edition was superior. Fine. But why are people still reviewing the new edition as if it were exquisite?

Biggest WTF Moment:

People lining up at Goose Island's Sunday Funday for over an hour to get a plastic thimble full of various BCBS rarities. The line cutting and general bad behavior was astounding ... for an ounce of beer.

All the changes in the trade forums on a beer site not to be named making it virtually impossible to trade there any more.

Lagunitas managing to make a world class BA coffee stout and sell it for under $10. If that's the future of craft beer consolidation, we have little to be afraid of.

Up-and-comer: This is inevitably going to be someone making BA stouts or IPAs. Maybe wilds. But instead of saying "up-and-comer" I'll name some breweries that I think make incredible beer and still fly a bit under the radar.

- Block 15. They get some attention for Golden Canary, Turbulent Consequence, etc. But they make an insane variety of great stuff. Expansion should improve quality and availability.
- Propolis. They win some medals ... they make insanely unique Belgian and Farmhouse beers with herbal (foraged?) ingredients. The barrel aged stuff is incredible ... wild and unique.
- OEC. Tiny bottle counts, a unique vision and spirit. But still relatively easy to obtain.
- Highland Park. Some of their stuff reminds me of a few of my favorite breweries - Upright and SARA. That they're making it on a tiny system seems to reveal a similar spirit.
- Holy Mountain. A Seattle gem that is starting to make ripples, if not waves.

Old reliable (non-whale):

Sierra Nevada, Lagunitas, Deschutes, Stone. BA Narwhal is now more or less a shelf beer ... their Oktoberfest was killer ... they seem to be experimenting more with barrels not that expansion frees up capacity ... the upcoming beer camp project is ambitious. Lagunitas for Born Yesterday and High Westified alone ... though Sucks, Doppel Sticky, and more also make them righteous. Deschutes has such a solid basic lineup and now they're pumping out BA stuff regularly (BBXXVII, Dissident, Mirror Mirror, The Stoic, Not the Stoic, etc) that sits around in their footprint; shelf BA stuff of this quality?!? And Stone has something new and interesting every week it seems ... Thunderstruck, Sorry Not Sorry, retooling their basic lineup, 500 mls of Southern Charred / Double Bastard in the Rye / Winter Harvest / Crime / Punishment on shelves, Xocoveza returning. I could probably be happy year round just drinking stuff from these four.

Old reliable (whale-ish edition)

This is a weird question since there are so many things that were considered whales years ago and now are readily available; see Deschutes above. I'll go with Bruery ... because who cares about them much these days even though they are pumping out more variety of high quality stuff than ever? Black Tuesday is still banging, Chronology 6 / 12 were both good, the Melange's continue to impress (3, 9, 10, 12 all great), some of the cocktail influenced beers are great and some merely interesting (loved Sourrento), Beret / Tonnellerie Rue and many others sit on shelves, Flimishmish and SitR with Peaches made glorious returns, new stuff like Ride That Goat kills it. They are somehow both simultaneously hyped, overlooked, lauded, and derided.

 

Best Beer:

Stone Enjoy By. I additionally loved that they started utilizing the 12oz bottles. Score!

Or

Saison Brett. Perfection in a glass!

Best Surprise:

Citra Bend by Golden Road Brewing. Cheap at 8.99 for a six pack, but beautifully citrusy, crisp, and refreshing!

Also tried Boulevard’s Saison Brett… One of the best beers, if not the best beer, I tried in 2015.

Most Overrated:

Prairie Bomb! Don’t get me wrong, the beer is good, but it isn’t fantastic. I got a strange metallic taste, which detracted strongly from the taste. Also, I felt it was under-carbonated. For me, it didn’t live up to the hype.

Biggest WTF Moment:

All of the breweries that sold themselves out this year…

Up-and-comer:

Modern times

Old reliable (non-whale):

Duvel… Best beer on earth. Period.

Also, I always have a sculpin in the fridge. Great IPA!

Old reliable (whale-ish edition):

BCBS or the Abyss

 

2015'S BEST NEW BEER IMHO Weyerbacher Sunday Morning Stout!!!
What was your favorite new beer or beers of 2015?

 

Tough call between Assassin and DG Broken Truck.. Both amazing in their own way.

 

Hawaiian Speedway, especially on cask.

 

This new to this year correct?

Sierra Nevada Hop Hunter
Firestone Walker 19th Anniversary
Sante Adairius Fruit Punch
Hop Freshener Dank & Sticky
Lagunitas High Westified

 

SMS was certainly good, but not the best BA coffee stout of the year. I'd say High-Westified edges it out and Breakfast Exorcism beats it handily. Wouldn't be surprised if there are a few others I haven't gotten to try.

Anyway, my votes go to Breakfast Exorcism and Does Anybody Remember Laughter?

 

not even weyerbacher's best new beer in 2015, turns out they finally made a legit IPA(or in this case DIPA)

 

Mine was Olde Hickory Carolus Magnus. It's a top 5 all-time for me as well I dare say so I doubt anything else new coming this month will top it.

 

Fun thread!

Best Beer: Clown Shoes - Breakfast Exorcism. This was a close call vs. Fyodor's Classic (which was amazing) but man this beer just did so much for me. I've been trying to get back to that level with each BA stout I've had after that, and it's tough.

Best Surprise: Alpine Nelson. I had the "green flash" bottle like everyone else who's never traded for it or been up to Alpine, which is literally BFE in San Diego County (I grew up in SD so I can say that). This beer blew me away, what a huge flavor bomb. Never expected to be that good.

Most Overrated/Let Down: Modern Times Monsters Park aged in a single 12 year old Elijah Craig barrel. Sounds incredible right? It wasn't. Very thin, all I tasted was the whiskey, base beer was nonexistent. It was a $30 bomber so I was a little pissed.

Biggest WTF Moment: tasting a beer called "Butchers HPA". It was so horrid I literally spat it out. Also, learning of shipping costs whilst completing my first trade. Fucking expensive!! Will be a while before doing another one for that reason.

Up-and-comer: Cellarmaker Brewing Co, San Francisco. You know you're at a great spot when the entire flight of beers you sampled were terrific.

Old reliable (non-whale): Narwhal, and Enjoy By IPA.

Old reliable (whale-ish edition): Pliny the Elder. I was one of those people who used to throw shade at Pliny because of the hype, and that it sometimes can be a pain to get here even in the Bay. Had some straight from the brewery this year and let me say, all the shit-talkers are mad because they ain't drinking it. The only IPAs that can come close to competing with Pliny are mentioned here in my post. It's truly a fantastic world class IPA.

Cheers!

 

Happy New Year's Eve BA's! Soon enough 2016 will be here with new brews, but until then, let's talk about our favorite beers of 2015. New beers and old favorites are welcome.

In no particular order:
1. Pear Bear - Three Floyd's
2. BA Speedway Stout - Alesmith
3. 30th Anniversary Stout - Bell's
4. Beer Geek Vanilla Shake - Mikkeller
5. High West-Ified - Lagunitas
6. Caractere Rouge - Rodenbach
7. w00tstout 3.0 - Stone
8. Square Grouper - Pipeworks
9. Apple Brandy Barrel Noir - Prairie Artisan
10. Backwoods Bastard - Founders

Cheers and have a Happy New Year!

- Sean

 

I'll limit this to beers I've tried for the first time in 2015:

1. The Abyss
2. Bourbon Barrel Black Maple
3. Grapefruit Sculpin
4. Beergeek Cocoa Shake
5. Nelson
6. Champion Ground
7. Apple Brandy Noir
8. Deliverance
9. Deth's Tar
10. Track 10 (appropriately in the 10th spot)

 

1. Bcbs '15
2. Spotted puffer
3. HF citra pale ale
4. Green
5. Haze
6. Bcbcs '15
7. Alter ego
8. Dinner
9. Swish
10. Crank