West Michigan = the SEC of breweries?

[Goober McTuber]

New Holland sucks out loud.

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

Petoskey Brewing, Block Brewing, Old Nation, Odd Side Ales, Grand Armory, among others, also got screwed. Frankly, I can't see any reason why Michigan beers wouldn't occupy every spot in the top 10.

So this means you've pretty much sampled every beer in the country? Far out, man...

Yes. Soon I will be as fat as you and as drunk as AP.

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

New Holland sucks out loud.

Actually...I can't really dispute that. They have like two good beers.

[Screw_Michigan]

You think dog cum tastes good as well, so how in the fuck do you think anybody's going to give fucks about your idea of what is good or bad?

Nice obsession, tard.

[Screw_Michigan]

Actually...I can't really dispute that. They have like two good beers.

So does that mean you won't visit their brewery/restaurant on Bridge?

[Mikey]

Petoskey Brewing, Block Brewing, Old Nation, Odd Side Ales, Grand Armory, among others, also got screwed. Frankly, I can't see any reason why Michigan beers wouldn't occupy every spot in the top 10.

Ballast Point and Firestone Walker are excellent.

You think dog cum tastes good as well, so how in the fuck do you think anybody's going to give fucks about your idea of what is good or bad?

Ballast Point is good but actually now part of Constellation Brands (Modelo, Corona, Pacifico, Robert Mondavi, etc, etc, etc).

Stone makes some great beer but not sure if you can call them a microbrewery anymore. They've expanded from Escondido to San Diego, Richmond, VA and Berlin.

A bunch of other great microbreweries around here as well. Too many to list, actually.

[BSmack]

Let's be real, if I can find your "microbrew" in my local supermarket, it is probably ceased to be a microbrew. That doesn't mean that it's a bad beer, just that it's I got enough distribution that the brewery has to be putting it out in massive quantities. Does it make it Budweiser? No. But it sure as hell isn't a place like the little brewery that I found on Mount Desert Island in Maine that has distribution locally and to Portland.

[Killian]

New Holland sucks out loud.

Actually...I can't really dispute that. They have like two good beers.

This is very true. And their Beer Barrel Bourbon is fucking awful.

A sneaky brewery is North Peak. Good selection and still are pretty small.

Two Hearted is my favorite beer, by far. Hopslam is incredibly overrated.

[Goober McTuber]

You obviously have shit for taste. And a taste for shit.

[Mikey]

Based on the thread title, am I to understand that West Michigan has two breweries that seem really good because there's nothing any good to compare to, and the rest are basically Group of Five quality?

[Dr_Phibes]

I guess if you're full of shit, you might as well talk out of your ass. The brewery is known for producing extremely well-balanced beers. That means adding a proper measure of malt to your IPAs/APAs.

Nothing spells balance in ingredients with a name like Hopocalypse. I have yet to see you post a tin without a lightning bolt, a skeleton riding a motorcycle or a hop-shaped cloud over a nuclear target posted on the label.

More isn't necessarily more.

If you were the coach of the Green Bay Packers, would you replace the secondary with four quarterbacks? Thinking you'd score four times as many touchdowns? Of course not. That would be stupid.

[Dr_Phibes]

A free market is cool like that, comrade Phibes. :wink:

Not really, the free market destroyed brewing. With the advent of injecting carbon dioxide and nitrogen into your keg, you get a nice fizzy drink. Drop the temperature from cellar (10 centigrade) to + 1-3, your taste buds are effectively dead. Cask ale took up shelf space, secondary fermentation took time, not conducive to the bottom line, you can't ship product fast enough. Hipsters (and T1B) sticking their pinky out while sipping and denigrating the big brewers is truly an act of irony.

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

[Goober McTuber]

I guess if you're full of shit, you might as well talk out of your ass. The brewery is known for producing extremely well-balanced beers. That means adding a proper measure of malt to your IPAs/APAs.

Nothing spells balance in ingredients with a name like Hopocalypse. I have yet to see you post a tin without a lightning bolt, a skeleton riding a motorcycle or a hop-shaped cloud over a nuclear target posted on the label.

More isn't necessarily more.

If you were the coach of the Green Bay Packers, would you replace the secondary with four quarterbacks? Thinking you'd score four times as many touchdowns? Of course not. That would be stupid.

Your response makes no sense whatsoever. I talked about balance, you ignored that and talked about the opposite. The brewery I was talking about is local. I'm not familiar with Hopocalypse. I googled it and it sounds nasty. It's made by a brewery in California.

I can't remember ever posting a picture of a beer can like you described. Or any beer can for that matter. Your football analogy was moronic, but what do Canucks know about football anyway? About as much as they know about beer. Your post reads as if you were 11 cans into a 12-pack of Molsons.

[smackaholic]

The micro beer homerism here really is comical.

Guess what douchebags, last I checked, brewers are able to import incredients. Hell, they can even import the water if they need to. This means brewers, no matter where they are, are capable of making good beer and shit beer. Some are certainly better than others. Some places such as Portland have larger numbers of them. I suspect the number of legit micro-brewers is well into the hundreds, probably thousands. And I am sure they all make good beer.

I'm pretty sure they don't. There is a ton of shitty microbrewed beer on the market. Because everybody and their brother wants to be a microbrewer.

To me, micro beer homerism makes sense in that you're getting beer at its freshest when you're buying a local product. Has nothing to do with local ingredients. The really good microbrewers here that I've talked to make annual sabbaticals to the U&L to contract for hops.

Goobs, your point regarding freshness would have been valid when you were young middle aged and goods were transported by conestoga wagon. Today we have these things called highway and tractor trailers. They can get a case of your finest micro-nectar to me in a day or two. Well, as long as they don't try to take the cross-bronx like I did last night.

This homerism is just plain garden variety homerism based in nothing more than douchebag homer being himself.

BTW, I never said there aren't shite beers out there. Just that there are plenty of good ones and they are spread throughout the country.

[Goober McTuber]

Yes, if you could have the brewer next day air you a sixer or two, you could have it fresh. The reality is that it probably spent a couple days or so at the brewery before getting picked up, and the God knows how long making its way across the country and then sitting in a distributor's warehouse. No way of knowing the conditions that beer is subjected to while travelling interstate, but it almost certainly is not travelling in a refrigerated trailer.

I'm sure you can subject Miller or Bud products to all sorts of temperature extremes without affecting the "flavor". Not so with unpastuerized craft beers. Hop-centric beers in particular are very sensitive to light. At the Ale Asylum, when the brewers take a beer to the outdoor beer garden, it's not in a pint glass but an aluminum mug with a cover. They claim that 5 minutes in direct sunlight alters the flavor, and that they can taste the difference. Fucking poseurs that they are.

My palate is not that refined, but I have no doubt that the milk tastes better at the teat than it does in that little carton with AP's picture on it.

[smackaholic]

Yes, if you could have the brewer next day air you a sixer or two, you could have it fresh. The reality is that it probably spent a couple days or so at the brewery before getting picked up, and the God knows how long making its way across the country and then sitting in a distributor's warehouse. No way of knowing the conditions that beer is subjected to while travelling interstate, but it almost certainly is not travelling in a refrigerated trailer.

I'm sure you can subject Miller or Bud products to all sorts of temperature extremes without affecting the "flavor". Not so with unpastuerized craft beers. Hop-centric beers in particular are very sensitive to light. At the Ale Asylum, when the brewers take a beer to the outdoor beer garden, it's not in a pint glass but an aluminum mug with a cover. They claim that 5 minutes in direct sunlight alters the flavor, and that they can taste the difference. Fucking poseurs that they are.

My palate is not that refined, but I have no doubt that the milk tastes better at the teat than it does in that little carton with AP's picture on it.

Holy crap!!!

A well thought out, reasonable post from goobs without any "you kids fukking morons get off my lawn".

Color me impressed.

Maybe there is something to getting it right off the teat, as you say. I must investigate this claim further, in the interest of science and fact finding, of course. There is a micro in my area that does friday night "tastings".

As for light being a problem, I guess this is why many of the micros are going to cans. Of course, there is that wonderful packaging material called cardboard that does a pretty fair job of blocking those taste killing death rays as well.

[smackaholic]

A free market is cool like that, comrade Phibes. :wink:

Not really, the free market destroyed brewing. With the advent of injecting carbon dioxide and nitrogen into your keg, you get a nice fizzy drink. Drop the temperature from cellar (10 centigrade) to + 1-3, your taste buds are effectively dead. Cask ale took up shelf space, secondary fermentation took time, not conducive to the bottom line, you can't ship product fast enough. Hipsters (and T1B) sticking their pinky out while sipping and denigrating the big brewers is truly an act of irony.

So, the USSR had quality brew then, right?

[Mikey]

As for light being a problem, I guess this is why many of the micros are going to cans.

Plus there's this...

Aluminum recycles more productively than glass.
Cans chill faster than bottles.
Cans take up less space and are easier to store.
Cans are in demand by beach-goers, campers and hikers, picnic people, boaters, lawn jockeys, and ballerinas.
Cans are sealed with nitrogen with no chance of air to oxidize the contents, while with bottles, which are purged with CO2, there’s a small chance of oxidation due to the seal between cap and bottle.

http://www.thebeveragejournal.com/beer-cans-vs-bottles/

[Dinsdale]

purged with CO2

I know you C&Ped that, but in the wine word, if you said "purged" rather than "sparged," you'd get laughed at (even though it's not the textbook definition of the word, at least as used in chemistry class). Wine is sparged with N2, rather than CO2, since it would tend to add fizz to the wine.

[Moving Sale]

^That post is a clusterfuck. Try reading comp and English next time you sanctimonious fuckhole.

[Mikey]

I'll have to admit, I don't know (or didn't) know about purging vs. sparging. However, this discussion is about beer.

Apparently in brewing sparging has a very specific, and different, definition than in wine making.

Sparging, also called lautering is a step at the end of the mashing process where hot water is run through the grain bed to extract a sweet liquid called wort. The wort is later boiled and fermented to produce beer.

At least according to brewiki

http://brewwiki.com/index.php/Sparging

[Moving Sale]

However, this discussion is about beer.

Don't mind Dims, he is an idiot masquerading as a know it all.

[Dinsdale]

I'll buy that, since I've never worked in a commercial brewery.

Funny thing, that -- IIRC, in chemistry class (been a long time), "sparging" is bubbling a gas up through a liquid. In winemaking, that's called "gassing," as in you gas the tank from the bottom to displace oxygen from the headspace.

Then again, lots of professions have lingo that don't fit with either the dictionary definition, nor with other professions.

[Goober McTuber]

Funny thing, that -- IIRC, in chemistry class (been a long time), "sparging" is bubbling a gas up through a liquid. In winemaking, that's called "gassing," as in you gas the tank from the bottom to displace oxygen from the headspace.

"Gassing" seems like the right term.

[Dinsdale]

For all of your overt hating on shutyomouth, you seem to have a lot in common.

[smackaholic]

Yes, if you could have the brewer next day air you a sixer or two, you could have it fresh. The reality is that it probably spent a couple days or so at the brewery before getting picked up, and the God knows how long making its way across the country and then sitting in a distributor's warehouse. No way of knowing the conditions that beer is subjected to while travelling interstate, but it almost certainly is not travelling in a refrigerated trailer.

I'm sure you can subject Miller or Bud products to all sorts of temperature extremes without affecting the "flavor". Not so with unpastuerized craft beers. Hop-centric beers in particular are very sensitive to light. At the Ale Asylum, when the brewers take a beer to the outdoor beer garden, it's not in a pint glass but an aluminum mug with a cover. They claim that 5 minutes in direct sunlight alters the flavor, and that they can taste the difference. Fucking poseurs that they are.

My palate is not that refined, but I have no doubt that the milk tastes better at the teat than it does in that little carton with AP's picture on it.

Assuming "right off the teat" really is that important, doesn't it pretty much say every place is "the best" and "the worst"? Just depends on the zip code of the rater.

[Goober McTuber]

For all of your overt hating on shutyomouth, you seem to have a lot in common.

I know this is a smack board and all, but that was pretty fucking harsh.

[Mikey]

Funny thing, that -- IIRC, in chemistry class (been a long time), "sparging" is bubbling a gas up through a liquid.

Maybe from your many years working in wastewater treatment?

It's a lot more energy efficient to use fans than compressed air, BTW.

[Dinsdale]

I just worked on the coatings in treatment plants (which I'm quite glad I don't do anymore. Paid decent, but I'm getting too old for that shit). But new or upgraded plants seemed to use huge blowers for the aeration (which in a modern plant, is combined with digestion, rather than separate processes).

[smackaholic]

For all of your overt hating on shutyomouth, you seem to have a lot in common.

I know this is a smack board and all, but that was pretty fucking harsh.

No shit. Goobs is ancient, untalented and gay, while I'm still relatively young, talented & extremely heterosexual.

Talented?

Sure. I have heard your music. There is definitely some talent there.

extremely hetero?

Probably. Morbidly obese rednecks have a tough time finding work as gay dudes.

Relatively young?

Compared to goobs?

Well aren't we setting the standard high, here.

[Goober McTuber]

while I'm still relatively young

Totally negated by the fact that you are 5'8" and 430 lbs. I have a much greater upside. Not in a Lutheresque way.

[Goober McTuber]

while I'm still relatively young

Totally negated by the fact that you are 5'8" and 430 lbs. I have a much greater upside. Not in a Lutheresque way.

6'1" & 350 (exaggeration factor accounted for). You're old enough to be my great, great, great, great grandfather.

And way too intelligent to be even remotely related to you.

[Goober McTuber]

And way too intelligent to be even remotely related to you.

My chihuahua's shit is more intelligent than you.

And what does that say about your intelligence, dumbass?

[smackaholic]

And way too intelligent to be even remotely related to you.

My chihuahua's shit is more intelligent than you. At least it knows when to quit.

What exactly is it your chihuahua's shit quits?

Residence in his intestine?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Dinsdale]

Had one of these yesterday. Fucking excellent.

[Goober McTuber]

You own a Chihuahua? Isn't that just precious.

[Goober McTuber]

Whatever happened to that old truism about dogs resembling their owners? This should be your dog:

[Shlomart Ben Yisrael]

Not overweight...just full of jizz.

Oh well...I suppose it's warmer than a FleshLight...

[MgoBlue-LightSpecial]

New Holland sucks out loud.

Actually...I can't really dispute that. They have like two good beers.

This is very true. And their Beer Barrel Bourbon is fucking awful.

A sneaky brewery is North Peak. Good selection and still are pretty small.

Two Hearted is my favorite beer, by far. Hopslam is incredibly overrated.

I've been to North Peak twice, and I was disappointed both times to be honest. I don't even think it's one of the four or five best breweries in Traverse City. Their beer isn't bad per se, just very boring. If you're going to stick to all the traditional flavors, I'm cool with that, but you'd better perfect them. Rare Bird, Right Brain, Workshop, Earthen Ales, Monkey Fist...all better imo. On the plus side, North Peak is in a great location right downtown and the food is really good.