The Beer Thread • Page 65

I know squat about Indiana but for DC - Port City (it's in Alexandria), 3 Stars, or Blue jacket

 

Thank you! Yeah South Bend was basically just a good place to stop and eat before we stay somewhere for the night (probably the national lakeshore, but possibly a hotel), and I think she will want to see the Notre Dame campus, so I figured there might be a place around there to do it. But I'll totally try and work it so 3 Floyds as our brewpub stop instead.

 

I had a friend who taught Teaching English As A Second Language at Notre Dame and he (and me when I visited) was very, very disappointed with the lack of cool beer places in South Bend.

 

I put no thought into this but here goes:
If I was going through Pittsburgh and if I wanted to hit local made stuff I would check out Church Brew Works, Penn Brewery, maybe Rivertowne. If you are staying in the south of the city there is Spoonwood Brewing and Insurrection Alehouse.

Cool beer bars are everywhere but Caliente Drafthouse and Industry Public House are great. Sharp Edge is known for their Belgium beer selection.

Beer Advocate has a section on their website about the beer scene in different cities too.

 

Yeah a few people in my thread rec'd Church Brew Works, it seems to be quite popular, so I think that's going to be our stop there. I don't even need a Pennsylvania glass because I live right near the Del/PA border, but I've always heard Pitt had a good beer scene so what the hell.

Thanks for the Beer Advocate advice! Definitely going to put that to use...

 

Pittsburgh is growing a lot.

 

Saw you mention a side trip into Michigan and it's totally do-able. It's like an hour from the border. There's Greenbush and Tapistry Brewing. They are in Sawyer and Bridgman, Mich., and those towns are six miles apart. You can hit them both and be back in Indiana in like four hours. Three Floyds should be your priority, but if you have extra time, both of those breweries are wonderful little spots -- eat at Greenbush if you don't eat at Three Floyds -- and they're very close to Lake Michigan. If you want to head even farther north, 20 minutes north of that is St. Joseph, Mich. which is a major spot for Chicago people with money to vacation in Michigan. It has a place called The Livery, which is technically in Benton Harbor, but that's just a matter of being across a bridge from St. Joe. The Livery is a very cool restored building where the brewery is upstairs and they make some very good sours and other odd-angled takes on traditional styles of beer.

However, I've made the trip to Chicago multiple times and grew up in Kalamazoo, so I've been to Greenbush/Tapistry numerous times. Make Three Floyds a priority, but if you want to get into Michigan and check out the lake, you can hit those two as a nice little side trip. There's also five or six wineries down there, but be warned: Michigan is best at sweet wines and even our dry reds are sweeter than other regions in the world. Our soil is just great for sweet rieslings/moscatos/sweet table wines. But they're still really cool to see. Especially a place called Round Barn which is just a few miles away from Greenbush and Tapistry. It's three big round barns, one with a beer tasting room, one with a wine tasting room and one with spirits. Very, very cool place, but not a must-stop on this first trip. It's more of a thing to do a second or third time you're in the area, especially if you're looking for beer as the brews are just okay at best.

 

Got up super early and rode with some friends down to St Petersburg for the new Cycle release (today's was RareDOS aged in Heaven Hill barrels). Then we ran over to Cigar City after coffee (Bandit) and breakfast (Datz). Got our Growler Choose-Day fills. I got Russian Holiday (Marshal Zhukov's w/ coconut and bourbon-soaked oak), Nuts & Nibs (Maduro with hazelnuts & cacao nibs), and Georgia Porch Party (Jai Alai w/ peach and rum-aged oak). Then a quick trip to Hidden Springs for some Tropic Thunder berliner (delicious) before grabbing some shitty pizza and stop at Coppertail (Whoops and Purple Drink berliners). Not a bad beer day.

 

Picked up a few things yesterday:
Prairie Birthday Bomb
Stone Americano
Shorts Chocolate Giddyup
Shorts Hopstache
Oddside Troll Toll

 

For you fans of sours:

A new sours-only brewery named Inoculum Ale Works opened up recently somewhere north of Tampa, FL. So far they've only released 2 beers, but several others have been announced. The cool thing about them? They ship. You can order 4-packs or 24-packs of each beer, and you can even mix-and-match several different 4-packs to create your own 24-pack. Looks like its about $30/case to ship.

2 of my friends and I are about to order a mixed case together so that we can each get a 4-pack of both beers.

The beers they have available right now are:


Drex the Lactosaurus Rex
Inoculum's light and crisp Sour Weisse beer. 100% lactobacillus pitch followed by an American Ale yeast fermentation produces a 3.2pH, 3.2%ABV, 10IBU beer.



Mother Ursa
Inoculum's take on an Oud Bruin. Chocolate malts, Midnight Wheat, Canadian Pale, Lactobacillus, American ale yeast, and a complicated double mashing procedure all come together to make a clean sour brown. 3.5pH, 5.2%ABV, 23IBU.



Other upcoming 2016 releases announced so far:

Passion for Blood
Inoculum's Berliner inoculated with Blood oranges and Passion fruit. Blood Oranges add Citric Acid Complexity to the already present Lactic acid and Passion fruit adds aroma and sweetness. 3.2pH, 3.2%ABV,/10IBU.

Souther Crux
Inoculum's Berliner inoculated with Guava and Mangos. Our take on a Raspberry syrup Berliner. A considerable guava inoculation builds a Berliner with complex sour notes, while Mango adds a noteworthy sweetness. 3.2pH, 3.2%ABV, 10IBU.

Dream Catcher
Inoculum's finest canned funk. We start with light body light color soured pale and then age it on a funky farmhouse strain with a little Brett tossed in for good measure. Truly a can full of horse blanket and barnyard. If you can brave the funk you'll love Dream Catcher.

 

Great label art.

 

Just found out that a buddy of mine got a job in sales working for Burnt City Brewing here in Chicago (formerly Atlas - they had to change their name because of a lawsuit) and he's pretty stoked about it. Their beer is pretty solid, and I'm excited to try and support them more as they attempt to expand in the crowded Chicago market.

 

Sounds like a pretty epic day for sure! Are you hitting up any of the other Cycle releases? Let me know if you're interested in trading for them.

 

Keep us updated on how these taste. If they're great, I have no problem throwing some money at a four-pack. Wish more breweries shipped. I'd rather pay money than trade away beer for other beer.

 

Trading is such a hassle and expensive I hate doing it.

 

Really? We trade a lot, actually expecting a box today. It's not bad if you have bottle shippers and there's a drop off place nearby. Den has a FedEx account and prints the labels in advance, then we just drop them off. If the weight is off they'll update it and charge/credit your account accordingly. Pretty easy, actually.

 

I don't have any of these things. Also there is nothing worth trading in VA.

 

nah, it's a huge hassle to get down there. 2ish hours each way means leaving at 5am to stand in line. we already had plans to go down for the Growler Choose-Day thing, so we just went early.

 

i've met the brewer there and have had Drex a couple of times. solid stuff.

 

Been following Inoculum since they launched. Excited to finally be able to try their stuff.

 

If you have any Hardywood Bourbon GBS lying around, I'd happily trade something for it.

 

I might have a few laying around, along with a regular and an apple brandy barrel I'm not sure. It doesn't age very well in my opinion. All my beer is so unorganized.

 

I don't know how much Hopsolution from Bell's will make it to out of state markets, but it's a must-buy. Easily their best IPA (it's a Double at 8%) and it might be my favorite Bell's beer in general. I'm excluding Black Note from this discussion because I've only had one BN and it lost all its carbonation which made it pretty terrible. Still, Hopsolution is fantastic. Pineapple, orange, resinous, slight bitter finish. Just fantastic.

 

^^ I'm really hoping some of that makes its way down to NC. Would love to try.