The Bar Towel

I went to Buffalo, so much good beer was had. The selection is big, so I decided to go for halves instead of pints (and paced it over a whole day):

Ithaca Cold Front
Great Lakes Conway's Irish Ale
Hebrew Lenny's RIPA
Harpoon Saison Royale
Brewdog / Stone Bashah
BFM Tarry Suchong
Lindeman's Framboise
Lindeman's Pomme
DFH 120 Minute (on tap!)

Brought home a crapload of good stuff too!

The night before sstackho and myself shared a few:

Ommegang Biere de Mars
Jolly Pumpkin Oro de Calabaza
Victory Moonglow Weizenbock
Ola Dubh 12
Ola Dubh 40

Wild Rose Barley Wine. Great stuff. Their Cherry Porter gets more press but their barley wine is at least as impressive, IMO. At some point I'm planning on doing an all Canadian barley wine comparison between Wild Rose, Old Deuteronomy, Burley Wine and Mill St., but I need a day when I have absolutely nothing to do the next day

Jon Walker wrote:I don't know if the refrigeration was the issue (though it might have been). I believe the issues related to the LCBO packaging and labeling regs. SN were not prepared to strip label or alter existing labels for this one market, especially since there was no guarantee of ongoing business. Regardless, yet another example of decent beer being kept out by over zealous and inflexible bureaucracy.

That's all too believable. And not really all that surprising.

Still, there's a lot of other breweries that don't seem deterred by having to slap an additional label onto their bottles to appease the powers that be at the LCBO. If what you say is true, it strikes me as a tad obstinate on SN's part not to go through a minor amount of effort in order to sell more of their wares. Business must be good!

As for refrigeration, I've seen enough unrefrigerated bottles of SN in Chicago, Buffalo, and many parts of California to wonder how that could have been an issue in Ontario when it doesn't seem to be an issue elsewhere.

Anyway, in keeping with the SN theme I had a Bigfoot 2009 and a Kellerweis. And I'm finishing up the night with a Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold.

Grand River Plowmans Ale

Victory Storm King, bought at the LCBO, so 5+ years old. A few weeks ago I would've said that this was past its prime and on the verge of a steeper decline, but another bottle proved excellent.

TJ wrote:If what you say is true, it strikes me as a tad obstinate on SN's part not to go through a minor amount of effort in order to sell more of their wares. Business must be good!

Sierra Nevada seem really smart and 'No BS" about what they do. It's probably looks like a risky or borderline business proposition for them to deal with Ontario. With a more 'open' marketplace like NZ, even though it's much farther away, SN know that they can build a solid market base there that will grow & stay. NZ probably "doesn't fuck around", so to speak, in the way the LCBO constantly does (pulling all kinds of resistance & penalties on its suppliers.)

Plus how come here brewers like Rogue and Southern Tier can never sell more than one or two of their great beers here at a time? New Zealand would not care, they would allow a 'product line' selling approach instead of thiis arbitrary cherry-picking BS the LCBO indulges in (and which they do for no given reason.)

Given all this LCBO hassle, the actual size of our market & lower shipping cost to Ontario may not even matter to SN! Anyway, it bears pondering. I recently had a SN Southern Hemishpere Harvest Ale that was astounding for a cheap bomber. But realistically, without our timid system we'd get ONLY the 'safest' beers - so let's say we did get SNPA here, be honest, wouldn't we be excited for maybe half a year and then get bored? I'd rather drink Southern Tier IPA most days!

Just having a bottle of the wonderful Brew Dog Hardcore IPA. Very very drinkable for a 9% IIPA.

last night:
ken schmidt/maui/stone kona coffee macadamia nut coconut porter
a l'abri de la tempete corne de brume
flossmoor killer kapowski
shorts kind ale
homebrewed saison

so far today:
homebrewed ipa
central waters brewers reserve bourbon barrel stout
deschutes mirror mirror

what's next?

Last night:

Mill Street ESB
Mill Street Weizen Bock
Mikkeller Monk's Elixir
Bell's Hopslam
Corsendonk Brown


Tonight:

Haven't decided

Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast, I'm cheating and having it at night.

Lagunitas Hop-Stoopid.

Baltika No. 6 - 2007
Baltika No. 6 - 2009

Saison Dupont. F*cking brilliant, but not as brilliant as Waltz With Bashir, which we just finished watching:

Sipping on Samuel Smith's Winter Welcome as I work through 115 pages of textbook. I like it, but it's not nearly as spicy as I tend to expect from a winter ale. Tastes similar to their pale ale but with a touch of nutmeg or something.

grub wrote:what's next?

shorts liberator dipa
de struise aardmonnik - earthmonk
bartle's homebrewed ipa
derek's homebrewed fresh hop brew

not a bad way to end the weekend!