Fantastic beer! I happen to sell St Bernardus. Last year some representatives from the brewery and their US importer were in town for the Craft Brewers Conference. We had an event at a local bar where we opened mags of Abt 12 that had been aged for 10, 6, and 4 years, and had fresh Abt 12 on tap. It was quite the experience.

Pretty decent little 4.7 abv ipa. Can't always handle the strong stuff.

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Degenerate Pinheads weekend

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This thread has been dormant for too long. I give you one of my favorite fall beers.

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Pintastic is next weekend. It's my first time going. Have heard nothing but good things so I'm pretty excited, and the bonus is, going to stop at Treehouse on the way to pick up some suds for the weekend.

I'm generally not into farmhouse ales or most pumpkin beers. Somehow Hardywood's combination of the two works for me.

Picked up some heavy hitters

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Beer is so gross

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touché on the Allagash! Also had it on tap while back. If you can find it, highly recommend Weihenstephaner Vitus

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VA peeps. I'm going to be in Norfolk next week for work.
Looking at a map now, I'm going to be real close to both Benchtop Brewing and Smartmouth Brewing. Any intel on either?

Ahhhh BEER!

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2x20litre, well it’s my birthday the 31st
Been trying to get this for a while now, at last!

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Congrats on getting them. Always interesting to see what beers are difficult to get in different parts of the world but then are easy in other parts. I think the hardest beers for me to find, being in the States, in barrels were....

Weihenstephaner Vitus
Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale
Firestone Walker Parabola

Don't forget to store those upside down before tapping.

Meee, I like to drink different types of beer

Not usually a big fan of IPAs but this one was actually pretty pleasant. It's not bitter like most of them.

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Yeah this is why I typically talk people out of getting a draught system. I have a 6 tap system and it’s been used, mostly, for parties. Occasionally when I could get a limited beer it was great to have on tap.

Love me some nice creamy milkstout! The Nerdy Professor was a pretty tasty sour too.

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Mmmmm Barleywine!

My wife got me a BrewDog advent calendar this year. Should be a fun one.

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Anyone ever shipped beer before? Is there a service you can pay for? Or?

Someone I know traded a few beers with a pinsider in another state. He packed it very well and shipped it UPS. When they asked him what the package contained he told them maple syrup.

I've shipped beer numerous times and never had an issue. I always used FedEx (Don't use USPS as it's a gov't entity and is illegal). Instead of taking a package to a FedEx location I always hand it to a driver. Be surprised as to how many trucks are out there. Drive around your town for 5 min and you'll see several. This way I am never asked what's in the package and the fewer times your package is handled the better.

I've shipped hundreds of bottles of alcohol and I have always used USPS. You are fine as long as it is packed well. Remember, USPS has to have a warrant to open a package to inspect, private shippers like FedEx or UPS can open for any reason they see fit. Shipping alcohol is also against ToS of the private companies.

I think you're fine with anyone as long as you don't get caught. I know a few people that FedEx caught and all that happened was they received a letter advising not to do it.

With USPS being a Federal entity, shipping anything with them that's "illegal" makes it a federal offense. Have a friend that works for USPS and he advised that he's never seen anyone get busted for shipping alcohol but has seen "packages with alcohol get lost" . He also said they look more for people shipping stuff via Media Mail, that's not media, then they look for alcohol.

I think you can use anyone as it's not like any of use are shipping in bulk. If you get caught, move onto another carrier.

Check it out! The beer Santa stopped at my house while I was out of town playing pinball at District 82. Excited to try some of these!

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Damn! I haven't seen Hoppin' Frog stuff in about a decade.

That Backyard Rye is tasty but definitely needs some time.

They never really seemed to want to branch out like other breweries. Several years back I purchased a sixtel of their Silk Porter off them, he was reluctant to sell to me as I was in PA and it wasn't his market. He just seemed to be satisfied with distributing to smaller area.

Wow a Sixtel of that would be awesome!

You're in my area so I don't need to tell you how many great breweries in CA alone just don't seem to have any ambition to grow. Maybe that's a blessing. I was in the industry for a while and saw the oversaturation coming, and it's a shame I can't even find fresh Dogfish, Alpine, etc., on the shelves anymore.

A recent trip to Jester King had me floored. Between the pandemic and last years heatwave they've changed the entire business model. Only the barn is open, no brewery taproom anymore. And they're focusing on pizzas, which were fantastic I have to say, but not why we visited. They can and bottle the entire production, so there's no longer anything on draft at the brewery! They're shipping it all out to distro, and a few weeks after I got back home I started seeing those same bottles I traveled for, available at my local shop. Tragic.

Anyone else take the plunge on this one?

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Yikes. 28% ABV is a bit much for my taste. I prefer to stay around 7 to 9%.

Certainly understand. I like the higher abv beers. My favorite is Black Tuesday which fluctuates between 19-21%.

Utopias is more like drinking a cognac than a beer. Issue with it is, they change it every year so it’s a gamble to purchase it when u could wind up not liking it.

That BrewDog It's a Beaut was better than expected. Bought it on the gimmick alone but actually thought it was decent for what it was.

Backyard BCBS was the only one I didn't try, but Angels Envy>Eagle Rare>Banana Foster>Regular>Prop.

I'm sadly down to 3x DB VSOD from Rev, 22 kbbs, a couple of dark lord, and a 7 yr vert of bcbs reg in the fridge. Probably for the best because when I've got BA beers...well...I drink them.

That bananas foster was not bad!!!!

Still like the original better!

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Haven't tried them yet

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Not that it’s bad, regular better and over half less price wise

Here's my imgur album from when I built our draft tower/system

https://imgur.com/gallery/treZRpP

Very interesting. Thank you for posting the link. Approx how many ounces of beer do you lose when cleaning the lines?

We have reached bourbon barrel aged stout market saturation in eastern Pa.

Tons of bourbon county. Distributor didn’t even bring in any Fifty Fifty Eclipse this year. Most variants are still on the shelf from last year.

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Our draft cooler is beneath the draft tower in the basement. The lines are approximately 20-30' long (depending on which wall of the cooler they go to. We lose about 30-40 oz per line.

I have a tavern head couplers, faucet loops and have a pump to clean them. So we create a series loop through 6 draft lines at a time and can clean/flush the system from one spot (the draft tower). Would be nice to do all of them simultaneously in a series loop but doing over 6 at a time would over pressure the lines.

Thanks for posting! I remember a bartender saying his boss would get angry about the amount of beer loss when cleaning lines. He said that their lines were fairly long and they also had 40 different beers on tap. Most were Belgian or expensive craft brews.

Is there any waste when retapping kegs or do you do a final flush with water after cleaning so you can pour immediately without discarding any beer?

I fucking love beer! But a bit to much and I had to stop, it’ll be 3 years in March. I needed to take a break. It’s been a good thing. But I really miss me some ipa’s, I think about beer all the time still. I have found some non alcoholic craft beers and I do enjoy those from time to time.

Gave up smoking weed too. But I get some liquid concentrate that put in a drink to make a “cocktail”.

Been going to a tap house since March, revolving 25 taps. Trying things I never thought I would before. Inspired my wife to make a podcast about beer.

There's waste retapping and refilling the lines. When we clean them we first use a chemical, then a long water flush, then you have to refill the lines and push enough beer so the water is completely out of the lines.