Monster is right

Brooklyn Monster Ale Barley Wine

$5.99 for a 4 pack of barley wine, one of my favorite styles? Yes. Please.

Perhaps not the smoothest or most refined take on this alcoholic style but I respect it at the price point and would buy again. Brooklyn rarely disappoints.

Bottling Leafblower

Bottling goes faster when you have bombers to fill...and when you are "tasting" a 2008 Flying Dog Horn Dog Barleywine, a Special Tea, Milk Stout, and Pete's Wicked Strawberry Blond.

Imperial Stout from Ottos in State College, PA

Happy Stout day!!

Have Faithful

Ed and I ducked out of work early once the newest dogfish beer started turning up on their fish finder tool.  Ed is a huge pearl jam fan, so the Faithful tribute beer to them made it a must find ASAP.  We normally find ourselves spending countless hours cold calling beer stores, often with no luck on these things.  To our chagrin, this place called "Tenley Town Mini Mart" had 4 of them last after getting a shipment on the Monday earlier in the week.  It was just 2 metro stops south of Bethesda.  I would not have pegged this place as a craft beer store, which is wasn't as the advertise 3 - 30 packs of Keystone for $30 sign told us (good deal regardless), but nestled between the a dogfish Chateau Jiahu and a Goose Island Matilda 4-pack, were 4 bottles for us, 2 a piece.  We snatched them up and excitedly made our way home.  Our girlfriends were probably more excited, so they could be spared of the giddy and nerve wrecked fury that is us wanting to find a beer.

The beer was pretty great considering how clear and crisp it was.  The fruit was un-worldly.  It was a belgian golden ale that was continuously fruited every 6 minutes with currants.  It comes in at 7%, which isn't high on the scale for abv for dogfish's big bottles, but considering the lightness of the beer, it was well handled.  I still can't get over how clear the beer was.  Our homebrews, even non-stouts and porters, manage to be pretty opaque to say the least.  We also had the trappist chocolate we made last month, which tasted pretty good to our nervousness.   To top off the night, we had a Jolly Roger Imperial Stout from Ottos in State College to celebrate International Stout Day.

The Imperial Stout is in the glass below.  We're excited to make both one of those and a barley wine one day, but we're to transient at the moment to know we'll be in a place for a year in order to age it before drinking.  One day we'll have garages.



Ed's best sexy pose.



Lexi enjoying some Faithful.



Ed shows off his loot in the metro.