G&T

QUOTE (ptatc @ Aug 19, 2009 -> 07:40 PM) Charleston SC. New Orleans Bar Harbor MA. Seafood and fantastic local breweries Maine? Or is there a Bar Harbor Massachusetts? In any event I'll be in Bar Harbor, Maine for the weekend. Should be there around noon tomorrow. Of course there's a hurricane coming. Awesome.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Aug 19, 2009 -> 03:18 PM) My favorite class as an undergraduate was limnology. Nerd.

Ithyphallophobia keeps me from watching porn. strike that. Japanophobia keeps me away from my Honda

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Aug 19, 2009 -> 03:03 PM) I'm actually starting to salivate thinking about this year's crop of Oktoberfest offerings. The party starts this year in München September 19th, so we'll start seeing the new festbiers coming in soon. Victory has their Festbier out now (assuming the bottles I saw were fresh). I think I saw the Shipyard Pumpkin out as well.

Can't help myself: Cacophobia keeps me out of Wisconsin.

Bolshephobia has kept me from...uh...going to Russia...er something.

QUOTE (hogan873 @ Aug 18, 2009 -> 08:34 AM) I've had some very good Dogfish Head beers. And I've had a few that were so-so. Their Raison D-Etre is fantastic, and the fall seasonal Punkin Ale is top notch. Punkin Ale is really good. As much as I love the summer brews, I'm starting to get excited about the fall seasonals. Pumpkin ales will be tops on my list.

QUOTE (Pants Rowland @ Aug 19, 2009 -> 02:16 PM) Xenophobia kept me away from this thread until I got to know it better. Zemmiphobia keeps me out of the sewers.

Tough call. All the moves have made it difficult to say they aren't underachievers. I can say that they don't seem to understand the urgency of winning games against bad teams. They are about to enter a stretch of 23 games against stiff competition: Red Sox, Yankees, Cubs, West Coast Trip, Twins, etc. Can't be settling for series wins when you have a chance to sweep against the Royals and Orioles.

QUOTE (fathom @ Aug 17, 2009 -> 10:13 PM) If Terry Boers is to believed, and he's almost never wrong about Sox stuff, CQ will be in RF next year and Pods in LF with Dye gone. Terry has been very adamant that what he is hearing is what the Sox are thinking RIGHT NOW. The fact that Pods isn't being re-signed right now, to me, shows that they want another option, but are doubtful that anything else is out there. Oh and Terry has been wrong for years about PK being traded.

QUOTE (MHizzle85 @ Aug 17, 2009 -> 08:56 PM) Very much so. Xerox me the jokes and I'll review them later.

I don't know if this is elsewhere so I threw it here: ESPN

Uhh...I feel like I've been missing out on some, dare I say, crappy jokes?

QUOTE (knightni @ Aug 17, 2009 -> 06:12 PM) What's the story/rules involving sending alcoholic beverages through the mail/UPS/FedEx? Are there dos/don'ts? Read this article from RateBeer. Pack well.

Anyone getting Bells is quite fortunate. Can't get it up here. But last time I was in Chicago I had the Expedition. Good stuff as I recall. I think some age would have been great for it. Definitely one brewery that I miss dearly, along with Founders.

QUOTE (hogan873 @ Aug 17, 2009 -> 12:27 PM) In the past few months I was finally able to partake in the food and beverage at Flossmoor Station and Gordon Biersch. I tried the samplers at both (Flossmoor had a 12 beer sampler!) and found both places to have very good brews. The Milky Way Stout at Flossmoor and the Hefeweizen at Gordon Biersch were standouts. Sweet stouts are an awesome thing. I recommend the Left Hand Milk Stout.

QUOTE (hogan873 @ Aug 17, 2009 -> 12:27 PM) Does anyone else reviews beers at ratebeer.com? I do as a matter of fact.

Frankly I didn't expect you to come up with 5. You clearly have a wider range of styles you gravitate towards than I do at this point. I like to try to get back into some of the styles that I didn't enjoy the first time around as my palette develops. I'm not surprised to read about the Cantillon. "Acquired taste" is an understatement. I think the Avery will be a good one. I haven't had the Brabant but I did have the Avery 15 which was a farmhouse. I'd consider it an underrated beer according to RateBeer. I thought it was pretty solid. In fact, I was swirling the yeast out of it at the end to get more of the funk. By the way, someone is gonna have to get into this thread and help me out. Jim's going to get bored here really soon.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Aug 16, 2009 -> 10:30 PM) Cantillon Gueuze is probably in my top 5 favorite beers, which is saying something. Can't get it here, but I've been able to beg the beer store shopkeeper to stock Lindeman's Gueuze and I can get Boon on the other side of the state. If you ever get to the Monk's Cafe in Philadelphia, you will fall in love with their draft Cantillon Geuze. Cantillon actually sends the owner casks of unblended young and old lambic and he hand blends on site. A couple of those to compliment a pot of their musslels steamed in lambic and shallots and you'd think you were in a cafe in Brussels. I have to make more beer trips around the northeast because there is some great drinking and eating to be done around here. Philly is a place a few people have told me to get to for some eating. I actually made a Lindeman's Framboise ice cream a few months back. We have the ice cream maker attachment for the Kitchen-Aid mixer. Sounds kinda weird, but it was damn good. Speaking of food and beer, I'll be heading to Bar Harbor, Maine later this week and this weekend. I'm looking forward to reliving one of my favorite eating experiences at Beal's Lobster Pound. There is nothing like fresh caught Maine lobster and a Bar Harbor Real Ale, brewed right on the island. The beer is decent enough, but the lobster is out of this world, and beer matches really nicely. By the way, what else might you put into your top 5?

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Aug 16, 2009 -> 08:08 PM) Glad you're digging the Punpkin. Sounds like you'd really enjoy gueuze lambics and Flemmish browns and some of the other wonderfully tart styles, yes? Yeah I enjoy it. I made the mistake of jumping in with a Cantillon Geuze early on in my beer hunting. That blew out my palette. I got back into it with some less abrasive offerings and now I try to seek out some funk.

Poured the Bam Biere. This is something special. Fruity and funky. Nice tart taste. There's quite a bit going on here and I'm eager for it to warm up.

QUOTE (FlaSoxxJim @ Aug 16, 2009 -> 02:35 PM) You're going to really like the Bam Biere I think. I had it a couple of weeks ago and can't wait to do another. Didn't rank up there with the best bière de gardes I've had, but very nice all the same. I don't think I've ever had a Corsendonk beer I didn't like, though unless it's a seasonal or other limited release other Trappist or abbey beers usually end up coming hoe with me instead. Hops can be an acquired taste for sure. I have a friend who is an avid craft beer enthusiast who for years only did the malty side of the beer world. We'd get him to try aggressively hopped beers just to see the icky face he'd make. Over time, though, he matured into a serious hophead. Well my problem with hops is less about the flavor and more about the assault on my stomach. I can handle one hoppy beer and that's about it. Problem is I make the mistake of getting a bomber and feeling awful. That said, Double Simcoe is some pretty good stuff which had enough malt to make it interesting for me. 90 Minute is good too. However, when I tried Alesmith Yulesmith, that didn't feel so great.

Unfortunately, Stingo doesn't appear to be available around here. Nevertheless, my dinner was paired with something I've been meaning to try and just never did: Corsendonk Pater. I'm a huge Belgian beer junky, and the Corsendonk Christmas is not one to be missed (though it is decidedly on the sweet side), so I figured this deserved a go. Nice deep brown color with a fluffy head and great retention. Full of port wine aromas along with chocolate and some cherry and raisins. There's nothing like Belgian yeast. For a darker beer, it sits light on the palate and the carbonation makes the flavors dance. Very nice traditional abbey ale. I'd say the beauty of this one was balance. Plenty of abbey ales can turn out to be overly sweet, but this had just enough hops to keep it from becoming dessert beer. Of course, sweeter is always better to me. Hops don't do much for me (even though I keep trying). The beer that's waiting for me tonight is a bomber of Jolly Pumpkin Bam Biere. Traditional farmhouse ale weighing in at a light 4.5%, as it should. I didn't know that Jolly Pumpkin was even offered here, but I wandered the bottle shop and stumbled on it. Pretty excited about it.

There's a quote somewhere about Boras wanting to remake the way draft picks are valued and the Nationals basically told him they won't be a part of it. Here it is: Foxsports

No one should expect the Royals to help anyone out.