LBx wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 10:58 am For a minute in ~'15 Beau's in eastern Ontario was brewing the Gigantic IPA and I swear I bought 98% of the stock from the depanneur down the alley from where I was living at the time. Like, a daily post work thing or whatever else. Just a perfect blend of haze and hops and freshness.

If the everyday version on tap at yr Oregon local is the same recipe or very close then I'm pretty jealous for sure...

Beaus, I could go for some lugtread right now. Did you ever goto their Oktoberfests? Great lineups

McEwan's Champion Whisky Edition. They've replaced it with something called Headspace, but it's not the same

Krev wrote: Fri Dec 16, 2022 6:38 pm

Tom Wanderer wrote: Fri Dec 16, 2022 10:30 am

Krev wrote: Mon Dec 12, 2022 4:37 pm While not a Mass beer, I miss Gennessee Cream Ale.

They still make it!

Yeah, I last had it in a Boston bar in 2019. I've found regular Gennessee in WA.

Was coming here to say the same. They've redesigned the can, but I still see it occasionally.

When I first moved to CA, Lagunitas Brewing had a beer called Dogtown Pale Ale that was perfectly hopped. I eventually grew to hate hoppy craft brews but this beer was always tastefully done. Crisp and clean with a little hoppiness. I pretty much steer clear of craft brews these days unless they are pilsner or kolsch style. I can't deal with the sweetness, high alc. and over the top hop flavor. Migraine city.

RyanZ wrote: Tue Dec 20, 2022 12:43 pm When I first moved to CA, Lagunitas Brewing had a beer called Dogtown Pale Ale that was perfectly hopped. I eventually grew to hate hoppy craft brews but this beer was always tastefully done. Crisp and clean with a little hoppiness. I pretty much steer clear of craft brews these days unless they are pilsner or kolsch style. I can't deal with the sweetness, high alc. and over the top hop flavor. Migraine city.

Agreed. So much hops, ABV and intensity of late. We call it 'Kris Kringle's nutsack ale'. That, or hazy, astringent bitterness.

Bell's Sparkling Ale. Long discontinued but one of the most wonderful craft beers I've ever encountered.

enframed wrote: Thu Dec 15, 2022 5:24 pm

kicker_of_elves wrote: Thu Dec 15, 2022 3:00 pm Craft beers have really become a dime-a-dozen in the last decade.

I think craft beer x Instagram has influenced the"natural" wine market as well. Labels have cute pictures and few words. The demand is for new, always new, and "Instagrammable." Clear bottles (which are not good for the wine, long-term) are very important. People are buying based on label and visuals rather than what's in the bottle. Many wines are one vintage only, and the crowd eagerly awaits the new wine from the producer. Not surprisingly, many beer people are getting into "natural" wine.

Natural wine has certainly become goofier and trendier in recent years. More animals on the labels and a latecomer Gen Z audience that knows little of wine history, much less the backstory as to why so-called natural wine exists. Some of these kids, in fact, seem almost attracted to weirdly flawed wine, by which I mean stuff that doesn't just have a little bret or VA. (Mouse in da house!) I actually saw a couple girls question the orange wine they ordered at a bar b/c it didn't look like Tang and thus wouldn't be pretty enough on social media. (Never mind that skin-contact wine can be pale yellow, classically orange, or even a browning rosé color.)

Lately, I find myself reflexively going back to producers and importers whose bottles I really enjoyed 15 years ago, before the hype. Classic natural wine (some of which is merely traditional), if you can use such a term. Picked up my first bottle of Baudry Les Granges cab franc in I don't know how long. To be fair, though, there is an awful lot of interesting new stuff (at least, new in the American market) from Georgia, Iberia, Greece, and even South America popping up on natty-wine shelves lately.

That said, I'm not sure how much natural wine is specifically to blame so much as youth drinking culture and silly trends in marketing. In the late '90s, critter labels were all the range (especially from Australia) and the young 'uns wanted everything to be dark, deep purple w/14.5% ABV (zin and shiraz were having a moment).

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 9:03 am

enframed wrote: Thu Dec 15, 2022 5:24 pm

kicker_of_elves wrote: Thu Dec 15, 2022 3:00 pm Craft beers have really become a dime-a-dozen in the last decade.

I think craft beer x Instagram has influenced the"natural" wine market as well. Labels have cute pictures and few words. The demand is for new, always new, and "Instagrammable." Clear bottles (which are not good for the wine, long-term) are very important. People are buying based on label and visuals rather than what's in the bottle. Many wines are one vintage only, and the crowd eagerly awaits the new wine from the producer. Not surprisingly, many beer people are getting into "natural" wine.

Natural wine has certainly become goofier and trendier in recent years.

I've burned out on way-too-sour/cloudy/yeasty natural wines the same way I burned out on hoppy beers 10 years ago. It took splurging on a Barolo for my birthday to remind me what I liked about wine in the first place.

penningtron wrote:

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 9:03 am

enframed wrote: Thu Dec 15, 2022 5:24 pm
I think craft beer x Instagram has influenced the"natural" wine market as well. Labels have cute pictures and few words. The demand is for new, always new, and "Instagrammable." Clear bottles (which are not good for the wine, long-term) are very important. People are buying based on label and visuals rather than what's in the bottle. Many wines are one vintage only, and the crowd eagerly awaits the new wine from the producer. Not surprisingly, many beer people are getting into "natural" wine.

Natural wine has certainly become goofier and trendier in recent years.

I've burned out on way-too-sour/cloudy/yeasty natural wines the same way I burned out on hoppy beers 10 years ago. It took splurging on a Barolo for my birthday to remind me what I liked about wine in the first place.

If you're into Barolo, there's definitely not a whole lot of strictly so-called natural wine out there to suit your tastes. Hell, a lot of the farming up in that corner of Italy isn't even organic. That said, if you're into trad wine that hasn't been crazily manipulated, there's plenty of great nebbiolo out there. One of natural wine's biggest early champions, the writer Alice Feiring, is a huge nebbiolo fan, so there you go. Not remotely natural wine and from Valtellina (rather than Barolo), but I'm not gonna stop drinking Ar.Pe.Pe anytime soon.

I dig plenty of that cloudy, ciderlike stuff. But it needs to be done well. And plenty of it is not. It should not taste like an extreme sour beer.

Marie et Vincent Tricot's White Light (White Heat), which is more luminous than murky, is an example of this kind of thing being delicious and not fucked up. Bojo do Luar's Doralice is also great, and cheap, to boot. Ditto Milan Nestarec's white Forks and Knives, although that's getting a little wilder. Of course, everyone's taste is different...

OrthodoxEaster wrote: Wed Dec 21, 2022 10:38 am I dig plenty of that cloudy, ciderlike stuff. But it needs to be done well. And plenty of it is not. It should not taste like an extreme sour beer.

Yeah, I've liked some 'funky' stuff too. But I definitely sample it first now, and if it just seems like a sourness competition the same way beers became more in-your-face with the hops, I pass on it now. Doesn't do my acid-sensitive stomach any favors either.