Beer Thread :Spinoff

[jimbo]

Went to Lexington Saturday to spend my birthday with some friends. I show up to a small surprise party and a keg of Shotgun Wedding, a vanilla brown ale made by Lexington's Country Boy Brewing. My friends know me all too well.

http://countryboybrewing.com/?age-ve...adea3c33#brews

Beer pong using Bud Light is for wimps.

[SunDeck]

Visited Rhinegeist during opening day weekend. My niece's husband is one of their four brewers and he gave us a tour of the Braukon brew house they just put online. Their expansion is just about a third done and it will bring them up to 60k bbl capacity. On top of that, they now own their building and are remodeling with the addition of a roof top bar, overlooking OTR. What an amazing story they are shaping up to be.

I had a few pale ales there and they were quite good, but I'm most excited about the new capacity which will allow them to brew lagers. Currently, demand is so outstripping their capacity that they can only do ales. In truth, I'm not really their target market, feeling kind of old among all the tattoos, bushy beards and flannel. But I think that's what's really driving their success; Rhinegeist is creating a hipster home in OTR and that's going to be a good thing for the district.

[Sea Ray]

Visited Rhinegeist during opening day weekend. My niece's husband is one of their four brewers and he gave us a tour of the Braukon brew house they just put online. Their expansion is just about a third done and it will bring them up to 60k bbl capacity. On top of that, they now own their building and are remodeling with the addition of a roof top bar, overlooking OTR. What an amazing story they are shaping up to be.

I had a few pale ales there and they were quite good, but I'm most excited about the new capacity which will allow them to brew lagers. Currently, demand is so outstripping their capacity that they can only do ales. In truth, I'm not really their target market, feeling kind of old among all the tattoos, bushy beards and flannel. But I think that's what's really driving their success; Rhinegeist is creating a hipster home in OTR and that's going to be a good thing for the district.

Rhinegeist has done some lagers in the past. The Pums Pils is one example:

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/rhinege...a-pils/272209/

[SunDeck]

Rhinegeist has done some lagers in the past. The Pums Pils is one example:

http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/rhinege...a-pils/272209/

Yeah, in fact they had just sent a pils to the fermenter the day before I was there. They want to do more lagers, I should have said, but their sales are so strong that they are pinched.

[919191]

Visited Rhinegeist during opening day weekend. My niece's husband is one of their four brewers and he gave us a tour of the Braukon brew house they just put online. Their expansion is just about a third done and it will bring them up to 60k bbl capacity. On top of that, they now own their building and are remodeling with the addition of a roof top bar, overlooking OTR. What an amazing story they are shaping up to be.

I had a few pale ales there and they were quite good, but I'm most excited about the new capacity which will allow them to brew lagers. Currently, demand is so outstripping their capacity that they can only do ales. In truth, I'm not really their target market, feeling kind of old among all the tattoos, bushy beards and flannel. But I think that's what's really driving their success; Rhinegeist is creating a hipster home in OTR and that's going to be a good thing for the district.

Hey Sundeck- you ever go yo Big Red Liquors in Bloomington? They bought most of the liquor stores here in terre haute. Seems they think fans of micros/imports are only into Pales and IPAs. Guess it sells, but they kinda forget about porters and stouts. Just wondering if, like everything else, Bloomington is better than Terre Haute and BRL has a better selection.

[SunDeck]

Hey Sundeck- you ever go yo Big Red Liquors in Bloomington? They bought most of the liquor stores here in terre haute. Seems they think fans of micros/imports are only into Pales and IPAs. Guess it sells, but they kinda forget about porters and stouts. Just wondering if, like everything else, Bloomington is better than Terre Haute and BRL has a better selection.

I don't really look for porters or stouts much, but I went to their biggest beer garage, hoping to find some pils and they only had one. In their defense, I think craft brewers are ale happy, which is because they are easier and quicker. Anyway, it wouldn't surprise me if they are just stocking more ales to satisfy that particular demand; it seems IBU>100 is the in thing.

Speaking of IBUs, here's a chart for some of the most popular German beers. Mostly in the 20s and 30s.

[dabvu2498]

If you haven't tried Taft's in OTR, you should. Shared a flight and enjoyed everything they had. Very good variety on their beer list. I'm self-styled saison connoisseur and theirs is top-notch. Different from a typical saison, but outstanding on its own.

[Chip R]

If you haven't tried Taft's in OTR, you should. Shared a flight and enjoyed everything they had. Very good variety on their beer list. I'm self-styled saison connoisseur and theirs is top-notch. Different from a typical saison, but outstanding on its own.

Went there with GAC after the game. I wanted to get a flight but they said they were low on glasses so I had a Maverick porter instead. Delicious!

[Sea Ray]

If you haven't tried Taft's in OTR, you should. Shared a flight and enjoyed everything they had. Very good variety on their beer list. I'm self-styled saison connoisseur and theirs is top-notch. Different from a typical saison, but outstanding on its own.

I'm happy to report that I was lucky enough to go to their Opening Party on April Fools Day. I can't say that I found any beers that I'd brag about and I did try all of them. Their amber was not yet available. I don't know if it is now. I was surprised that there was no reference to William Howard Taft anywhere in the place. I expected a big painting or statue of him but none was found.

I wish these guys luck. OTR needs a place like this where you can just grab a beer but I'm concerned that it's off the beaten path and all the money they poured into it ($8 mill)

[dabvu2498]

Taft's isn't half as off the beaten path as Rhingeist is. It's only a block walk from the Washington Park garage and two and a half from the Vine St. garage.

Also, I thought the gavel tap handles were a nice touch. Made from wood they reclaimed from the old church stairs. (We had a very talkative bartender.)

[Sea Ray]

Taft's isn't half as off the beaten path as Rhingeist is. It's only a block walk from the Washington Park garage and two and a half from the Vine St. garage.

Also, I thought the gavel tap handles were a nice touch. Made from wood they reclaimed from the old church stairs. (We had a very talkative bartender.)

Rhinegeist isn't a restaurant. Their survival is not dependent upon people finding them. They depend on the availability of their beers on restaurant taps. Poor comparison

You know what's really hidden is Rivertown. Even an occasional GPS gets confused with Shepard lane vs road/drive or whatever.

[dabvu2498]

Rhinegeist isn't a restaurant. Their survival is not dependent upon people finding them. They depend on the availability of their beers on restaurant taps. Poor comparison

You know what's really hidden is Rivertown. Even an occasional GPS gets confused with Shepard lane vs road/drive or whatever.

I'm sorry. I should have explained better. Enough people have "found" Rhinegeist that their expanding their on-site services with an event center and roof-top bar. Like I said, I doubt if Taft's location hurts them at all. They're a block away from the easiest place to park in OTR.

And yes, a Rivertown is tough to find. Here's a tougher one... Find Dogberry Brewing. Now find Dogberry Brewing while they're actually open!

Edit: I may be totally wrong on this, but isn't Taft's beer also going to be distributed in kegs once they become fully operational?

[SunDeck]

We're having a party tomorrow and my wife brought back some Mad Tree and Mt. Carmel beer. Never tried either, but since the beer is the centerpiece of the Cincinnati themed party, I'm told I may not have any until then. The whole beer lineup is those two, plus Rhinegeist Truth, a couple different Moerleins, Hudepohl...and maybe one other but I can't remember.
We have multiple pounds of brats from Eckerlin's and Kroeger Bros., too, which I predict will blow some minds here. And Grippo BBQ chips, which I may just hide from the guests.

[Sea Ray]

I was at a bar in Clifton over the weekend and stumbled upon a beer that's so new it's not even on the brewery's website so details will be kinda scarce but it's called :

Squirrel by Rhinegeist. A roasty, full bodied brown ale that was about a 9 or 10 (on Sea Ray's 10 pt scale). It was very very good. Look for it on draft.

My favorite beer event of the yr for our area is coming up this weekend at Sawyer Point on the river. Brew Ha Ha. What makes this event so good is the fact that each taste is only a buck and you're not required to buy 40-50 bucks in fees to get in. It's a $5 entrance and then you buy as many or as few tx as you like. I also like the beers that come out this time of yr. They'll be breaking out the fall beers like Pumpkin ales and Oktoberfests. They've added a day this yr so it's now from Thurs-Sat. I usually go on Sat night but I'm thinking that I'd better go sooner this yr 'cause I've found that by Sat they're out of the really interesting beers

[Yachtzee]

Just got back from England last week, where I spent two weeks drinking just about every real cask-conditioned ales I could get my hands on. Some of the beers I had include:

Woodforde Wherry
Nethergate Suffolk County
Cliff Quay Sea Dog
Mighty Oak Kings Citra Hop (English Pale Ale with American hops)
Theakston Old Peculier
Greene King IPA
Greene King Abbot Ale
Old Speckled Henry
Sharp's Doom Bar
John Smith's Extra Smooth
Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter
Ringwood Best Bitter
Marston's Pedigree
Badger Fursty Ferret
Badger Tangle Foot
Harviestoun Afterglow
Fuller's London Pride

All very tasty beers. The interesting thing about these beers is that they were all served as real cask-conditioned ales, which means they were cellar temperature rather than ice cold and were poured using a pump style tap instead of CO2. The result was a less carbonated but more complex tasting beer. Also, just about all of them were between 3.5% and 4.5% ABV. While I had some tasty IPAs over there, they bore little resemblance to the intense hop bomb many American craft brewers are putting out there days. In fact, the complexities of the real ales were such that some of the English drinkers I spoke with say you can taste the local water in some of the ales. For example, more than one person said that Old Speckled Hen, now brewed by Greene King in Bury St. Edmunds, was better when it was brewed by Morelands in Oxfordshire. They said the Oxfordshire water gave the ale a characteristic flavor no longer present in the current brew. While staying in Bury St. Edmunds, I had the opportunity to get a pint at The Nutshell, Britain's Smallest Pub.

Now that I'm back, I'm already missing those real ales and I wish American brewers would get involved in brewing cask-conditioned ales. To me, the craft beer market seems oversaturated with hop bomb IPAs, high alcohol "Imperial" beers, and exotically flavored fruit beers. It makes me wonder if the focus on these strongly flavored beers is used hide flaws. I think it would be great if you had a pub like this one called The Dove I went to. They had one house ale that is regularly on tap, and 6 taps that served the ales of the day. Once a cask was finished, the sign for that ale was removed and the sign for a new cask was put in it's place.

Another interesting place to have a pint was at the American Express Community Ground, home of the Brighton and Hove Albion football club. They have Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter as the home real ale, then they have a guest ale for each match that is typically from the city or county of the visiting team. The match we took in was against Nottingham Forest, so the guest ale was Marston's Pedigree. I think it would be pretty cool if the Reds had stands that served a local craft beer together with a different craft beer served based on the visiting team, home beer vs. visiting beer.