The Awesome Beer Thread

[Sky]

That's the site Cmdr Slack referred me to long, long ago. I waited too long and now $200 isn't something I can do until 2014. Been fishing for xmas for years now, but no nibbles.

[Hawkbit]

I can't tell you how jealous I am that you have access to a 5L keg of Paulaner.  Considering I have to pay $9/six for it...

The 5L keg of Paulaner costs me €37/$50, so I think you're still coming out on top on price.

Holy schnikies yeah, you're paying more than twice what I do.  Guess I won't complain. 

[Yoru]

I can't tell you how jealous I am that you have access to a 5L keg of Paulaner.  Considering I have to pay $9/six for it...

The 5L keg of Paulaner costs me €37/$50, so I think you're still coming out on top on price.

Holy schnikies yeah, you're paying more than twice what I do.  Guess I won't complain. 

Homebrew is 1/4 the cost of decent beer due to the import taxes and, more importantly, the sky-high alcohol taxes. Go go Nordic countries and their love-hate relationship with booze. 

[Hawkbit]

This current conversation trend is making me itch to try homebrew.  How are the starter kits at Midwest for fist time quality?  I'd look towards going with the intermediate kit to have two batches going at once.  Have you tried any of their hefeweizen recipes?

[stu]

Yoru, are you in Iceland? I read an article a few years back that the government's policy of keeping beer at ~2% ALC lead many young people in the country to mix their brew with vodka in order to get some kick in their puss. Have you run into that?

I think I read that in Beer Advocate (?) nvm, I don't remember the mag.

[Minvaren]

I've never done a kit myself, but the rule of thumb if you're buying one locally is to look for the most recent "packed' date that you can.  The extracts do degrade in quality some over time.  A place like Midwest is likely turning them over fairly quickly, so you should be safe.

I dig the yeast from the Cooper's Wheat kit myself - it's my go-to yeast for many of my recipes.

[CmdrSlack]

This current conversation trend is making me itch to try homebrew.  How are the starter kits at Midwest for fist time quality?  I'd look towards going with the intermediate kit to have two batches going at once.  Have you tried any of their hefeweizen recipes?

The Midwest kits are great. Some are better than others. There was a cherry stout that kind of sucked. My favorite is their amarillo pale ale kit....dunno if they still make it.

[Yoru]

This current conversation trend is making me itch to try homebrew.  How are the starter kits at Midwest for fist time quality?  I'd look towards going with the intermediate kit to have two batches going at once.  Have you tried any of their hefeweizen recipes?

I haven't done the Midwest hef kits - I stopped doing extract a little over a year ago. I did do a dunkelweizen (effectively a dark hef) extract from them and it turned out excellent. The Germans I invited over loved it and thought it tasted pretty authentic. In fact, all the Midwest kits I did turned out at least decently and often quite good.

The most important things when homebrewing are (a) cleanliness and (b) temperature control.

If you're not strict about cleanliness, your beer will get infected and taste like poo regardless of the quality of your ingredients. It's very important to use a good sanitizer on everything that's going to touch your wort post-boil, and to rinse everything well with clean, cold water if you're not using a no-rinse sanitizer. (I strongly recommend a no-rinse sanitizer - a spraybottle of Star-San solution will help keep your sanity intact.)

If you can't keep your fermenting wort at a decent, relatively constant temperature (15-20C for ales, the sweet spot varies by strain), your yeast will either ferment too little and you'll end up with mildly alcoholic sugarwater, or they'll ferment too fast and produce a lot of off-flavors. I'm lucky, as my flat stays a relatively constant temperature throughout the seasons, never peaking above 22C in the height of summer. Think about where you'll store your fermenting wort, and then again about where you'll store your bottled beer whilst it's bottle-conditioning - a cool, dark basement or closet is best.

Yoru, are you in Iceland? I read an article a few years back that the government's policy of keeping beer at ~2% ALC lead many young people in the country to mix their brew with vodka in order to get some kick in their puss. Have you run into that?

I think I read that in Beer Advocate (?) nvm, I don't remember the mag.

Yeah, I'm in Iceland and yes, the locals will freely tell that story, but it dates back to 1989. See, from the local start of Prohibition in the '30s up until 1989, all beer over 2% ABV was illegal. As a result, people would buy vodka (or landi - the local version of moonshine) and pour it into 2% "light beer" and pretend they were drinking real beer - most students at the time went abroad to Denmark to study, where they drank real, decent beer and folks were trying to imitate that experience. Apparently it was repulsive.

I've never tried it myself and don't intend to.

These days, you can get "cheap" shitty beer at the local liquor stores for about $1.50 per 33cL can or $1.75 per 50cL can - it's what most of the students drink. Decent local stuff starts at $2.50/33cL bottle and good imports start around $3.50/33cL.

The bums here have stooped a bit lower - alcohol taxes only apply to booze sold in the liquor stores, so the bums drink vanilla extract and hand sanitizer. Some of the dodgier bus stops will be littered with little empty bottles come Sunday morning.

[Yoru]

Here's two quick snaps I just took of my spare bedroom, which doubles as the boozery. Note that I do all-grain brewing, so I have way way more gear than you need. You can get away with just a few pails, a siphon, capping gear and a kettle if you're doing extract brewing. Sorry for the shitty quality, I took it on an iPod.


Left to right, front to back. Hop bags and water salts to correct water pH. A vanilla-infused ale, bottled 2 weeks ago. A bunch of fermenting pails (the plastic buckets with blue graduation marks on them) filled with tubes for transferring liquids; some of these have connections that let me hook them directly up to my sinks. The copper handles poking out are from a hand-made spiral immersion chiller, used to cool wort after boiling. The big cabinet in back is my "aging cellar", which has bottles from about 4 different batches at different stages of aging in it.

Big white buckets in the back are grain pails - pale ale malt, wheat malt, rye malt, carapils, caraaroma, caramunich I, II and III. One of the pails in front of that is actually a retrofitted hot liquor tun; two heating elements from disassembled countertop hot-water kettles stuck into holes cut into a standard fermenting pail.

The big fucking steel kettle is a 50-liter stewpot bought from a restaurant supply store. It's the boiling kettle. It sits atop a propane-fired turkey fryer imported from the US, which is used to do the boils - my stovetop just can't get up enough heat to boil 25L of water, and I don't like doing high-gravity boils with all-grain batches.

Next photo for the rest of the room...


Blue tub in the front is the mashing tun - it's basically just a decent cooler with a hole drilled in one side and a valve stuck in there. A bit of mesh hose inside prevents clogs - vital to prevent stuck sparges when doing all-grain. That space-age thing inside is a gadget one of my brewing buddies cooked up - it's just a holder for hop bags with metal rods to rest it atop the boiling kettle.

Box on the bed has miscellaneous gear - bottle washer, some airlocks, flavoring ingredients like bitter orange peel and coriander seeds. Also two scales, one accurate to 1g and another accurate to 0.1g, for measuring grains and hops, respectively. A smaller 11L kettle in the back for doing small pilot batches on the stovetop, also doubles as a handy pail for crushed grain when milling the malts.

The bucket up front with the handle is a bottling bucket, imported from the US. It's effectively a fermentation bucket with a spigot attached to the side near the bottom. Very much recommended, as it makes bottling 100% easier than with a siphon and they're usually quite cheap.

Glass carboy fermentation vessel. I don't use it much because it's a bitch to clean. The aluminum foil over the top is to keep dust out. Vacuum cleaner because I don't have anywhere else to keep it.

About 20L of oatmeal stout, just finished aging after 2 months. I ran out of space in the ale cabinet. Finally, on the far right, a bottle tree - a handy thing to stick bottles on whilst they dry. Midwest sells them, they're cheapish but not really necessary until you're cleaning out tons of bottles regularly.

Oh yes, and the spare bed, on which you throw drunk friends after they come to your homebrew parties and get utterly wasted on good beer.

[Minvaren]

I'm lucky, as my flat stays a relatively constant temperature throughout the seasons, never peaking above 22C in the height of summer.

Gah, you are lucky.  Here in Texas, my place fluctuates between 72 and 80F half the year.  Good time for weizens and fruit beers!   

Glass carboy fermentation vessel. I don't use it much because it's a bitch to clean.

But it's so cool to watch a primary fermentation in glass!   

After scratching one of mine with the bottle brush, I've resorted to the following strategy:

1] Rinse out what you can (I fill mine 20% full with water and shake them).
2] Fill it to the narrowest point with water, add 1 tablespoon per gallon One Step Cleaner/Sanitizer.
3] Let sit overnight.
4] Rinse it out a couple times and let dry.

You might have to repeat steps 2-4 once if you're doing a barleywine or something.  Note that this won't help with hard water.   

[Yoru]

I'm lucky, as my flat stays a relatively constant temperature throughout the seasons, never peaking above 22C in the height of summer.

Gah, you are lucky.  Here in Texas, my place fluctuates between 72 and 80F half the year.  Good time for weizens and fruit beers!   

Glass carboy fermentation vessel. I don't use it much because it's a bitch to clean.

But it's so cool to watch a primary fermentation in glass!   

After scratching one of mine with the bottle brush, I've resorted to the following strategy:

1] Rinse out what you can (I fill mine 20% full with water and shake them).
2] Fill it to the narrowest point with water, add 1 tablespoon per gallon One Step Cleaner/Sanitizer.
3] Let sit overnight.
4] Rinse it out a couple times and let dry.

You might have to repeat steps 2-4 once if you're doing a barleywine or something.  Note that this won't help with hard water.   

Hah, yeah, you'd say that's lucky except 22C is just about the highest outdoor temperature we get here. Most of the time, the heater's on to keep the place above 15C; it only goes north of 16C during June and July, when the outdoor temperature rises above that. August through May, it's quite chilly. Despite that, we're going to try our hand at lagers and are cobbling together a lagering fridge. It's sitting behind me now. It just needs a power strip, which I'm picking up tomorrow.

I'll have to pick up some of that sanitization product next time I'm stateside; if it makes glass-fermentation easier I'm all for it. My brew buddies are all chattering about moving to conical fermenters though, so we'll see.

And yeah, the water here? It's so soft we always have to add various salts in order to get any decent hop utilization. Most of our beers end up substantially less hoppy than they should, due to the softness of the water.

[Sky]

On sanitization - how about a dishwasher with a sanitizing mode? For everything that would fit in there, anyway. Stuff like the carboys would obviously need something else. Though given what you guys are saying about them, maybe I should be looking at bucket fermenting? The midwest kits all seem to have carboys (plastic or glass).

On connecting to the sink - both my sinks have non-standard faucets. Not sure there's a workaround for that, though I can fill large containers with the kitchen faucet, as it's extendable (has a hose).

Also a bit worried about the stove setup. In fact, I might have to scratch the entire idea until I can install a new stove. I have the worlds shittiest electric stove, with a sub-code hood that basically means I have difficulty boiling liquids in a normal pot, let alone a 5 gallon pot. It will scorch the bottom and the hood doesn't vent properly. For normal-sized pots this means I have to constantly mop condensation or it will drip back into the pot and any other pan on the stove. As someone who cooks every night, let me put it mildly: I fucking hate my fucking stove.

Turkey fryer is a good idea, or maybe I can finally brick in a firepit :) I have several cord of wood...

[Minvaren]

The main problem with plastic is that it always (eventually) scratches, and the more scratches you get, the more hiding places for stuff you don't want (bacteria, the last yeast you used, etc.), which requires better cleaning and sanitization, which leads to more scratches...  This is why I use plastic for primary and glass for secondary, so that it sits the longest time in the cleanest, least-scratchy environment.  YMMV.

For heat, I'd go with the turkey fryer myself if you already use LP for grilling, or if you want to stay electric look into a canning element.  With one of those on my 1970's electric range, I can keep 7.5 gallons of wort at a boil on the max setting.  And my hood drips as well - not a major issue if you keep it clean.

[Goumindong]

Gah, you are lucky.  Here in Texas, my place fluctuates between 72 and 80F half the year.  Good time for weizens and fruit beers!   

Dogfishhead Festina Pesche

Starr Hill Lucy

You're welcome.

[Yoru]

On sanitization - how about a dishwasher with a sanitizing mode? For everything that would fit in there, anyway. Stuff like the carboys would obviously need something else. Though given what you guys are saying about them, maybe I should be looking at bucket fermenting? The midwest kits all seem to have carboys (plastic or glass).

On connecting to the sink - both my sinks have non-standard faucets. Not sure there's a workaround for that, though I can fill large containers with the kitchen faucet, as it's extendable (has a hose).

Also a bit worried about the stove setup. In fact, I might have to scratch the entire idea until I can install a new stove. I have the worlds shittiest electric stove, with a sub-code hood that basically means I have difficulty boiling liquids in a normal pot, let alone a 5 gallon pot. It will scorch the bottom and the hood doesn't vent properly. For normal-sized pots this means I have to constantly mop condensation or it will drip back into the pot and any other pan on the stove. As someone who cooks every night, let me put it mildly: I fucking hate my fucking stove.

Turkey fryer is a good idea, or maybe I can finally brick in a firepit :) I have several cord of wood...

Opinions vary on dishwasher sanitization, personally I don't like it as there's often residue from dishwashing soaps in your dishwasher. Those have chemicals that are meant to break up bubbles - great for streak-free glassware, but will also kill head formation/retention on your beer.

I'd recommend standard chlorine cleansing+sanitizing mixes you can buy from brewing stores for cleaning & sanitizing your fermentation containers and kegs/bottles, and then using no-rinse acid sanitizer on everything else. There's no trick to using either no-rinse sanitizer (soak your item, shake it off, done) or chlorine sanitizer (soak, let sit for 30 minutes, rinse, dry) - it's not an equipment-heavy process. Concentrated no-rinse sanitizer is cheap and lasts forever (I bought a liter for like $20 and it's not even a quarter done) and chlorine sanitizing powder is also cheap - under $10 and also lasts you many batches.

Also, I recommend you start working with the plastic fermentation containers they sell at brewing stores; they're cheaper and lighter, so if you end up not getting into it, at least you got some reusable plastic buckets out of it. It's harder to repurpose a glass carboy. If you get serious, go glass.

Sinks, you don't need to be able to connect anything directly to your sink - I have hookups for doing that because (a) I don't have an extendable hose, so I had to fill up my pails one 500mL measuring-cupful at a time and (b) I can run the cold water straight through the copper immersion chiller. If you have an extendable hose, you've got problem A solved - you can hose stuff off and fill buckets with your hose-faucet. When starting out, you won't have fancy chilling gear, so problem B isn't an issue either.

The stove is an issue; you can start out by doing high-gravity boils, but you'll need to be able to boil at least 10-12 liters of liquid at a time. A turkey fryer's another substantial investment, but you can reuse it if you do other outdoor cooking. A firepit isn't quite as good an idea, as you want to be able to get a constant, controlled amount of heat into the pot - natural wood fires are harder to control.

That said, if you're good at firemaking and can keep a wood fire boiling a large amount of water for 60 minutes, go for it - bit of a crazy experiment, but it's also kind of awesome.  

[Sky]

I could probably drop the pot on top of my woodstove in the winter, it would also humidify the house :)

I'm pretty good at wood fire control, but this year I've got a melange of wood, unless I separate it all into species it would be very difficult to control. For an hour, though, probably doable. I also like the idea of using my woodstove and not paying extra for fuel to boil with.

For the immersion chiller, it's all indirect water, right? I could use the hose bib in the garage for that, if needed. It's got a frost free mechanism, so might me doable for my hypothetical winter brewing.

Basement would get a bit cold, usually 12C in the winter, maybe 20C in the summer.

[Yoru]

I could probably drop the pot on top of my woodstove in the winter, it would also humidify the house :)

I'm pretty good at wood fire control, but this year I've got a melange of wood, unless I separate it all into species it would be very difficult to control. For an hour, though, probably doable. I also like the idea of using my woodstove and not paying extra for fuel to boil with.

For the immersion chiller, it's all indirect water, right? I could use the hose bib in the garage for that, if needed. It's got a frost free mechanism, so might me doable for my hypothetical winter brewing.

Basement would get a bit cold, usually 12C in the winter, maybe 20C in the summer.

You don't need to use an immersion chiller, but yeah, it's indirect water - you pass icy cold water through temperature-conductive tubing immersed in your wort. Copper tubing is the only thing you want to use, as you can sterilize it by immersing the chiller in the boiling wort for the last 15 minutes of the boil. This has the added benefit of getting just a bit of copper into the wort, which reportedly acts as yeast nutrients.

Starting out, you can just immerse your pot in an ice-water bath and keep the ice-water circulating around the pot. It's not as fast or clean as using proper chilling equipment, but most people can muster a bathtub full of ice (or snow, in the winter).

As for temperatures, those are good ranges. Some ale yeasts like it around 12-15C, you'd have to do research to find a decent strain. Altbiers and kolsch yeasts like that temperature range, if I recall right. 20C is more appropriate for weizens, so I hope you like wheat beer. The main thing is that the temperature remains near-constant throughout the day and over the course of the primary/secondary fermentation. You don't want cold snaps or heat waves affecting your yeasts.

I strongly recommend picking up the "How to Brew" book by John J. Palmer. It covers absolutely everything you've asked so far and more, in much more detail than I can go into. Midwest sells it, and you could also check area libraries.

[Minvaren]

I strongly recommend picking up the "How to Brew" book by John J. Palmer. It covers absolutely everything you've asked so far and more, in much more detail than I can go into. Midwest sells it, and you could also check area libraries.

Awesome book.  "New Brewing Lager Beer" by Gregory Noonan is also recommended (by Palmer, too) if you plan on doing lagers.

[Sky]

I strongly recommend picking up the "How to Brew" book by John J. Palmer. It covers absolutely everything you've asked so far and more, in much more detail than I can go into. Midwest sells it, and you could also check area libraries.

It's on the end table right now. I got a ways into it when I bought it last year, then got bummed out because I can't afford to start brewing, dropped hints for an xmas gift...then a bday gift...so I should probably just accept it'll be a few years before I can try my hand at it. 

[Minvaren]

Brew kettle : $20 32-quart stainless tamale steamer (this is what I use)
6-gallon fermentation bucket: $20 with airlock
Racking cane: $6
One-step cleaner/sanitizer : $8
Hydrometer (optional) : $8
Grain steeping bag (optional): $5

Use spare screw-top plastic bottles for putting the final product in.
Use the cold water/ice bath method for wort cooling.
Leave the brew in the bucket for a month and bottle condition.

Go forth and start extract brewing on a budget.   

[Dren]

Hmm, hadn't been to General Discussion in awhile, so missed this fine thread.  I'm a homebrewer too.  Been at it now for 5 years+.  Started a home brew club here with a friend.  Started extract with a system that was maybe $50-60 total.   Chilled by putting the kettle in an ice bath and stirring constantly but slowly.

I've probably ended up putting nearly $600 into my setup over the years.  I'm all-grain now and keg.  Still loving it.  I just made some more investments to get my mash tun bigger to handle bigger beers.  10 Gallon tun to make 5 gallon batches can hit some seriously high OG's.  I was limited to about 14.5 lbs grain in my 5 gallon tun before.

Our group just got 14 brewers together to make a Scotch Ale and mix together into a 55 gallon Rye Whisky barrel.  Been aging for about 3+ months now.  Plan to at least get 6-8 months.  We pulled 5 gallons at 2 months to share with people at the Big Brew Day we had here (national day to celebrate Home Brewing in the US.)  I still have a lot of it in my kegerator.  It is nice and only getting nicer with age.  The Big Brew day had about 16 brewers all brewing outside under a tent we provided with their own setups and their own recipes.  Was great.

Next project for the group is another barrel (bourbon this time,) to make a big Russian Imperial Stout.  The original Rye barrel will get emptied and then we're going to go with a big DIPA (double Indian pale ale,) with lots of dry hopping. 

I'll stop there....yeah I'm into brewing too.

 

[Dren]

Also, I'm a huge craft beer fan.  I basically won't drink anything but that.

I'm in Michigan and that helps  a lot.  We're currently in the top 5 in the nation for craft brew volume/activity/whatevermetricyouwantotuse.  I'm also close to Chicago, so there's that.

Favorite within-driving-range breweries?  Founders (have my case of 2011 KBS aging in my basement now, 2010 and 2009 nearly gone), New Holland, Vivant,  Dark Horse, Bell's, Arcadia, and Three Floyd's (Indiana.)  Love the long drive to Detroit for Kuhnnen's and Dragonmead.  Go up North, ay, for North Peak, Short's, and Right Brain.  Tons of others, but those are my fav's.

Saw Unibrougue (sp) down below...another big shout out from here.   Love them.

Enjoying a lot of good west coast breweries including North Coast and Lagunitas.  They can't seem to do wrong.  East coast is great too with Ommegang and Dogfish Head.  Having a brainfart where Left Hand is from, but fantastic beers from them.

[Dren]

I strongly recommend picking up the "How to Brew" book by John J. Palmer. It covers absolutely everything you've asked so far and more, in much more detail than I can go into. Midwest sells it, and you could also check area libraries.

Awesome book.  "New Brewing Lager Beer" by Gregory Noonan is also recommended (by Palmer, too) if you plan on doing lagers.

Palmer's How-to-Brew is basically all online and easily searchable.  I use this site a ton.

http://www.howtobrew.com/section1/chapter1-5.html

[Mazakiel]

Also, I'm a huge craft beer fan.  I basically won't drink anything but that.

I'm in Michigan and that helps  a lot.  We're currently in the top 5 in the nation for craft brew volume/activity/whatevermetricyouwantotuse.  I'm also close to Chicago, so there's that.

Favorite within-driving-range breweries?  Founders (have my case of 2011 KBS aging in my basement now, 2010 and 2009 nearly gone), New Holland, Vivant,  Dark Horse, Bell's, Arcadia, and Three Floyd's (Indiana.)  Love the long drive to Detroit for Kuhnnen's and Dragonmead.  Go up North, ay, for North Peak, Short's, and Right Brain.  Tons of others, but those are my fav's.

Saw Unibrougue (sp) down below...another big shout out from here.   Love them.

Enjoying a lot of good west coast breweries including North Coast and Lagunitas.  They can't seem to do wrong.  East coast is great too with Ommegang and Dogfish Head.  Having a brainfart where Left Hand is from, but fantastic beers from them.

Left Hand is from Colorado.  It's kind of a pain to find their stuff locally, but I'm a fan of it.   

[01101010]

The other day I dropped in on a friend at the local bar/pub to say hey and catch up. No idea, but I really had the taste for a Fat Tire but sadly, it's just not available around here (Pittsburgh). However, the barkeep, who was a friend of my buddy poured me a Railbender and said I didn't have to pay for it if I didn't like it. Went back to my apartment $20 shorter and began hunting for a spot that sold cases of it around here. Thank god the only one that does is a hole in the wall beer store that has a treasure trove of stuff. I got a case of Railbender, but christ I am thinking about just going down their list.

[Sky]

For those in distribution range...Saranac is making their Hefeweizen (my favorite) this summer.

Rejoice!

[Abagadro]

Necro!

Holy shit I just tried an amazing beer. It is a local brewery and this is their experimental line where they only make 1800 bottles per release and play around with it so won't really be available around, but holy hell it is amazing. They actually age it in bourbon casks.  May be my new favorite beer, which is saying A LOT.   Added bonus: 9.5 percent ABV.

http://www.epicbrewing.com/our-beers/exponential-series/itemlist/category/19-smoked-and-oaked

[Sky]

I don't see high alcohol content as a bonus, quite the reverse in fact. The less alcohol, the more you can enjoy.

[Chimpy]

Ab has to get as much as he can quickly, in Utah you never know if they are going to make booze illegal again from minute to minute.

[Teleku]

I officially proved I'm a beer nerd/snob by standing in line for over an hour last week just to get a 12 oz pour of one beer:

Pliny The Younger.

It was SF beer week all last week, and while I didn't hit many events like I did last year (since I'm holding myself to a pretty strict diet for the new year), I did hit some stuff Friday and Saturday.  Pliny the Younger is very very hard to get, because they only make it once a year, and only in kegs.  For beer week, a pizza place in Berkeley managed to get ONE keg.  It was announced on their website that they would be tapping this one Keg at 5 PM.  I work in Oakland, so I made some excuse and quite work early at 4.  Got to Berkeley and the line at 4:30.  This is the line for the keg at that time:



The line is into Bobby G's Pizzeria.  Keep in mind, that line then extended into the place and to the counter in the back to order, and then you had to stand in another line that wrapped all round the the inside to get to the bar for your actual pour.  That was at 4:30.  Within 10 minutes, there was a larger amount of people standing behind me.  It then wrapped around the block and I couldn't see anymore, so I'm sure an even larger volume than that soon followed.  They tapped the keg at 5, and the line started moving.  I eventually got my small glass of it by 5:45.

Despite all that, I will say its easily the best IPA and/or hoppy beer in general I've ever tasted.  Amazing floral taste, that is almost all sweetness and no bitterness.  But its not the heavy cloying sweetness Double/Tripple IPA's usually have, but smooth and rich.  Best of all, it had a very creamy mouth feel (which I've never really tasted in a beer of this category), which went wonderfully with the other factors I just mentioned.  Overall spectacular beer, and I'm happy I waited.

The line was still going around the block when I left the place, but I'm sure they had to be pretty close killing the keg by that point.  Thankfully they only charged $6 for it.  With that kind of raving demand, they pretty much could have charged what ever they wanted and made the keg literally worth its weight in gold.

[trias_e]

Necro!

Holy shit I just tried an amazing beer. It is a local brewery and this is their experimental line where they only make 1800 bottles per release and play around with it so won't really be available around, but holy hell it is amazing. They actually age it in bourbon casks.  May be my new favorite beer, which is saying A LOT.   Added bonus: 9.5 percent ABV.

http://www.epicbrewing.com/our-beers/exponential-series/itemlist/category/19-smoked-and-oaked

Gotta love Epic.  I've had most of their beers including the smoked and oaked.  It is indeed fantastic, although I am a poor student so I really can't justify buying it!

Speaking of beer aged in bourbon barrels, If you ever get a chance, try this:  http://www.gooseisland.com/pages/bourbon_county_stout/59.php.  Godly.

[trias_e]

I officially proved I'm a beer nerd/snob by standing in line for over an hour last week just to get a 12 oz pour of one beer:

Pliny The Younger.

Pliny the Younger is an incredible beer.  I managed to get some at Toronado by pure luck once.  I can see that its reputation has only grown since then!  Of course Pliny the Elder ain't bad either, but Pliny the Younger is so damned unique, just as you described it.  More of it needs to be made. 

[Paelos]

Any reason they don't...make more of it?

[trias_e]

From the website:  http://russianriverbrewing.com/brews/pliny-the-younger/

"It is almost a true Triple IPA with triple the amount of hops as a regular I.P.A. That said, it is extremely difficult, time and space consuming, and very expensive to make. And that is why we don’t make it more often!"

Excuses excuses.

[fengzi597]

i like drinking beer.lol