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potownrob wrote:not much of a beer man...HARD APPLE AND PEAR CIDERS FTW!!!!!!!!!!





n.b. these are my favorites i've tried so far. woodchuck pear is not good, and the other pear ciders i've tried aren't that good either, while kopparberg is incredible. woodchuck is my favorite apple cider i've tried in recent years. i know there are better ones out there, but our beer stores don't have the best selections, not even half-time has a real good selection of ciders...

Welp, now I know whenever I see rob we need to have pizza and cider. I'm not a huge beer guy, but I love cider. Like you, the selection hasn't been great in the area but it has slowly been improving over the past couple of years. Trader Joe's has a brand of cider that is cheap (Newton's Folly - not bad but it tastes kind of cheap). More recently, I've had Shock Top's cider/Belgian wheat combo which was pretty good. The more regular one I've had as a base-line is Angry Orchard. I will say that I went to a small-ish wedding last year that had the post-wedding dinner at a fancy-pub-style-restaurant where I had an imported from England cider. It was amazing and I can't even remember the name...

Squint wrote: I will say that I went to a small-ish wedding last year that had the post-wedding dinner at a fancy-pub-style-restaurant where I had an imported from England cider. It was amazing and I can't even remember the name...

Oh, I had that stuff. It's actually from Wales. It's spelled "Smith", but pronounced "Throat-warbler-Mangrove" - you know how goofy those Welsh can be with spelling!

Rope-Pusher wrote:

Squint wrote: I will say that I went to a small-ish wedding last year that had the post-wedding dinner at a fancy-pub-style-restaurant where I had an imported from England cider. It was amazing and I can't even remember the name...

Oh, I had that stuff. It's actually from Wales. It's spelled "Smith", but pronounced "Throat-warbler-Mangrove" - you know how goofy those Welsh can be with spelling!

I knylllylylyylow wlllylyyylyyhylyalylyllyt you mlylylyllean.

Squint wrote: Welp, now I know whenever I see rob we need to have pizza and cider. I'm not a huge beer guy, but I love cider. Like you, the selection hasn't been great in the area but it has slowly been improving over the past couple of years. Trader Joe's has a brand of cider that is cheap (Newton's Folly - not bad but it tastes kind of cheap). More recently, I've had Shock Top's cider/Belgian wheat combo which was pretty good. The more regular one I've had as a base-line is Angry Orchard. I will say that I went to a small-ish wedding last year that had the post-wedding dinner at a fancy-pub-style-restaurant where I had an imported from England cider. It was amazing and I can't even remember the name...

angry orchard is pretty good, at least a couple of the flavors. I think I had an elderberry one that had a unique taste not typical of hard ciders, and then one or two of the mainstays were decent.

Squint wrote:

Rope-Pusher wrote:

Squint wrote: I will say that I went to a small-ish wedding last year that had the post-wedding dinner at a fancy-pub-style-restaurant where I had an imported from England cider. It was amazing and I can't even remember the name...

Oh, I had that stuff. It's actually from Wales. It's spelled "Smith", but pronounced "Throat-warbler-Mangrove" - you know how goofy those Welsh can be with spelling!

I knylllylylyylow wlllylyyylyyhylyalylyllyt you mlylylyllean.

Precisely!

Pumpkin beer is hitting the shelves in force. I want to try as many as possible this year. As basic white girl (BWG) as pumpkin flavor is, its the only truly seasonal beer in my mind. Just about everything else is just a variation on a style rather than a distinct flavor.

So today I picked up this:

Left to right the Beer Advocate ratings (BA scores/ Bros) are 88/91, 90/81, 84/XX, 83/88, 80/87, 76/XX.

Very nice.

I noticed that over the years I've switched entirely to craft brew, and probably 90% of the stuff that I drink is local.

Having a Dallas Blonde from Deep Ellum right now; pizza is in the oven getting baked.

I drink almost exclusively craft. Sam Adams and Harpoon are as mainstream as I get. At least both are local to me though.

That said, most of what I drink is New England and New York beer. Im pretty sure thats similar in area to Texas on its own.

Living in Salem means the beer selection is phenomenal. Between having a university, the witch stuff, and the substantial hipster population I could probably try several different beers every day and not run out. And thats just in one pizza place/cafe thing. A new law was passed to promote brewery construction in town too. A cider brewery has actually just opened a taproom a short walk from my house. Its made in Salem from Massachusetts apples. Bunch of varieties that are all pretty good.

its not exactly beer, but i like hard root beer. the "not your fathers" is hard to get around here, so i've been drinking coney island.

watkins wrote:I drink almost exclusively craft. Sam Adams and Harpoon are as mainstream as I get. At least both are local to me though.

That said, most of what I drink is New England and New York beer. Im pretty sure thats similar in area to Texas on its own.

Living in Salem means the beer selection is phenomenal. Between having a university, the witch stuff, and the substantial hipster population I could probably try several different beers every day and not run out. And thats just in one pizza place/cafe thing. A new law was passed to promote brewery construction in town too. A cider brewery has actually just opened a taproom a short walk from my house. Its made in Salem from Massachusetts apples. Bunch of varieties that are all pretty good.

Yeah, I discovered a store nearby that focuses on wine, craft beer and cigars. Huge selections of all sorts of craft beers - multiple large isles. Then there's the humidor! I doubt I'll ever get to trying every craft brew at that store.

wannabe wrote:its not exactly beer, but i like hard root beer. the "not your fathers" is hard to get around here, so i've been drinking coney island.

Not Your Father's recently showed up in town which was a total surprise. So we ended up doing quite a bit of research on them to find out what happened.

It is being distributed by PBR which is why it expanded from like 4 states to 20something in the past couple of years.

The story behind the recipe is a load of crap (not that it really matters - but historically, the probability of what he claimed happened is next to zero).

The nutritional info is IMPOSSIBLE to find. There's a guy that sent off a few bottles to a lab to analyze it... ~330 calories a bottle and doing backwards math from % alcohol to calories with rough guess as remainder of calories provided by sugar... We guessed ~50-55g of sugar per bottle.

It's a pretty good root beer - doesn't like much like alcohol at all - and you SHOULD try it with ice cream for an adult root beer float. But don't drink a lot of them quickly.

The mystery of who actually owns the company now is confusing. I didn't bother trying to delve into that too much, but it's not exactly a small craft brewery anymore.

The root beer is tasty though.

yeah, i drank a coney's island one once before food after having not had much food before hand and my friends asked why i wasn't sober...um no food? lightweight? Doesn't taste like alcohol, which is probably a bad thing in the long run. I'm not a fan of root beer floats, but if i ever get vanilla ice cream (mudslides!) and alc root beer at the same time i'll try it. it is rather expensive (to me, i'm not used to buying 6's of alcohol....first place i found it, a specialty beverage place aka craft beer, wine, hard alc), it was 13.30 for a 6 (.60 was bottle deposit). the other place (grocery store/meijer) its 9.99 before bottle deposit, so...cheaper!)

wannabe wrote:it was 13.30 for a 6 (.60 was bottle deposit). the other place (grocery store/meijer) its 9.99 before bottle deposit, so...cheaper!)

Yikes. That's cheap for me. Ive spent more than $15 on a four pack of beer on multiple occasions. Sometimes $18 for a bottle.

Then again I am a bit of a beer snob.

wannabe wrote:yeah, i drank a coney's island one once before food after having not had much food before hand and my friends asked why i wasn't sober...um no food? lightweight? Doesn't taste like alcohol, which is probably a bad thing in the long run. I'm not a fan of root beer floats, but if i ever get vanilla ice cream (mudslides!) and alc root beer at the same time i'll try it. it is rather expensive (to me, i'm not used to buying 6's of alcohol....first place i found it, a specialty beverage place aka craft beer, wine, hard alc), it was 13.30 for a 6 (.60 was bottle deposit). the other place (grocery store/meijer) its 9.99 before bottle deposit, so...cheaper!)

Pretty sure Not Your Father's Root Beer here was $11 or $12 for a 6 pack in the grocery store regular price - we don't have bottle deposits here though.

I'm more of a cider person usually if I'm going to have a drink. I'm just happy there are more of them around than there used to be even 5 years ago.