Why I Oughta...

On Black Friday, I popped into the Jewel to pick up a few rations (and get 'cash back' because our bank wasn't close) for our trip to the Christmas Tree Farm (where they only take cash for the trees) and came out with a few of these Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Stouts.  By total accident.  I was making small talk with the cashier and she was telling me about how there people were camping out overnight in hopes of scoring these bottles.  She pointed to them and said that they found two bottles after the crowd left.  I asked if I could buy them and she said "sure".  So...almost $20 later, I came home with proudly with two bottles.  Of stout.  Nat loves a good stout.  And so do her beer nerd brothers, so they'll enjoy them this Christmas season.  I texted a photo to Dr. Jeff - who normally hosts our craft beer dinners and has even had a stout one before - and bragged about getting two of these.  He sent me back a shot of his haul:  all six versions

This past weekend was Oath Day Five out at Solemn Oath Brewery in Naperville.  We weren't able to make it because the Bird's birthday was the same day and we were, ummm, tied up with cake and presents and rainbows.  Yeah...rainbows.  Lots of them.  That's what she wanted, so Nat delivered!  Anyway, I've posted about Oath Day in the past.   Here's a post from 2015 showing off a cool van sticker I scored from the festivities .   If you're wondering what happens at Oath Day, check out this post from Solemn Oath  that details everything or tune into their Instagram feed for a post-event roundup showing some of the sights from the weekend.  It covers all the what-have-yous that go on including how they created a new deck of cards for the event .  But, just because we didn't get to go to Oath Day this year, doesn't mean we aren't fans.  And, we even showed off a little bit of our own craft beer nerd chops by introducing Dr. Jeff - our resident c

Recently, we had another craft beer education and tasting with Dr. Jeff at our place.  I've covered previous sessions with Dr. Jeff here on the blog .  As usual, Dr. Jeff brought over a batch of beers to share and they tended to be around a theme.  We started with the beer at the top called Galaxy Bowl from Hop Butcher for the World - which he told us was a Chicago beer.  It has an 88 on BeerAdvocate , so it is a strong beer in the craft beer nerd world.   It is the top right corner of the little collage above.   After that, we moved on to this beer from Off Color - another Chicago brew maker.  Called I'm Sorry, it isn't rated on BA just yet .   And the final beer of the evening (well...at least for me...because I went to bed!) was Humulus Terreux With Motueka Hops from Bruery Terreux.  Dr. Jeff brought a different beer from this brewery about a year ago.   Here's that post .

This is the 3rd or 4th 'craft beer tasting with Dr. Jeff' that I've shared here on the blog.  The rest of them can be found here on the "Dr. Jeff" tag page with the most recent one being an IPA session .  We've had sour sessions and stout sessions, too. This time, we had a combo session.  IPAs, sours, stouts.  It was fun. The first up is that beautiful bottle on the left.  Can't find it on BA.  On the top right is Your Wish is Granted IPA.   Not rated on BA, either .    And on the right is a Transiet Artisan Ale.  Not sure which one, though!  I guess I didn't take too good of photos that night, eh?

Another month, another craft beer tasting session with our good friend Dr. Jeff.   Here's the last session he hosted that focused on Sours .  And one from earlier this year where he toured us through various stouts . This time, he took us on a tour of IPAs including a stop at what he called the "OG of West Coast IPAs", this 5th Anniversary Stone Brewing IPA.   This one scored a 93 on Beer Advocate , so he isn't fooling around.   It was interesting to taste a few different versions from Stone being that we were just at the Bavarian Lodge where Stone did a takeover .  Of course, Dr. Jeff was there on opening night as a good craft beer advocate *should* be. Here's the story on the back of the big bottle: After that, he brought out a can of Heady Topper The Alchemist from Vermont.  This one has a score of 100 !  I think that's the first 100 I've ever had.  And, maybe it was the age of this can, but I liked other beers better that night.   However,

Over the weekend, Dr. Jeff brought over a flight of sours for us to taste along with some pizza and besides the nice conversation and friendship, these were the standouts:   Allagash FV 13 , Perennial Von Pampelmuse and Allagash Farm to Face .   He's done this before - here's the series of stouts that he brought earlier this Spring and one of the sours from earlier this summer .  This time....I liked the two Allgash's, but the peach one stood out for me.  I believe that they're brewed with different processes aside from being different fruits. If you head to the links for each of the beers above, you'll see that the two Allgash ones score very high on BeerAdvocate but the Perennial one isn't scored.  When Dr. Jeff brings and shares knowledge around various beers, they're always really good and/or rare ones.  He's pretty passionate about beers and spends plenty of time at Binny's finding interesting things.  Making pizza and sharing some of

Dr. Jeff brought over this Terreux Fruct Passion Fruit Berliner Weissbier from The Bruery for one of his beer tastings recently.  There aren't enough ratings over on Beer Advocate, so it isn't rated, but based on the other things he brought, I'm guessing it will rank pretty highly.  I tend to like these fruity-wheat beers (that's what this is, right??? I'm *so* not a beer sommelier!), and this one was interesting.  Can't drink tons of it, but enjoyed my half-a-glass.

Last weekend, we had some friends over and had a little pizza party and beer tasting.  The husband of the pair, is a crazy beer guy.  I mean...like totally a beer guy.  As big of a craft beer expert as I've seen and that says something when you think about Nat's two brothers who are big craft beer guys. Well...it turns out that Natalie likes stouts.  Me?  Not so much.  But...I'm always up for a tasting in a little glass of just about anything.  Above are three of the (I think) five or six stouts that they brought and we drank.  Did I love them?  Nah.  But they were all unique.  And all interesting. On the left is Prairie Pirate Bomb.   Which has a 98 on Beer Advocate . In the middle is Founders Kentucky Breakfast Stout.   Which has a 100 on Beer Advocate ! On the right is Perennial 17 Mint Chocolate Stout.   Which has an 89 on Beer Advocate . Despite the scores, I *think* I liked the Mint Chocolate Stout from Perennial the best.  It tasted like - and smelled just