While Merc wasn’t around for his actual birthday, on his next swing through the Capital District we had a pretty fucking stellar tasting to celebrate. He brought over a shit ton of Russian River bottles and some extras, I brought out some Juicy and Golden Blend, Pig Destroyer Jon brought over some Fruet. Seriously, not a bad beer of the night. Which is near impossible to be had considering how many bad Cigar City beers Merc manages to find and bring over.
It’s been a while since I’ve made it down to the Doom Saloon. The last time was for our epic IPA tasting over the summer. And while the IPA tasting was great, this week’s sour tasting with Ken, Cavedave, Merc, and Jeff2 definitely took the cake. The lineup for the night:
We started the night off with Jeff (2)’s growler of Sour Barrel Aged Burial at Sea. This was my first beer from DC Brau. Apparently there was only one sixtel of this produced and there was enough to beer in the growler to go around a couple of times. Interesting beer but this one did not blow me away.
The Raspberry Tart was next and again, this was my first New Glarus beer. It was a 2009 and was much sweeter than I expected. Raspberry fruit juice all day long. The age has definitely mild out the tartness of the beer, unfortunately.
Sloop brewing is one of the newest breweries in the Hudson Valley located in Poughkeepsie, NY. They are bottling about 4 beers right now including a Pale Ale, a Red IPA, A Belgian Black IPA, and the Berliner Weisse we tried this week. Berliner Weisse beers are one of my favorite styles right now, but with how relatively mild the style is, it definitely got lost in the shuffle compared to the rest of the big guns that were out that night.
Our gracious host, Ken! (The face he’s making, with the sign in the background is totally not creepy as fuck. At all.)
The next stop of the night were all of The Bruery beers.
I’ve had the Tart of Darkness a few times now and it’s a really great beer with an interesting take on the wild ale. A “sour stout” is definitely a turn off to some, and while I haven’t had Batch 1 to compare it to, I don’t think I need to. The new version is just that good.
I was very happy to get a taste of their collaboration with Cigar City, Marrón Acidifié. You guys know I’m a huge Cigar City fan, and as far as I know this is a one-off collaboration (The Bruery’s first collab, I believe) and is collecting dust on the shelves of hoarders around the country and that’s about it.
Sans Pagaie was delicious as hell, like all of The Bruery’s sours. Merc tells me that their Mother Funker will be hitting shelves Provisions again soon, and I’m looking forward to trying it since it was the first “real” sour I had and I hated it. Now that I’ve had a few under my belt I’m definitely interested in seeing how my palate has changed.
Pretty happy to get my hands on this one (thanks Jeff2!). I’ve currently missed out on ALL Captain Lawrence bottle releases. I’m not sure why it’s so difficult for me to get down there, but it’s so easy for me to hop in a car and get to Hill Farmstead. Gotta work on that, start supporting some of my NY breweries that are doing their damn thing.
I was really looking forward to opening up the 2006 Doesjel. I picked it up at Spirited during our Wild Gueuze Chase a while back. It’s by far the oldest gueuze I’ve ever owned (or even had, for that matter). Some of the ratings have been on the lower side of it so I did not want to get my hopes up but man did it deliver. Pretty low carbonation compared to most gueuzes, not still but just above it. HUGE funk on the nose, like old cheese wrapped in used socks left to age in a gym bag. I mean, this shit was really offensive. Taste was great though, really well balanced for how offensive the nose was. I was extremely pleased with this purchase and the rest of the Doom Saloon crew couldn’t have been happier to try it.
On to the title match: Classic Gueuze vs Gueuze 100% Lambic Bio. Both 2010 vintages. There were some really minor differences between to the two, and both were equally great. The group unanimously chose the Classic as the winner.
We rounded up the night with some The Vine, Madame Rose and Juliet. I’ve had The Vine multiple times and haven’t had a bad beer from Cascade yet. This was no different.
We were juuuuust about to wrap it up when Merc decided to go out to his car and grab a couple of more to finish off the night. Madame Rose is definitely on the receiving end of a lot of hype these days, but Juliet was the the better beer to me.
With those last two it was time to call our tasting to an end. Just another great night of cigars and new (to me) beers at The Doom Saloon. Until next time fellas!
Another great get together with the crew, with some of our recent hauls, some beers Richard brought back from his trip to Seattle and Bill’s birthday beers. This was our first tasting since I finally cleaned up the basement enough to have some beers down there. I have a few stools, a nice 8 foot kitchen prep table I’m using as a makeshift “bar”. The beer cellar is repaired, we’ve got this nice water jug/dump bucket system going (although I really want to get a glass rinser but I don’t think that is in the cards for a while) and I should have a couple more glass racks installed in the ceiling by week’s end. Plus the card table, surround sound system, and the dart board that folds into the ceiling I’ve had for a while now. I’m pretty happy with how the man cave “tasting room” is shaping up.
So after a pretty successful night of running around with Mike, we went back to Chez Fuj and met up with the rest of the guys and a couple of friends of Bill’s from NJ. The lineup for the night:
Other than Luscious, which we only incidentally opened because of Untappd, I don’t think any beer stood out as the clear “best beer of the night” or anything. A lot of really solid beers here, of all different types so it’s tough to compare. Fat Head’s never ceases to surprise me with that IPA, same with that Meadowlark. Black Butte was great, as was Curieux, Oude Tart and Madame Rose. No complaints here.
Richard acting a damn fool.
Dave showcasing pretty much how everyone felt by the end of the night morning.
- From The Bruery’s Facebook Page:
Thanks for all of the amazing Black Tuesday artwork submissions this past week. Some of them were plain ridiculous and we really appreciated that, but the TWO winners are both a bit dark and fit with the blackness that was that fateful Tuesday.
These two may have won but my personal fave was this:
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- Snapped these pics after the Gang Bang Beer It Forward. We didn’t drink any of these that day but I’d be doing all of you guys a disservice if I didn’t show off his stash. Some pretty impressive stuff here. Eat it up!
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- My buddy Chris was in town and called me up to see if I was in for drink. When am I not?? He showed up with some goodies from his travels in Hawaii (where his fiancée resides and his future nuptials are) and some things he picked up from Decicco’s on his way up to the Capital District. I pulled out some stuff from my recent MA trip, birthday beers from Elise, and since I’ll be at Hill Farmstead this weekend for the Harvest Festival, the Everett I’ve been saving since our trip there over the summer.
A night of having a couple of beers quickly turned into an all-nighter, watching an entire season of Archer, eating an entire 10-cut pizza from Inferno, staying up until 2:30AM and showing up two hours late to work next day. Whoops. Totally worth it, though, as it’s not often I get a chance to catch up with Chris.
As for the beers that day:
I was actually really impressed with the stuff from Maui. I’m NOT a huge fan of most of the stuff we have available from Kona (but I’m sure their other stuff is great) so I was pretty happy the beers from Maui delivered. The porter had a tough time standing up next to Everett (one of the best porters in the world in my opinion) but it was great and not something I’m used to expecting from a can. Even the Sobrehumano had this flavor going on with it that just BEGGED to be sour, of which Jolly Pumpkin does and is fairly well rated. I gotta keep my eyes out for that. Lastly the Trekker Triple really surprised me. I’ve been pretty bored of Belgians lately (well, maybe just bored of Ommegang’s yeast strain) and I thought it was really solid. I’ve been happy with all of the beers from my haul from MA and I’m going to start making my way out there for my next couple of hauls.
Anyways, on to what you guys are really here for, beer porn!
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- Again, this was pretty late in the night by the time we cracked this one open and we were drooling over trxxpaxxs’ cellar at this point. This one didn’t wow me the way Cascade sours have, or even some of the other stuff from The Bruery. (Granted, I’m still a sour noob.) Solid, but not mind-blowing.
Chocolate Rain - The Bruery
- Wow. Hype city. For the money, rarity, and hype surrounding this beer, I’m not sure that I’d rate it higher than Southern Tier’s Choklat (of which I have several in my cellar). It’s not that I didn’t like this beer, and I appreciate trxxpaxxs for opening his up, but this was waaaaaaaay too sweet for my blood and didn’t live up to these super lofty expectations surrounding this beer in the BA community.
From the Team Buffalo Gang Bang Beer It Forward #2.
EDIT: Forgot to add this.
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