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Winter is my favorite time of the year to go beer shopping. This year's purchases (and I'm not done yet): Victory Old Horizontal Anchor Our Special Ale 2004 Corsendonk Christmas Ale Stoudt's Winter Ale Unibroue Edition 2004 2003 Samichlaus Still looking for: Troeg's Mad Elf Weyerbacher Winter Ale (which has the best label of all the winter beers!) Are there any others that stand out this year??

Back in college, a local shot and a beer bar (patronized by the locals,not the college kids) started to draw a college crowd by selling $1.00 imported bottles every Wednesday night. Trying a bunch of these beers is what got me into the beer thing. After running through the list at the bar ($1.00 for a big Paulaner Hefeweizen?!?!), we found out about a liquor store across the river which had a wine and beer cellar. Every few weeks, we'd go to the store and buy a six pack of whatever beers we had never heard of. When I saw the hang tag on the Samichlaus (World's Strongest Beer!) and Thomas Hardy's (Rarest Beer in thr World!), we HAD to buy them. I knew nothing about beer at the time other than, "It tastes good," or "This sucks!" I read the label on the Hardy's, which explained that the beer could be aged for twenty five years. I drank one and thought, "Strong, dark, sweet...I'm not sure about this one." I don't think I liked it, but it didn't suck, either. So, I put the remaining bottles in a paper bag, took the bag home and put it in the closet. Somehow, the bag didn't get thrown away and I got it back when my mother gave me one of her many "Whatever you don't take out of the house this weekend gets thrown out next trash day" edicts. I decided that the holiday weekend would be a good time to try one of my two remaining bottles of this beer. I shared it with my cousin, who homebrews and worked as an assistant brewer at a now defunct microbrewery in PA. We cracked it open last night. Wow! Eighteen year old beer! Intense chocolate, toffee and raisin aromas. Most, if not all, of the carbonation had dissipated over the years. It was intensely sweet and viscous, no noticeable hops. I was amazed that a beer could hold up this long. So now I'm down to one little bottle. I think I'll wait until 2006, it's 20th birthday.

Uncorking one right now. Share your impressions on their other efforts?

Recently I stopped at Shangy's and picked up a variety case from the Southern Tier Brewing Co. of Lakewood, NY. So far I'm impressed with what I got. The case had a six pack each of IPA Porter Belgian Trippel Phin & Matt's Excellent Ale The house style appears to favor a fuller bodied, maltier beer with an aggressive hopping... but the residual sugars from the malt balance the hoppiness. Once I'm seated in front of each of the beers I'll report on the specifics, but having tried one of each at this point, I'll recommend them. Anybody else tried beers from these guys? Opinions?

During my junior year of college many many (16) years ago, I took a semester and attended school in Seville, Spain. The food, I can get here in the states, but the beer that I consumed by the bucketload in Seville was called Cruzcampo, and I have NEVER seen it in the United States. Does anyone know why it's so hard to find beers from Spain in the US? lack of interest? Surely it can't be from lack of quality.....I'd stack that Cruzcampo up against a Peroni any day of the week. I travel a lot with my job, so if anyone has seen it, let me know, I'll schedule a trip there.

Aloha we just bought a nice bottle of the chocolate bock from Sam Adams. Never had it before and want to know what temperature would be best (I'm thinking slightly chilled but not too cold). What are some of your experiences? Thanks and a hui ho

I was searching Google and only found 1 brewpub for San Antonio, the Blue Star or something similar. Are there any others in San Antonio, Texas? Should they be on my beer radar if I visit?

I'm at it again... it is that time of year to get out the brewing equipment and set myself up with a summer's worth of fine fermented grain products. Since there appears to be at least a passing interest in the homebrew thing here, I thought I'd write a bit of a commentary for the amusement of whoever happens to be amused by it. Since I brewed over the weekend and took no pictures, there will be no visual aids... Maybe next time, if there's demand for it. As a bit of background, I've been brewing a few batches a year for at least a decade. I started out like most newbie brewers with pre-hopped extracts that were very much an exercise in dumping and stirring... the essential brewings skills I picked up back then were sanitation and not reading the directions on canned pre-hopped kits. I moved on into choosing my own hops, though using mostly extract for my base, and then picked up the technique of steeping flavorful grains in a base of extract-derived wort to freshen it up and customize it a bit (thanks to the fine folks at my local homebrew shop, who took the time to explain these processes). I've since begun to do partial mash brewing, which means that some of the sugar I'm converting into alcohol actually comes out of grain that has been warmed to the right temperature to let enzymes itside it convert its starches into sugars. My equipment only allows me about a five-pound mash, which means that I can play with about 5 pounds of grain, and have to supplement the remainder with extracts... and I'm happy at the moment with this technique. I still mainly buy kits to brew from, though I sometimes customize them with things that make me happy. While shopping for kits recently, I happened to be browsing over at Beer beer and more beer and spotted two thing juxtaposed which got all kinds of gears in my head turning. First was their Fire in the Hole partial mash kit, and juxtaposed with it was Wyeast's Roeselare yeast blend. Since I have really unusual tastes in beer and happen to like the quite sour Belgian styles, I knew right off that Roeselare is where Rodenbach beers are brewed, and I got excited at the thought of being able to try my hand at making an Oud Bruin of my own. Flemish sour beers are fermented in a manner that would count as irretreivably contaminated in a brewery anywhere else. There are a cocktail of yeast strains and bacteria in there that produce a very distinctive sourness. I hope Wyeast got the mix down, so that homebrewers can play with these styles. That is part of what my experiment is all about finding out. The kit claimed to have been based on an irish red with some ad libbing by the kitmakers. Their decision to throw in some oak chips jived exactly with the Rodenbach brewing process, which involves aging their beers in oak. So, I ordered the kit and the yeast, and went at it this weekend. We'll see how it turns out. Doing the mash is sort of like making a vat of instant oatmeal... warm but not boiling water (170F) with lots of grain stirred into it. Since somewhere online I'd seen somebody call for plain wheat flour in a mash for an Oud Bruin, I decided to augment the recipe with a cup of it to see what would happen. It sort of gelatinized on top of the grains since I didn't mix the flour and grain together before hitting them with the water. But after letting it go for 45 minutes at about 155 degrees (hooray for large quantities of wet stuff having a lot of thermal inertia!) the flour did appear to have been chewed on by the enzymes. A taste of the final wort was a bit astringent, as though the process may have gone on a bit long and taken some of the tannins out of the grain husks. Fortunately, Belgian sours benefit from a bit of astringency, and like with a wine, they should age out. At the boiling stage, I'd decided that the kit's hop schedule would totally not jive with the style I'm trying for... it would be way too bitter if I threw in all of the high powered hops that were called for. So I dug around in my beer boxes in the basement and brought out a year old half ounce of Hallertauer, and a half ounce of Saaz. Tossed them into the boil and did a little figuring with an online hops utilization calculator to figure out if I'd need more. It turned out that I'd be at the bottom end of the style with my little ounce boiled for an hour, so a bit more might be called for. Since the kit came with some Centennials which are famously grapefruity in their aroma, I figured that a flemish sour beer might play well with that sort of flavor... so a half ounce of centennials and the remaining half ounce of Saaz went into the boil for the last eight minutes. Enough time to extract a bit of the bittering agents from the hops to up the bitterness by a couple of points, and sufficiently little time that the grapefruity aroma should not be boiled off. Now a few days later, the yeast and beasts have been doing their thing, and my airlock has been bubbling with hoppy aromas escaping. I'm a bit concerned that even the two ounces of hops may be a bit much for this beer style... but we'll see. In a week or so, I'll toss in some of the the oak chips and let them do their thing. I'm excited to see the results...

i love beer and think i have a very good beer palate, but i am not by any means an authority on it; hence this question: what exactly makes a porter a porter? how does it differ from stout? and what is everyone's favorite porter?

I was having a cold one today on my patio (unfortunately, from a LONG NECK bottle ), and was thinking of the good old days when all beer came in those nice, rounded stubby bottles . I thought to myself "if someone came out with beer in stubby bottles again, they would make a killing". Have any Canadian breweries tried going back to stubbies, or are the logistics involved too much to overcome? Or was there a law passed, banning them forever, that I don't know about?

What's that song? "If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere!" But seriously now.... Full press release can be read here. Cheers!

King of Beer? Two words: Road Trip.

Full press release can be found here. Anyone of the eG home brewers/enthusiasts going? Sounds like great fun.

I've been reading/posting to various threads picking up info for a July trip to SF. Several microbreweries have come up & I would appreciate any thoughts on these or any others folks think are worth a stop: Anchor Steam Brewery Gordon Biersch Microbrewery Thirsty Bear Brewery San Francisco Brewing Co. Thanks!

The Brandywine Valley Craft brewers festival will be held, rain or shine in the parking lot of the Iron Hill Brewery in Media, PA. Over 25 all you can drink beers will be available from Victory, Yards, Dogfish Head, Troegs, Wayerbacher and more. $25 (a portion goes to charity) gets you an afternoon of adventures. $5 for designated drivers. Comcast will provide large TVs for Flyers game watching because God forbid Philadelphia holds an event during a sports playoff game and some people can't watch it. Tickets/Info

Check out the newest update to Dogfish Head Beers. They've added taste descriptions, food pairings, serving glass suggestions and comparable wine style.

This week, May 17-22, we have in the eGullet Q&A Forum, the abovementioned Corey and McCoy, ready to answer any and all questions regarding thier quest for individual titles as Beerdrinkers of the Year, as well as their thoughts on beer styles, beer travel (and they've done a TON of travel, worldwide), beer food and many of their most memorable beer adventures. Load up your best questions for Cornelia (beergirl) and Ray (alekeep), and get ready for some great beer give and take! Q&A with McCoy and Corey

I am not sure if this is the proper forum for this, but does anyone know of any reputable online sites or retail outlets from which I could find an array of beer glasses available for sale? Not the standard pint glasses - looking for glasses to serve different styles of beer in - like a nice belgian ale or perhaps a doppelbock. I've been doing some searches online and have found a couple sites, but was maybe looking for a recommendation from someone who has actually purchased or built up a glassware collection. Thanks!

Take note of the nice interactive feature from the NY Times website, where you can listen to some specific reviews from the IPA tasting panel: IPAs, NY Times-style

"Sometimes when I reflect back on all the beer I drink I feel shamed. Then I look into the glass and think about the workers in the brewery and all of their hopes and dreams. If I didn't drink this beer, they might be out of work and their dreams would be shattered. Then I say to myself, "It is better that I drink this beer and let their dreams come true than be selfish and worry about my liver." ~ Jack Handy "24 hours in a day, 24 bottles in a case. Coincidence? I think not." ~ Stephen Wright "When we drink, we get drunk. When we get drunk, we fall asleep. When we fall asleep, we commit no sin. When we commit no sin, we go to heaven. Sooooo, let's all get drunk and go to heaven!" ~ Brian O'Rourke "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy." ~ Benjamin Franklin "Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza." ~ Dave Barry "BEER: HELPING UGLY PEOPLE HAVE SEX SINCE 3000 B.C.!!!" ~ "Unknown" And, as explained by Cliff Clavin, of Cheers... One afternoon Cliff was explaining the Buffalo Theory to his buddy Norm. Here's how it went: "Well ya see, Norm, it's like this... A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing off the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine! That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/199119p-171805c.html After 30 years and one frosty fight with Mayor Bloomberg, Rheingold Beer will soon be brewing again in Brooklyn. Company officials are set to announce a Brooklyn homecoming for the extra dry brew this morning at the Brooklyn Historical Society, capping another chapter in the beer's storied history.

I've been searching the internet and realized, duh! I could ask here on Egullet. I am a novelist writing about Hawaii while living in Florida. I want my hero to drink the occasional good beer, preferably something local. He used to drink Primo, back before it went out of business. What would he drink today? Are the Ali'i Ales available around the islands, particularly in Honolulu and on the north shore? (locations of the book I'm working on). Thanks for any advice! Neil

So what do people think about Rogue Beers and the Rogue Ale Houses in the Pacific Northwest and San Francisco?

For those in Colorado, I just had to report that Descutes Brewery's beers are now available in our fine state. I've always loved their beers and now can get them without getting on a plane and heading to the Pacific NW (not that going there is a bad thing!).

Hello brewers... Just wanted to let you all know about a new feature on Brew-Monkey.com. Over the last few months I have been putting together a database of yeast info and how it works with the different beer styles. If you go to the Yeast Information section of http://www.brew-monkey.com/brewschool/ you can check it out. It has taken quite a bit to compile the data and code the pages - so I hope you find it useful. I haven't seen anything like this on the web before - so maybe I'm the first :) As always, if you have articles, product reviews or other related items that you want posted - please let me know. If you know someone who may be interested - please pass this on. Hope to see you around on Brew-Monkey.com.