The Bar Towel

In no particular order;

1) Victory Storm King
2) Pike IPA
3) Sierra Nevada Celebration
4) Brakspear Bitter (come on, I grew up there!)
5) St. Ambroise Stout

Honorable mention; Grants Scottish Ale (before his brewery was bought out by Annheiser Bush), Sailor Hagar's bengal IPA, Victory Hopdevil, Sam Smith's Stout (both), Labatt 50 (Ha ha!) and a LOT more. I'm not much on mainland European beers of ALL varieties so my list may not be as global as others...to each their own.

On 2002-10-29 18:35, DukeOfYork wrote:
I figured someone was going to have to add Aventinus to this list sometime. May as well get it over with.

I tried Aventinus for the first time today. I'll need to drink one more bottle to be sure, but I think it's already in my Top 5.

And by the way - it's currently on sale at the LCBO for $2.40 a bottle until Nov 9th. A whopping 20 cents savings per bottle! The LCBO on Spadina north of Dundas had a whack of 'em on the shelf this afternoon when I was there. (They also had a lot of Ted & Bens Organic and Smuttynose Brown Dog left from the September promotion, in case anyone is looking for more...)


Greg

1) Boon Gueuze. Still have my single remaining bottle. Would love to try the Mariage Parfait.

2) My beloved Schneider Weisse. So glad this is readily available (and inexpensive!)

3) Alexander Rodenbach. Why did they stop making this? Haven't tried the Grand Cru.

4) George Gales Prize Old Ale.

5) Tie between Westmalle Tripel and Rochefort 8. (Which makes me consider a case of the latter for myself via Esprit. Hmmm...)


Andrew

I'll tell you this: I hadn't bought a case of any beer for personal consumption in probably my entire life up until two weeks ago when I picked up a case of Orval. I have not regretted it. If I beer is that high on your personal list, you owe it to yourself to have a nice big stash, from which you can drink whenever the mood strikes. And you can lay a few bottles in the cellar without feeling bad about it, cause there's about twenty more of them to drink now!

I wouldn't do it for a beer I didn't love, but for a classic, it's well worth it.

Top 5 eh?

Well . . .

1) Victory HopDevil
2) Orval
3) St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout
4) Bar Habor Cadillac Mountain Stout
5) Denison's Weizen

Honourable Mention:

Smuttynose Big A IPA
Alaskan Smoked Porter
Scotch Irish Sgt. Major IPA

Fine beers though not exactly to my taste:

Lindeman's Gueuze Cuvee Rene
Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Marzen

Anyway, this list will change tomorrow I'm sure.

Cheers, Joe.

howardt: your beers are certainly up there in my Lager rankings but I tend to favour ales.



<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: jcappadocia on 2002-10-31 17:01 ]</font>

Josh:

I regularly buy Schneider Weisse by the case. None of the others are available here. (Other than the aforementioned Rochefort 8 )

Where did you pick up the Orval? Peter didn't list it in the Esprit availability.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Andicus on 2002-10-31 17:40 ]</font>

Wow!!! Someone else who has had the Bar Harbor Cadillac Mountain Stout. I was in Bar Harbor this summer camping and picked some up just to try something local. Expecting nothing I got a whole lot more...definitely one of the best stouts I've ever had. In fact (I hate to be a copy cat) but I think it makes my list:

1) Rogue IPA2
2) Dogfish Head Raison D'etre
3) Sgt Major's IPA
4) McAuslan Pale Ale
5) Bar Habor Cadillac Mountain Stout

Andicus,

I guess they don't have any more Orval. Peter posted a note on it here at Bartowel and I put the order in. I'm sure he'll let us know when it's coming back.

I have a top five list for both North America and Britain
North America
Scotch Irish Session Ale
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
Black Irish Porter
Black Oak Pale Ale
St. Ambroise Oatmeal Stout

Britain
Timothy Taylor Landlord (cask)
Cain's Dark Mild (cask)
Buttcombe Bitter (cask)
Coniston Bluebird bitter (cask)
Adnam's Bitter (cask)

These choices are in no particular order and I wish it was a top ten list of best beers because there are so many other beers that I love in both N. America and the U.K

Top 5 for now... (these change often):

- Niagara Falls Eisbock on tap
- Black Oak Porter (Christmas Nutcracker/Harry Porter)
- Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier
- Schneider Weisse
- McAuslan Oatmeal Stout

Honourable mentions:
Black Oak Nut Brown, Algonquin Black & Tan, Durham County Signature Ale, Blanche de Chamblis, I could go on...

Thanks for the kind words (Josh,A, rabbit), I wasn't fishing for compliments...really. Creemore IPA? We have actually thought about it. In the end, you have to do one thing well. We are a lager brewery...German style brewing. There is a real worry about yeast contamination trying to do lagers and ales together (we would need to seperate one cellar). Plus, there are some very good IPA's out there. It is unlikely that we would be the best of the style. What's the point then?

On best beers, I forgot about Rochefort 10, I agree about Michael at Denizens and a fresh batch of Dragons Breath at the pub in Kingston is good atmosphere.

Worst beer in the world, * Mickeys * (beer,package, the works). I'd like to meet the genius that came up with that one. Second place to anything from * Petes *.

Further to my comments about worst beers, DAN-D-MAN, I note that you did not broadly categorize your favourites as you did the ones you did not like...further argument for the fact you cannot condemn or praise an entire category of product without having tried every example of the product...and that is obviously never going to happen.