We have never talked about Beer

Considering how infrequently I drink period, my only answer can be more ;)

But, seriously, if I’m at home I never have more than one. I can count on my hands the number of times I have a second beer if I’m chilling with a game or movie.

Though if I am doing gin and tonics then I usually have 2.

Many of the draft beers look to be from a local brewery. You might be able to talk them into letting taste samples of the draft offerings. The saison might be of interest. Saisons are not sweet, but the can be sort of like carbonated white wine (like the Ommegang Hennepin, which your Busy Bee has in bottle under ‘Belgians’). The Mash & Lauter House one talks about the hops, though… You probably don’t want anything from Stone.

In the bottles, the Mother Earth dunkle, if it is the same as Dark Cloud on their web site, should be not bitter.

I only have 1-2 of the more interesting beers when I go out. I don’t think I could handle drinking a ton of them, not to mention many of the more interesting beers can be 10+% alcohol (20 proof), 13 oz servings, which is enough to sit your ass down if you go hard and have 4+ in a short amount of time.

Price doesn’t get me usually. Alcohol content will. I can have 2 of just about anything, but 3 if and only if it’s lower than about 6 percent. I know my limits, and that’s about where they fall. That gets hard during tastings or beer events, and in those cases I pre-plan transportation and food.

At home I’ll regularly have Foothills Jade ($14 a six pack,) or Wicked Weed Freak of Nature ($4 per 16oz.) If you’re only having 1-2, really that’s not horrible, to me at least. I’m not equating that by any means to a cheap Bud Light. We are talking high end beers. Similarly, something like that Dogfishhead 120 minute would be a one and done, maybe once a year. Equate them to somthing like the price per glass of buying a nice bottle of bourbon or scotch.

I have seen it and don’t remember anything like that price. I forget which but one (either the 60 or 90) is only sold in 4 packs and costs the same as the other in 6 packs.

Yes, but more because of the alcohol. IPA’s can go up to 9% easily. Most are in the 7% range, so yea, I don’t drink as many in one sitting. And I know there are session IPA’s but none of the ones I have tried were truly as good as the regular version put out by the same brewery.

I agree with @Scuzz. There are sessions beers and low alcohol beers with decent taste, but I save those for boating days when I’m bound to not be able to regulate myself in the heat.

Drinking craft beer has gotten me used to something from 5-7% alcohol per drink. Any more than that and I begin to feel it and need to adjust accordingly. I’m actually thankful for beer bars that put high gravity (high abv) beers into smaller serving glasses. My favorite bar has 8, 11 and 14 oz beer pours, and you can even ask for a half, which is a 5 oz pour for some reason. It’s great for sampling more of the menu.

I find it’s not just the alcohol content, but I feel…satiated after ~ 2 beers. I just don’t want another, because while they taste good, I feel “mentally full”. Granted, I almost always drink craft beer when I’m out, and it’s on draft. So I’m time limited by the length of the meal - if I had a ton of craft beer at home perhaps I’d drink more in a day…but that doesn’t tempt me.

I assume because I’m older now (my 40’s), I’m drinking strictly for taste, so I tend to buy higher end stuff (good rye, scotch, craft beer, wine) and drink a lot less of it.

no :(

So the birthday party was last night? Wonder how long until Armando is up and coherent enough to report back on his beer experience.

What would I have personally splurged on? Quite possibly the Barrel Aged Hibernation Ale. I hate to think what the cafe must charge for that, but at 12.5% abv one would be plenty… I love old ales / barleywines, and I usually manage to keep them squirreled away in the basement through the summer until it gets cold again. I believe I have 3 or 4 of last year’s Bigfoot and a whole 6 of Bell’s Third Coast Old Ale.

Here is a review of the Barrel Aged Hibernation from beeradvocate by someone with a lot of time on their hands for writing reviews:

The problem with “old ale” is that they rarely exhibit any “old”
character, unless cellared properly. But with extended age in bourbon
barrels, the Hibernation ale from Great Divide is able to take on the
oxidation, develop the fruit, offer a mild acidity and mellow into as
smooth yet boozy, savory and sultry mix.

With bourbon, molasses and dark fruit wafting about the nose, hints of
sherry, fig and savory sweetness prelude even the first sip. Dark
crimson to bark brown, the beer’s tawny edges show lightness while its
body is deep and dark. And once its savory sweetness splashes on the
tongue, a multitude of malt and complexity arises- brown sugar, toffee
and molasses carry and rummy spice cake flavor with toasted pecan, dark
fruit, dark chocolate and coffee picking up steam.

The middle palate continues to release its secrets to the palate. The
sweetness is met with a sharp rebuttal from bourbon. Its caramels,
vanillans, cherry, coconut and oaken nuttiness offers tannic support
with thinning booze action. Fig, date, raisin, cherry, apricot and plum
all seem of the grilled variety and weave into a tangy, spicy
brandy-like taste. Peppery late, the beer’s peppery hop taste gives it a
slight boggish peat character as the finish awaits.

Full, lavish and decadent, the beer’s lingering sweetness mixes with
whisky for a sweet and spicy affair- one that’s well suited as
replacement for dessert after a savory and satisfying dinner. Save for
cold winter’s nights, a good book or great company. A long savory linger
of molasses and whisky trail well into the next sip.

You missed the chance to use the phrase “beer death experience!”

As an aside, though, I want to thank everyone for all of the interesting discussion lately (I guess it can be laid at the feet of Armando, eh?). I’m not a big beer drinker and I’ve gravitated towards IPAs mostly because I’m not sure what else was out there. And it’s difficult to experiment because I don’t know what I’m looking for in many ways. However, the latest discussions have provided a ton of interesting sounding choices that I’m going to track down at my local Total Wine store. I just hope I can nab them all as singles so I can sample the different suggestions.

Both Ultra Foods (which is a local retailer) and Trader Joes offer ‘build your own 6 pack’ options. I really like this, since I don’t drink enough to try many if I buy full 6 packs. See if your local stores do the same. Plus some breweries do mixed packs. I know Dundee, Leinies, Shock Top, Arcadia, and a bunch more offer 12 pack variety packs.

Usually around $14 for those, which isn’t too bad.

Yeah, TotalWine does the same, but the beers for the sampler are in a separate section from the 6-packs, so it’s unclear to me if you can just grab any random beer out of a 6-pack if you’re making your own. I’ll definitely ask if I’m looking for a specific beer and don’t see a loose one.

Charlatan maybe try some beer tastings, beer festivals or even beer pairing events if you don’t do those already. Last time I checked out Meetup.com it was full of beer groups. Another tactic is to find one of the crazy craft beer bars where they just have an alarming number of taps. I’m linking one here as an example. The bartenders at places like these are very, very used to people asking to sample things. They also usually seem to be a bit better at recommendations than general bars that don’t cater solely to craft beer. I’m thankful the US has these. I’ve taken a number of my European coworkers to these places and they are flabbergasted with the sheer amount of US craft beer available to us.

Strangely the best thing I ever did for developing more tastes for beers was to try homebrewing.

I’m afraid I must disappoint the Beer Grognards. My partner wound up feeling pretty awful last night, so she didn’t come out with me. For that and other reasons, I restricted myself to a beer (despite being a fatass, I’m a pretty big lightweight), and I went with something I knew I could at least finish, the Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro. Which was still darker than I like, but not-hoppy enough to actually drink.

I did try someone’s Russian Imperial Stout, which was like, vantablack-black, and it was pretty atrocious!

I also tried someone else’s pumpkin spice sangria, and it was worse.

That said, I did what I set out to do, which was eat a ludicrous amount of tater tots and hang out w/ a dozen plus of my better friends in the area (less one who seriously miscalculated her drive back from Texas and found herself in Georgia roundabouts when the “Happy Birthdays” were being exchanged), so all is well.

Thank you guys again for the well-meaning and well-informed suggestions. One of these nights, when I have a DD and the local mega-selection bars like Flying Saucer aren’t having Pint Night and crawling with college students, I look forward to trying some of them :)

When I can I love to go to our county’s most popular beer festival. It’s amazing, and I learned so much the first time I went. The festivals vary wildly in quality though, with the bigger ones being usually being much, much better because they have all the smaller breweries too. The few smaller events I stumbled into were all disappointing.

And yes, you get drunk. I can’t bring myself to swirl and spit because beer but that also means I don’t get to try and savor as many as I want because alcohol tolerance. Most will hand out X tickets to sample X beers but I found all the vendors couldn’t care less about the tickets, they just want you to try their product.

Dude, any night with a ludicrous amount of tater tots is a good night. Those things are my kryptonite. Glad you had a good time.

Hrmm no malt no hops, like sweet. Have you tried wheat beers? There’s even some that are 50% juice premixed, seen it in a lot of supermarkets although the name escapes me.

More for @ArmandoPenblade to try. These are all easy introductions to craft beers. Not overly hoppy, nor overly bitter. You should be able to find these in multiple places here in NC. Some of these tend to get near the scale of a little bitterness, you should try them anyway if you can.:

English Brown Ale: Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, AleSmith Nut Brown Ale, Bell’s Best Brown, New Glarus Fat Squirrel Ale

American Brown Ale: Big Sky Moose Drool, Duck-Rabbit Brown Ale, Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale, Rogue Ales Hazelnut Brown Nectar, Sierra Nevada Tumbler Autumn Brown Ale

American Cream Ale: Anderson Valley Summer Solstice, Ballast Point Calm Before the Storm, New Glarus Spotted Cow

American Amber Ale: Bell’s Amber Ale, Anderson Valley Boont Amber Ale, New Belgium Fat Tire, Troegs Nugget Nectar, Highland Gaelic Ale

Okay, now, for the bonus round:

I’m cooking chili tonight. Any of those good chili beers? Because I’ve traditionally kept a stout or porter around the house for the express purpose of cooking with, but if I can mingle the need to cook with the desire to drink, all the better :)