Bill, I desperately need a list of as many of your favorite beers as possible since I'm heading to a beer emporium to stock up. Here are some requests:
-pale ales
-saisons(never had one and based on your constant smileing over them I'm more than intrigued)
-smoked beer if you've had any
-gueuze(really wanna try out)
-IPA
-trippels(never had yet, curious to see if there are any with notes of plum or cherry[not like a lambic but as in a subtle hint])
-barley wines
seriously, king nailed it when he said to check out beer advocate. On the left side you'll see a link that says "beer styles", and from there choosing any style will let you see the most often reviewed beers of that style and, if you follow a link on that page, the best reviewed beers of that style. It'll be hard for me to make a ton of recommendations since I'm not sure where you're living and even if I did, I probably won't have a great idea of what's distributed in your area. That said...
Pale Ale: I'm going to assume you mean american pale ale (in the style of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale). I haven't had many, but Southern Tier's Pale is good (though potent enough both in ABV and hop flavor to be a full fledged IPA imo) and I had my first Dale's Pale Ale from Oskar Blues tonight and enjoyed it.
Saison: Saison Dupont is the beer that defines the saison style, it is to saison what Master of Puppets is to 80s thrash. It's bottled in green glass bottles though, so make sure if you buy it you do so from a place that cares about beer, because those color bottles skunk much easier than the traditional brown ones. Ommegang Hennepin is also a classic, from one of the best Belgian style breweries in the country.
I've never really explored smoked beer, but Weyerbacher makes a winter seasonal called Fireside Ale that's a smoked beer and I thought wasn't bad.
Gueze is kind of hard to say, because most of the traditional brewers of gueze are small Belgian breweries that don't really make it into the country. Girardin and Cantillon are probably the best known producers, and Cantillon is very well respected on the BA forums.
IPA: I'm going to assume you mean American IPAs, and probably lump a few double IPAs in there two. First of all, Russian River IPAs = God, Pliny the Elder and Blind Pig are the shit. Smuttynose makes a regular IPA (says "FinestKind" on the bottle) and the Big A Double IPA, and they're both solid beers. Ballast Point's Sculpin is pretty good too. Sierra Nevada makes Torpedo, which they describe as an "extra IPA", somewhere between an IPA and a double, and is pretty good. One general difference within the style is that west coast brewers tend to have more hop dominated beers (Russian River, Stone IPA/Ruination) while east coast brewers tend to have a bit more balance with the malt (Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA)
Tripels can be good, but I doubt you'd find much in the way of plum or cherry in them as they use mostly pale malt and candi sugar, while dubbels and quads tend to be darker and correspondingly have more of a dark fruit flavor. Chimay White is a tripel and pretty good from what I remember, and Allagash makes a tripel as well (though I haven't had it, but they're generally regarded as one of the top producers of Belgian style ales in the country.
Barleywines generally fall into two categories, American and English. American styles are super hoppy and bitter (think a total hop bomb double IPA with comparatively focus on hop bitterness than hop flavor and more of a malt backbone) and Sierra Nevada Bigfoot, Stone Old Guardian, Dogfish Head Olde School and Rogue Old Crustacean are probably the most well known/widely distributed versions of the style. English style Barleywines still have a good amount of hops, but that's only to balance out the *huge* malt presence. These aren't as common here, but Brooklyn's Monster Ale and Anchor's Old Foghorn are both English barleywines, as is Weyerbacher's Blithering Idiot (though I prefer the barrel aged version of this one, Insanity). In general I can enjoy American Barleywines fresh (I like fresh Old Guardian, but Olde School is too boozy for me when it's young), but I think they're really something special with a few years of age on them when the hops fade and the malt flavors meld together and come forward. I had a 5 year old Olde School Monday night that just about made me cream in my shorts.
Also, American Craft Beer Fest was *epic*, as was all of Boston Beer Week. I was so fried when I got home last night that I started typing this reply last night and then got up mid sentence and went to bed
I'll give an ACBF recap tomorrow
Topic: The Beer Thread: Mach 2 (Read 99192 times)
