Typical Vermont Beer Haul
Some stuff for me, some stuff for friends, some stuff for trades, some stuff for the BIF. You know how it goes…
Tag Archives: Bobcat Cafe & Brewery
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- Hops and Roses
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- Brute
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- Brute, Trois Poules Français, Row 2/Hill 56, Pliny
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- Merc
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- Ken
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- CaveDave
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- Dino
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- Brux
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- Mischief Gone Wild, Trois Poules Français
August Doom Saloon Tasting Part Duex
- After hammering the IPAs we moved on to a random mish mash or whatever else was brought including some gems like Brute, Hops and Roses, and everyone’s favorite whale: Bud Light Lime-A-Rita!
OK, I brought the Lime-A-Rita because I’ve been meaning to put it up here, and I thought it would be funny to force all of these beer snobs to drink it. Reactions were mostly hilarious. Even CaveDave, who refused it at first, got in on it after the IPA tasting and was appalled. Let’s face it, this swill taste like sugar-coated, artificially lime-flavored assholes. I’m pretty sure that the AB-Inbev R&D nerds used small children to test this for marketability using a modified version of an old recipe for Ecto-Cooler. Fucking awful.
Anyways, on to the rest of the beers that night
- Captain Lawrence Hops and Roses
- Sierra Nevada/Russian River Brux
- Ithaca Brute
- The Bruery Mischief Gone Wild
- The Bruery Trois Poules Français (I left before I got a taste of this one)
- New England Brewing Co. Wet Willy Scotch Ale (Missed this, too)
- The Bobcat Cafe & Brewery Flood Suds (which they used my bottling pictures to announce their release on Facebook!)
I missed out on Hops and Roses at the tasting at BCTC so I was pretty happy to see it show up at the Doom Saloon. We don’t see much of Captain Lawrence in the Albany area other than Liquid Gold and Xtra Gold, both of which I’ve had bad experiences with in the past (bad bottle, bad carbonation on tap), so I was really pleased that this beer was so good. This was a good mild wild ale with great carbonation, floral notes and some fruit in the flavor profile. This would be a good “intro to sours” beer, unlike Brux, which I think is just pretty weak on all accounts.
Merc also brought out a Brute, which I’ve never had before, and let’s be honest this is an absolutely phenomenal beer which Ithaca will probably never make again. This was without a doubt the best beer of the night and probably one of the best if not the best sours I’ve ever had (not that I’ve had that many). I’m pretty lucky to try this and thank Merc for bringing this along.
The Doom Saloon guys are really into cigars so naturally we had to break some out before I called it a night.
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Awesome Dinner at The Bobcat Cafe
After checking out the bottling for Flood Suds I came back upstairs and grabbed some grub and beers. They had a pretty decent selection of beers on tap (the most house-made beers I’ve ever seen at a brewpub of the size) so we decided to try them all.
- Baltic Porter
- Brickwall Harvest imperial IPA
- “Chewy” Double IPA
- Dennis Hopr’d
- Downtown Brown
- Easy Rider
- Kolsch
- Marzen
- Marzen auf Ahorn
- Marzen auf Holz
- Saison
- South Mountain Stout
The beers were pretty solid and I would come back just to see what else Mark has brewing. It sounds like turnover of beers is pretty quick and Mark always has something new.
We followed up the beers with two dishes from their new menu. So new the waitress hadn’t even seen these plates yet. The food was insane. Elise got the Eggplant parmesan lasagna with fresh mozzerella and I grabbed the juniper crusted pork loin with homemade sauerkraut, mashed potatoes, mustard rhubarb gastrique, and chive spaetzle (let’s face it just about every meal outside of the camp site this week was pork for me). I can go on and on about how damn good this food was, but I’ll just show you what was left of the plates as evidence:
Needless to say, this place will be a regular stop for us when we make our weekend trips to Vermont. Great beers, food and atmosphere. Cheers to the brewer and the chef. The only thing missing is some outdoor seating where we can tie up Kuma!
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Flood Suds Bottling at The Bobcat Cafe
I met The Bobcat’s Brewmaster Mark Magiera at the Summer Vermont BA Meetup where he brought along a some of Bobcat’s beers including Bourbon Barrel Aged South Mountain Stout and Bourbon Barrel Aged Unrepentant. After the recommendation of pretty much everyone at the meetup, Elise and I decided to go there for dinner that Monday. Lucky for me, Mark, Joe and the rest of the guys were downstairs bottling a new beer that day: Flood Suds.
Flood Suds is a Belgian-inspired Witbier using grains (mostly) from Vermont and hops grown by UVM Extension’s The Vermont Hops Project, to benefit farmers that were hit hard by Hurricane Irene last year. I’ve been told they’re using Lawson’s to distribute so you should see the bottles show up at the same places Lawson’s is available some time this month (possibly even the Waitesfield Farmer’s Market but I do not have confirmation on that). Draft will be available at the cafe and also the Vermont Brewer’s Festival.
This is the closest I have ever been to beer bottle production, and it’s definitely the smallest scale production I’ve ever seen (that wasn’t homebrew). Everything was done by hand including bottle fills, corking (with a floor corker), caging, labeling and boxing. Pretty cool stuff and I can’t wait to get my hands on a bottle.
All of this awesomeness was followed up with a couple of flights of beer (we tried every draft on the menu) and some of the best food I’ve had in Vermont. Pics of all of that deliciousness is coming up in the next post.
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