What are you Drinking?

[Ed Anger]

I'd like Sam Adams to go bankrupt, just because of their commercials.

[derspiess]

Yeah, the regular Austrian brews will generally be around 5%. There's a few special brews like Samichlaus which go into the double digits.

And some breweries do christmas bock, which obviously is higher, too. Though I guess my favorite bock remains Kloster Andechs Doppelbock (bit hard to get here).

Samichlaus is too strong to be sold in Ohio, so I have to buy it in Kentucky. Just finished the last one I had from the 2011 bottling.

[Caliga]

Samichlaus is too strong to be sold in Ohio

[derspiess]

Samichlaus is too strong to be sold in Ohio

It's 13% and the limit for beer in Ohio is 12%. 

[Caliga]

Weird.  I know some states have an upper proof limit on fermented beverages but I thought they were all Great Plains/Western states like Utah, Kansas or Oklahoma or something like that.

[derspiess]

NPR ran this story on All Things Considered yesterday about the emergence of canned craft beer:

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/06/10/320645347/brewers-have-been-all-bottled-up-but-now-theyre-canning-it

It mentions a couple Cincinnati breweries that opened last year and opted to can their beer rather than bottle it. 

[MadImmortalMan]

The only one I know who tried it in the last five or six years was Buckbean. They went under. They had some bad problems with product consistency that earned them a bad rep.

[derspiess]

Oskar Blues, Sixpoint, and Bells have all done it pretty successfully.

[derspiess]

Apparently this is building up as the next manufactured outrage:

http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/breaking/chi-beer-ingredients-petition-20140611,0,86312.story

On one hand I think breweries ought to disclose what additives they use in their beer.  And if people get turned off by this or that in their Budweiser or Coors, it should help the craft breweries.

On the other hand, it's much ado about nothing.  OMG they use starches/sugars from GMO corn (leaving aside the fact that corn ought not to be in beer in the first place).  And some of the "controversial" ingredients are being misrepresented-- like the charge that Guinness uses fish bladders in their beer.  They use isinglass, which is a clarifying agent that is derived and processed from the the dried swim bladder of a fish, yeah.  But that stuff coagulates with yeast and drops to the bottom of the vat.  It does not end up in the final product.

[derspiess]

Lol local brewery made what I guess is a Hungarian Hefeweizen:

[Ed Anger]

 

[derspiess]

So my local homebrew shop ran a special on ingredients.  I bought kits for a Raspberry Wheat and a Red Rye Pale Ale.

I'm a little disappointed that the Raspberry Wheat kit has raspberry extract flavoring instead of something more natural.  I plan on using canned raspberry puree instead but I don't even know if that's something commonly carried in grocery stores. 

[MadImmortalMan]

I'm at Mammoth right now having an Epic IPA. 

[derspiess]

I think I had that from a can a while back.  Good west coast IPA.

[garbon]

Canada Dry and Crown Royal