The Beer Thread - what are you drinking?

Amusing change of pace: I'm drinking Iron City lager for the first time. And it's not half bad! I mean, it's an American adjunct lager which means it's basically corn sweetness and not much else; but in terms of American adjunct lagers its better than your Budweisers or Coors. If I had to drink an American adjunct lager, I'd probably choose this one.

Not amusing change of pace: I'm drinking Coor's Light. And it's terrible. It was all there was in the fridge.

Sorry! Get ye to Pa, and get some Iron City. I'm on my second bottle and really I'm not hating it at all!

I'm in Europe. I mostly drink Belgian, German, Irish and Scottish (Gotta love me some of that 5am Saint.) It's mostly only the bigger American brewers who get imported. There'll generally be a small bunch of the mid-tier Americans but they'll be relatively expensive for good beer and sell out quickly. And because they're in short supply there won't be any general conversation about them. Unless you're knowledgeable about American beers, happen upon one you're looking for, or just in a buy-American mood there won't be any buzz about them to alert you to pick one up.

Finally cracked open that bottle of Frangelic Mountain Brown tonight.

OMG, was that amazing! A little pricey ($12/bottle), but it was sooooooooo tasty, like a liquid Snickers bar.

When I was in Scotland I discovered BrewDog. A-maze-zing beer. Went to their bar in Edinburgh. They had crazy strong beers, barley wines, beer cocktails and phenomenal IPAs. Being from San Diego I got a kick out of this:

I've seen that around here! Haven't tried any of their stuff yet, though.

Brewdog are brilliant. I'm not a fan of their novelty, marketing beers (their stupid high strength stuff) but their day-to-day brews are great. If a place carries 5am Saint I'll happily drink it all night long.

The real problem is that if you go to a stadium or arena around here, it's all IC Light, which is every bit as shitty as you'd think it would be.

Actual Iron City is pretty okay for what it is, though I'd still rather just have a Yuengling if I'm going cheap and local.

(or a Penn Pilsner if I want good and local)

Picked up some Pyramid Snow Cap tonight - a lot darker and thicker ale then I was expecting. But oh so good.

Flying Monkey Amber Ale with lunch today. Quite decent, just enough hops to complement a pork belly sammich well.

I'll have to grab some. I like just about all of Pyramid's brews.

Man you sure are stumping hard for this one.

IME pumpkin beers means pumpkin spice and not (usually) the fruit. Most are over spiced and/or hopped for my taste.

This is true, but actually I find that the rare ones that actually use pumpkins and only a little of the spice to be a lot nicer.

The vast majority of people think pumpkin spice when they think pumpkin. Additionally, in my brewing experience, pumpkin just doesn't add much flavor on its own to a beer. :(

Went to Hill Farmstead Brewery today and stood in line in the cold for 2.5 hours for the privilege of purchasing some of their sweet, sweet beer.

It was a cordial, festive atmosphere, but some of those people are hardcore. There were some guys with Connecticut plates on their vehicle who left with a couple coolers full of bottles, several growlers, and a mini-keg. And this stuff is $10 a bottle.

Beautiful location, though, high atop the crest of a hill, surrounded by rolling meadows and ringed by distant mountains.

Omniscia what specifically were folks picking up?

I got some of Southern Tier's brand new 2X Mas beer today. It's a totally new holiday beer for them; I'm excited to see how it tastes.

Today they had on tap Abner (one of the top-rated DIPAs on BeerAdvocate), Edward (their flagship American Pale Ale), George (their brown ale), Susan (a nice, citrusy IPA), Society & Solitude #5 (another DIPA), and Twilight of the Idols (a delicious, delicately-spiced winter Porter).

In retail bottle form, they had Anna (their honey Saison), Arthur (their Saison), Clara (their Grisette; a Belgian farmhouse ale style I'm unfamiliar with), Juicy (a wild ale aged in wine casks), Sankt Hans (an amber Saison brewed in collaboration with a couple guest brewers from Denmark) and Twilight of the Idols.

Most people were refilling swing-top bottles and growlers. I grabbed a growler of Susan to bring with me on Thanksgiving and a couple fresh bottles of Twilight, plus a couple of the capped, retail bottles of Anna and Sankt Hans, and one each of Clara and Juicy.

Didn't grab a t-shirt or any glassware, though; I'll save those for another trip.

If you go, do show up early, as the line apparently forms an hour before they open for business, and do bring cash, as they don't accept any other form of payment.

The best pumpkin beer for me has been Kuhnhenn's All Hallows Ale. They spend an entire evening roasting pumpkins a few at a time in ovens and dumping them in the mash tun. Lots of pumpkin flavor, hints of spice, really damn fine beer.

Not much in the way of pumpkin ales to choose from out here. The only ones I can recall seeing offhand are Brooklyn's Post Road (very drinkable), Saranac Pumpkin Ale (cheap, uncomplicated, and sessionable, like every other Saranac product), Shipyard's Pumpkinhead (terrible swill like virtually every other Shipyard brew, save for their surprisingly tasty sodas), and Southern Tier's Pumking (hail to the Pumking, baby).

Pumpking is damn good stuff.

Alright, break out your beer, the latest Broken Record is live and it has BEER in it!

Grab a bottle of Unibroue La Fin Du Monde and St Peter's Old Style Porter if you'd like to participate in the tasting with us!

Beer talk starts at 57:16 if Mechwarrior Online isn't your cup of tea.

http://brokenrecord.libsyn.com/broken-record-4-mechwarrior-online-and-beer-mp3

I hope my local liquor store has these. It would be awesome to drink along with you guys.

I'll listen with my La Fin du Monde shirt on, sipping La Fin du Monde from my La Fin du Monde glass.

LIKE GOD INTENDED

I finished reading that book on beer, which helped me get up the courage to explore the beer corner in the liquor store. I even found a helpful employee who knew his shit and helped me pick out a few things. Story on my blog if you're interested; otherwise, I'll just report that Samuel Smith Winter Welcome Ale is not as good as the store employee said, but it was still pretty tasty. I also joined Untappd, and am switchknitter there as well.

Yeah, I think Winter Welcome's a bit overrated, but to each their own.

Definitely give Dogfish's Midas Touch a try. Anyone who describes their beers as overly-hoppy is stereotyping them. There are plenty of their beers where hops play a more nuanced and subtle role, like Midas Touch.

Good to know. I do want to try Midas Touch, if only for the novelty of it. I'm a sucker for historical-type stuff.

Dogfish tends to get stereotyped for the "crazy" beers and their good xxx minute IPAs but they really do try a lot of new things and I find quite a bit of their odd things to be very good and worth trying like the Midas Touch. Keep trying new stuff! Added you on Untappd as well.

Midas Touch was a touchstone beer for me, definitely one of those "I'm drinking flavors I've never had before" kind of brews.

My favorite thing about having posted about a lot of my beer drinking on forums or ratebeer is being able to go back and find my original reaction to it.

Southern Tier 2Xmas... Anyone tried it? It intrigues me, but it also strikes me as something that could be either very very good, or very very awful.

I think it's a fair stereotype. A lot of DFH's wacky beers are simply not good. Others are absolutely fantastic. I admire the fact that they are constantly pushing the envelope, but I do think you have to acknowledge that when they do it's somewhat hit and miss.

It's really really good, IMO.

I give them props for their boundary pushing, because I think their record is better than 60/40 on the win/lose, and while their wins and losses are polarizing (very few meh beers, either great or awful), I think it works out in the end.

For every Ta Henkt there's a gem like Midas Touch.

Ohgod Sam Smith Oatmeal Stout. If I could marry a beer, it would be this one. Om nom nom.

yeah, that one is fucking awesome. It was the first commercially produced Oatmeal Stout and it's still a touchstone of the style.

I am discovering the problem with beer is that there are too many good ones. Smuttynose Old Brown Dog Ale is awesome too, as I just found out. Although not as good as the oatmeal stout. I wish I had more of the oatmeal stout.

ETA jerri blank -- you like brown ales. Try the Smuttynose. SO GOOD.

One of my absolute favorite beers.

I love that Smuttynose. It's super-easy to get up in the northeast, so I make sure to pick up a bunch every time I visit my mom in MA.