Today I am the Daily Devotee (or DD as it has been shortened to [no it doesnt mean dumb as dogshit]) on ratebeer.com. I wonder if this will attract mre people to this blog?

Last night I did a little 5 year vertical of a beer. Each year the Anchor Brewing Company releases a holiday beer, Our Special Ale. Its a spiced beer and ever year the recipe is slightly altered. I had a 5 year vertical 2002-2006. One of the fun things to do with beer is these kind of verticals. See how the beer changes and evolves. If you are interested the 2005 was my favorite.

Have you ever drank warm beer? How about hot beer? Well, tonight I did. A few beers out there are made to be mulled or heated up. These beers are usually either cherry heavy or very spiced up. So for the holiday season I thought I would experiment a little bit. Tonight I warmed up THIS in a mug and a microwave. It was a little weird to try to consume beer this way. In the end it was ok, check out a full RATING. I have another big bottle of beer to mull tomorrow. After that I doubt I will try it again.


On Thursday I bottled my holiday beer, its an Irish ale with spices in it, dont worry not enough to make it mull-worthy. It should carbonate in 4 weeks (hopefully) we could see whats up with it then.

Holiday time and beer, for those that dont know a lot of breweries push out "holiday" or "christmas" beers this time of year. Often these are spiced beers but for a lot of Belgian breweries its just a special stronger beer. Fortunately, I found an aged St. Feuillien Noel on the selves of a local NY beer store. Also bought a new Italian beer (a bit disappointing) and another yearly christmas special. A few things came out of this,


a) I got to share these beers with my family for the holiday.

b) I really think I can cut myself off from shopping in NY. Let me explain more. This store was always my utopia, it seemed to not play by the rules when it came to commercialism. Well, without going into detail, this is no longer the situation. After shopping here I know I really dont need it and an every-other-month trip to Jersey may just suffice. Of course, some aged treats are still possibly and the store wont be cut off completely like a certain Long Island place.

c) I really live in a Christian society. Despite, the one company that obviously caters to a different market, Hebrew, hehe get it, its all Chrsitmas beer. By the way, I have a nice vertical of anniversary beers from here to crack open soon. There is more here but its really useless to continue.

Tonight I had homemade (DELICIOUS) mexican with a nice hoppy west coast beer. This is also the first time I had a beer and wanted it to be more hoppy. Man, who am I.


But despite it being Hanuakka (why, how do you spell it?)I will be basking in the glory of some nice Christmas beers in the next few days, maybe even a vertical if I am lucky enough to fit it in.



P.S. new obsessions: hopefully one day homebrewing will take over as the overarching hobby. And to tie everything together I should bottle my own spiced holiday beer sometime this week.

Went to the Captain Lawrence Brewery yesterday for a little gathering. Lots of ratebeerians came by and got to meet many of the newer guys on the site. Lots of good beers going around but I felt jaded. I remember when I would die to try the Dark Lord, yesterday I was like been there done that. Despite all the good stuff there I wasn't even all that interested in everything. I was really happy to see the people though and still spent plenty of money in the beer stores in Jersey. I felt in myself that I was jaded by all the beer I had already tried and there was nothing new for me to see there. In hindsight, I didnt like that I was feeling that way. This could start me on a slippery slope I dont want to go down.

I went to a local brewpub yesterday that I really enjoy. There are not a lot of good brewpubs around this area. Here is the skinny, as a restaurant the place sucks. As a place for a good beer it’s really good. Made the trip out there specifically to try the Smoked Cherry Dunkelweisse. Just sounds delicious. While there they tapped the Imperial Pilsner, which was great as well. The brewer Joe is always a very jovial guy, cleaned up recently as well. My advice, come out before 7 on a weeknight, sit at the bar, and enjoy your beer with the half price appetizers.

Want to see which brewpub? Well, you got to check my ratings -------->

I have been ignoring my own blog what a shame. Nothing too big happened beer wise. But I think I need to talk about how cheap I am. Not am I only a beer hunter I am a bargain beer hunter in fact. There is a small beer distributor in Ronkonkoma and they have the best prices. The selection is ok, I mean their best thing is they carry the Southampton stuff. They dont get it first and they dont sell the Old Herb but they are the cheapest and I mean by far. For their region the are about 2-3 bucks cheaper. Plus everything else they carry is cheap as well, its basically a selection worth of a visit but not true beer geekdom. But I was considering curtailing my beer buying. Only buy from this one guy. He has the stuff I would like to drink in general and of course its cheap. He gets the Southampton beers and eventually gets some new stuff. Also, he orders the Saranac carmel Porter ever year. So basically, he would have me covered as long as I didnt need to be the first alchy on my block to try the new "hot" beer. And even then I could do a Jersey trip every few months as well. Only list the beers this store carries as tradables, yada, yada, yada.

I am bit sick tonight so I am drink tea instead of beer. I was thinking Lipton is probably like the Bud of teas. And the Herbal Seasonings stuff is like Heiniken. So why yank my chain and drink the Herbal Seasoning, I'll stick to the Lipton. Hey I am all up for real tea from China but only one obsessive hobby at a time.

I guess this is my first "other musings" post, partially. I promise to return fully to beer once I feel better.