that's a pretty wide range of brews.
So I've been lazy in bumping this thread (which only shows me that I shouldn't bother with the beer blog I sometimes think about starting). I'll skip a bunch of relatively ho-hum beer shenanigans and skip to the Goose Island event at my spot in NYC, the Rattle n Hum, this past Tuesday. Holy Santa Claus shit. I got absolutely wrecked by like 7pm because there were just too many fucking delicious beers on tap. I had (not in this order) a 2008 version of their Bourbon County Stout that was also partially aged in brandy barrels (very cool, but I'm glad it was a few years old, fresh it was probably pretty harsh), Bourbon County Vanilla Stout (so fucking rich/tasty), a new mystery variant of Bourbon County Stout (my guess is either a saison yeast or brettanomyces version), Big John (the base beer for Bourbon County Stout aged on a ton of cocoa nibs), Dominique (a sour, bourbon barrel aged Belgian Strong Pale Ale), and Scully (a 9% saison brewed with strawberries, white pepper, and honey). Everything was top notch.
I made my way back to the Rattle n Hum after the Adrenaline Mob show tonight for a couple quick rounds. First was Brooklyn's new Brewmaster's Reserve (one off, draft only), The Concoction. Based off of the cocktail The Penicillin, it uses smoked/peat malt, ginger, honey, and lemon. Very out there as far as beer goes, but they pull it off nicely. My other beer was Stone's Ruination double IPA, this batch was double dry hopped with Citra and Centennial hops. Pretty tasty, despite the fact that I'm not a huge fan of Centennial hops. It tastes like overly bitter grapefruit to me, the kind of flavor you'd get from trying to zest a grapefruit and getting into the white pith as well by accident.