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Another orbital period has passed, which I guess means I need to reflect on the year that was or some such thing. Since I'm terrible at choosing favorites and because it's a totally arbitrary exercise, I'll be posting my top 40 beers of the year. That might seem like a lot, but then, I could probably do a top 40 Tired Hands beer list and still have 60 of their brews that didn't make the cut (I'm pretty sure this is not an exaggeration; they put up at least 1-2 new beers a week on average and I've kept up pretty well). I drink too much is what I'm saying.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Various musings on my year in beer:

• Trading - It continues, and a fair amount of beers on the list below came from trades, LIFs, and BIFs, but not nearly as much as you might think. It turns out that Philly is a pretty great beer town, asinine PLCB rules notwithstanding, and even the suburbs are getting in on the action these days. I doubt I'll ever reach the crazy 5 trades per month tempo that some beer dorks engage in, but I'm pretty happy with the 5-6 trades I engage in per year, and I got to try some great stuff this year because of that.
• Wales, bro - White Whale beers are a sorta moving target. When you start to dip your toes into beer nerdery, anything popular that is rare and/or isn't distributed near you is a whale. Stuff like KBS. Then you start ticking those top 100 beers that are hard to find, but the goalposts move to obscure vintages of absurdly limited beers (I've had approximately 1 beer on that list) and people start creatively misspelling whales as walez or wales and at that point, who cares? The hunt can be fun, but some of that stuff seems like a fool's errand. I'll probably stick with local wales and trade for some khaki wales if the mood strikes me. With stuff like Operation Cheddar an finally procuring some Cantillon, I've gotten pretty good at scoring some great stuff, and that's all I can really ask for.
• The year the ratings died, sorta - I've been doing this for three years now, and I'm experiencing some serious ratings shifting here. Stuff I'd have rated an A a few years ago might be a B level beer nowadays. Is this changing tastes? Or was I just plain wrong? Or maybe I'm just drinking such a higher caliber of beer now that it puts that older stuff in a different perspective? Probably all of the above. So take my ratings with a grain of salt. I'm a moron.
• Snobby Palate - I'll never claim to have a great palate, but I'm starting to get super snobby about fresh IPAs in particular. And bars that don't clean their tap lines are starting to annoy me. And I'm pretty sensitive to carbonation issues. I don't know how great this development really is, but I try not to annoy other people with my snobby palate and pedantry.
• Sessionable Beer and Redrinking Beer - I used to basically never drink the same beer twice. And I used to review nearly every beer I drank. But that's lame. I've definitely drank a bunch of beers I've already sampled this year. Some are massive face melters that have a limited annual release (oh, hello there Parabola!), but I've also found a desire for "regular" beer or even a session beer. Sure, I still drink an unhealthy amount of high ABV stuff and the list below certainly contains ample Imperial Stouts and Barleywines, but sometimes I want to sit down with something normal, like a 4% pale ale. Not everything has to melt my face, all the time.
• Home Brewing - A slow start to the year, but I've been on a tear of late. I've also been tackling "slow" beers, stuff that takes a while to actually finish off (like, for example, the Brett dosed saison or bourbon oak aged imperial stout), but in about a month, I should have about 3 batches hitting their prime. Poor timing, perhaps, but still. I've also finally procured a kegerator and have kegged my first beer (Red Heady), so we'll see what that does (I'm actually planning to keep a relatively sessionable beer on at all times, but we'll see). As per usual, I've got lots of plans and ideas, so it should be a fun year.
• Aging/Cellaring Beer - I spent a pretty big portion of the year trying to drink down my cellar rather than going out and procuring the next big thing. Of course, I still buy way too much beer, but most of it is not really for aging, even if, uh, it takes me a while to get to it. There are definitely some beers that have really worked for me after a couple years in the cellar, but most are better fresh. This tends to be the general accepted wisdom in the beer nerd world, but it's interesting to discover it for yourself.

So it's been a great year in beer. As previously mentioned, I'm posting my top 40 beers, mostly because I feel like it. The list is limited to beers I had and reviewed this year. Stuff I've had before but loved is also not eligible (so no Parabola or Supplication, etc...) so don't get too cuckoo nutso if your favorite beer isn't on the list. Or whatever, yell at me in the comments, what do I care? Everything on the list has been rated at least an A- on my grading scale and the ordering is generally from best to worst. This is, of course, an entirely arbitrary exercise, but I always have fun with lists, so whatevers. One other rule: I tried to limit some breweries to a handful of entries, because otherwise this would be a list of my favorite Tired Hands, Cantillon, and Hill Farmstead beers, and while that's probably accurate, it's also probably very boring. Alright, enough whining about disclaimers, let's demonstrate how crappy my taste is:

1. Tired Hands Romulon (Saison)
2. The Bruery Black Tuesday (Imperial Stout)
3. Hill Farmstead Susan (IPA)
4. The Alchemist Heady Topper (Double IPA)
5. Cantillon Kriek (Lambic)
6. Goose Island Bourbon County Barleywine (Barleywine)
7. Russian River Framboise For A Cure (American Wild Ale)
8. Voodoo Pappy Van Winkle Black Magick (Imperial Stout)
9. The Bruery Bois (Old Ale)
10. Cigar City Nielsbohrium (Imperial Stout)
11. Fantôme Magic Ghost (Saison)
12. Cantillon Fou' Foune (Lambic)
13. Hill Farmstead and The Alchemist Walden (American Pale Ale)
14. Lawson's Finest Liquids Double Sunshine IPA (Double IPA)
15. FiftyFifty Imperial Eclipse Stout - Rittenhouse Rye (Imperial Stout)
16. Oude Quetsche Tilquin (Lambic)
17. Sante Adairius Love's Armor (American Wild Ale)
18. Firestone Walker PNC (Imperial Stout)
19. Half Acre Beer Hates Astronauts (IPA)
20. Tired Hands Phantom With Three Different Colored Eyes (Double IPA)
21. Tröegs Scratch Beer 83 - 2012 (¿Impending Descent?) (Imperial Stout)
22. Arcadia Bourbon Barrel Aged Cereal Killer (Barleywine)
23. Cantillon Saint Lamvinus (Lambic)
24. Tired Hands Only Void (Imperial Stout)
25. Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout (Imperial Stout)
26. Cisco Brewers Lady Of The Woods (American Wild Ale)
27. La Cabra Brettophile (American Wild Ale)
28. Crooked Stave St. Bretta Summer (Wit/Wheat Beer)
29. Three Floyds & Mikkeller Risgoop (Barleywine)
30. Cascade Kriek Ale (American Wild Ale)
31. FiftyFifty Imperial Eclipse Stout - Elijah Craig (12 Year) (Imperial Stout)
32. Divine Teufelweizen (2011) (Weizenbock)
33. Yeastie Boys Rex Attitude (Smoked Beer)
34. Clown Shoes & Three Heads Brewing Third Party Candidate (Imperial Red Ale)
35. Forest & Main Oubliant (Tripel)
36. Sierra Nevada Barrel Aged Bigfoot (Barleywine)
37. Voodoo Laird's Apple Brandy Gran Met (Tripel)
38. Firestone Walker XVI - Anniversary Ale (American Strong Ale)
39. Caldera Mogli (Imperial Stout)
40. Logsdon Seizoen (Saison)

Damn, that was more difficult than I thought. There are at least, like, 5 other Tired Hands IPAs that could easily replace the one I put in there, not to mention stuff like Guillemot Nebula or even the Rye Barrel Only void. I had a great year in beer. Here's to a great 2014!

On the first Friday of every month, there's a beer blog roundup called The Session. Someone picks a topic, and everyone blogs about it. This time around, Tasting Nitch is all about the womenz: Scary Beer Feminists or a Healthy Growing Demographic?

While I'm sure you all think of me as the world's most insightful hermaphrodite, I am, in fact, a man. A single, 35 year old man. Yeah, I'm not really qualified to speak to the female experience in the beer world. That being said, I think I'll come down pretty solidly on the "Healthy Growing Demographic" side of the argument. Nitch forwards a few ideas for topics, including historical profiles, current profiles, and a few others (I'm curious to see if anyone takes the bait for "Are there any men out there who think that women in beer is a bad thing?" Yikes, who would think that?). What's more, I'm not really one to get into identity politics. So I'll limit myself to a few observations, starting with one of Nitch's suggestions:

Woman's palate's are changing the direction of beer! Are women to blame for the recent increase in fruit beers?

If so, only because beer marketers are morons. It seems like not a week goes by without some ridiculous article about how beer confuses womenz (for real, the article suggests three options that women might like, one of which is a cider) or how some corporation is seeking to implement some hairbrained scheme to trick women into liking beer. So indirectly, maybe women are to blame for an increase in fruity beers (or for the notion that an orange is a good garnish for beer), but only because some sexist executive somewhere got it into their head that women only like beer that is sweet and fruity. Pshah.

Well fear not, female readers, I've gone to the trouble to curate a custom category on this blog that's perfect for you! Read it, seek out some of the shelf wales (or trade for the more obscure ones), and rejoice. Oh sure, it's just an archive page of beers I've rated an A, so you menz don't need to feel left out - they're for you too. Funnily enough, the first beer listed is a Framboise, but hey, guys like that too. At least, this guy does. In addition, you could check out these pages too, I'm sure you'd enjoy those beers.

***

Riddle me this, dear reader: is the beer bottle a phallic symbol? I guess it depends on your perspective. For drinkers, it might be. It's certainly got the shape for it, and fluid can shoot out of that bottle like no one's business. But for a brewer? Well, they're sticking fluid into a hole in the bottle. And for certain bottle-conditioned beers, well, that fluid changes over time into something beautiful. Or something. I'm not good at this. Let's move on.

***

Just about every month, folks from my work get together at a local BYOB for a beer tasting (amongst other libations) and fun. Of the folks in attendance, there are only really two major beer nerds. I am, of course, one of those. The other is a woman. The mixture of men and women amongst the group is about even, and I've pretty much given up trying to predict what people will like or not like. I just bring the best beer I can in the hopes that someone will see the light (and so does my female partner in crime). Every month, it seems like the most popular beer is a different style. Double IPA? Sure! Imperial Stout aged in Bourbon Barrels? You bet! Sour ale aged on fruit? Why not! Funky saison? Hell yes. Leinenkugel's Berry Weiss? Um, not for me, but some folks like it a lot, male and female.

Nitch sez that she doesn't want this to turn into a "bah humbug, let people drink what they want," type of session, but like I said, I've kinda given up trying to predict how people will react to stuff I bring to beer club. And quite frankly, I don't see a difference between men and women when it comes to beer. Ultimately, it's just beer. You drink it. It's not that complicated, and your reproductive parts don't really play a role. Amiright?

The most awesomest time of the year has arrived, bringing with it stuff like decorative corpses, mutilated pumpkins, bite sized candy, pumpkin beers, and a whole host of other nominally ghastly objects that suddenly become socially acceptable. Here at Kaedrin, we tend to drink a lot of beer (yeah, par for the course, I know) and watch a lot of bad horror movies (these tend to be chronicled on my generalist blog, so stop by and say hello if you're so inclined). So look for some season's greetings in the near future. And Sweetzels. Lots of Sweetzels.

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Speaking of Halloween themes, Tired Hands is getting into the swing of things with their series of beers named after various monsters. Last year were the classics: Vampire, Zombie, etc... Take a look at the fermenation board for a preview of this year's fun:

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Yep, 80s horror monsters all the way. Not on the board, but mentioned by the bartender last time I was there, is Marty Rantzen (!), a suitably obscure choice that warms this jaded horror movie lover's heart. Of course, these are just names, and it's what's in the glass that counts, but Tired Hands has more than proven themselves on that front and their nonsensical naming conventions only add to their charm.

Speaking of nonsense, check out this video I made on Vine after I got drunk on Saturday.

It's no DDB video revue, but I think it turned out well given the approximately 30 seconds I put into it.

Incidentally, this is the sort of thing I've been posting on Twitter lately, so go there and follow me now (if you don't already). Cheers.

As mentioned recently, I was on vacation last week. I joined family and friends in the Adirondacks (upstate New York, for the uninitiated) for general fun and merriment. Upon noticing that Vermont was, like, closer to upstate New York than it is to Philly, I made preparations for a detour on my way home. Thus began what would become known (to, uh, just me and my 5 twitter followers, really) as Operation Cheddar, an incursion into Vermont to secure beer from three hallowed breweries: Hill Farmstead, The Alchemist, and Lawson's Finest Liquids. I'm going to spend some time wanking about the planning process, but if you're not interested in that, there's plenty of pretty pictures below (just click for bigger pictures).

The original plan was to get up early on Saturday (the end of our stay in the Adirondacks) and make a detour into Vermont before returning to Philly. Truth be told, Vermont isn't that much closer, and with the stops I was planning on making, it would still be an all day affair, but totally worth it. However, as I started looking into each brewery's availability, I realized that Saturday might not be the best day for the trip.

I monitored Hill Farmstead's Retail page (which seems to be frequently updated and the best source on availability) and it looked like Saturday would probably be crowded, but fine. However, in looking at The Alchemist's Facebook page, I observed that Heady Topper was selling out most Fridays, especially during the summer months. Lawson's distributes out of a Farmer's Market that is held on Saturdays... but usually only one Saturday a month (and not the Saturday I was going). I emailed Sean Lawson, and he said that my best bet to buy bottles was to go to one of three places listed on their site. He also mentioned to go on the day of delivery, as they tend to sell out quickly.

Basically, if I went on Saturday, there was a pretty good chance of being shut out of Heady and Lawson's. That would suck, so I pushed Operation Cheddar up to Thursday, where unseasonably cool weather lead to a lull in our activity schedule anyway. I'm happy to say, this was most certainly the right decision.

First stop: The Warren Store for some of Lawson's Finest Liquids.

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This was a cool little store, with all sorts of artisanal foodstuffs, a bakery, a deli, wine, and, of course, a small selection of beer. It was actually a gorgeous day in Vermont, and they had an outdoor eating area right by a small stream. It was around 10:30 am, so after securing my allocation of Lawson's Double Sunshine (!!) and some other random Vermont beer that looked good, I picked up what was quite possibly the best breakfast sandwich I've ever had in my life. A great way to start the trip, and I was quite happy with the haul:

That's Lawson's Double Sunshine IPA, Switchback Ale, and Foley Brothers Native Brown Ale. The guy at the store said he had received 19 cases of Double Sunshine that morning, and that all but 3 cases had sold already. So basically, really glad I made this my first stop.

Next up, just a hop and a skip away, was The Alchemist.

The whole place smelled like fresh hops and malt (clearly a brew day) and they were naturally doing a brisk business. In fact, I later intercepted communications from The Alchemist that they sold out their supply of cans on Thursday afternoon (and no more would be available to the following Monday), so Thursday was definitely the right day for this trip. I bought as much Heady as I could, and picked up some glasswales while I was at it:

Finally, Hill Farmstead, which was a bit of a hike from The Alchemist... but it was a pleasant enough drive, and the resulting haul was quite worth the stretch!

There was actually quite a line for growler fills, even with the (apparently recent) limitation of only 3 growlers per person. Bottles were limited as well, but I was pretty ecstatic with my haul:

The growlers were filled with Amarillo Single Hop Pale Ale, Susan, and Society & Solitude #7. Bottles of Vera Mae and Grassroots Arctic Saison (Grassroots is basically the collaborative arm of Hill Farmstead, where they go out and brew at other breweries), and while I was at it, I grabbed a bottle of The Bruery Sans Pagaie (HF always has a selection or two from their brewer friends, so this was a pleasant surprise, as I've never seen this one in the Philly area).

Overall, I was pretty damn happy with the trip. It took up most of the day, but I got everything I was after and more (and if I stuck to the original plan, it would have been quite discouraging). The drive was actually pretty easy and scenic (Vermont is truly beautiful, and in case you doubt that small-town America exists, you should head over to Vermont), I didn't even lose GPS coverage on my phone (but I was still glad to have backup printouts). I even got back right in time for dinner, and was enjoying the spoils of Operation Cheddar before the sun set:

I suspect a day-trip from Philly would be a bit much (looking at at least 14 hours in the car for a round trip, and when you add in time spent at each venue and other stops, you're up to 18+ hours), but an overnight would work nicely. I actually had a lot of fun on this trip, so I will almost certainly be doing that overnight trip sometime. So that's Operation Cheddar. Stay tuned for a closer look at those HF growlers... and more Vermont beer reviews!

So I finally decided to stop trying to cram my beer obsession down my personal twitter account's feed (which will still probably feature some beer anyway, and feel free to follow that as well) and created a new feed @KaedrinBeer for that purpose. What will be on this stream? I'm not really sure! It will certainly contain pictures of stuff that wouldn't necessarily make it to the blog, as well as links out to other articles, blogs, and the like. You should totally follow me and tweet things at me and do other things that could be interpreted with various innuendos.

I admit it, I buy too much beer. As a result of this, I have a sorta defacto aging program. There have definitely been beers I specifically wanted to lay down for a while, but many beers get aged in my cellar simply because I have a long list of beers I want to try. When all this became clear, I did a little research and laid out my plans in a post about a year and a half ago. So how's this aging program going? Some general observations:

• Dark, strong beers seem to work best. Think World Wide Stout, which I loved at 2 years (I have since sampled a fresh pour, and yes, age does good things to this beer). Even just plain dark beers seem to do well with some time on it. I found a year old bottle of Lancaster Milk Stout in my fridge last fall and hot damn, that stuff was absolutely fantastic - smooth and creamy, just perfect (presumably similar results with the likes of other Milk Stouts like Left Hand's or Coffeehouse Stout).
• Barrel Aged beers seem to be a mixed bag. One thing that tends to kill me on this is a distinct lack of carbonation that I'm not always sure I can blame on the age. For example, Dock Street's BA Prince Myshkin RIS and BA Barleywine both had utterly fantastic barrel aged qualities, but they were nearly flat, and that's a problem for me (some folks seem to be fine with still beer, so good on them). Hoppin Frog's Barrel Aged B.O.R.I.S. suffered a similar low-carbonation fate. Another thing to consider is hoppy beers, even hoppy stouts. In particular, Victory Dark Intrigue and North Coast Old Rasputin XIV take on a big faded hop character after about a year (still good, but very different from when they were fresh). Speaking of Victory, Oak Horizontal was great when I drank it on the day of release... but got super boozy and unbalanced after just a few months. Not sure if that one will come around... Not all Barrel Aged beers suffered from age. Witness The Bruery's Coton (which, true, was only 25% bourbon barrel aged), one of the few beers to earn the coveted Kaedrin A+ rating (after a lenghty 2 year stay in my fridge). The difference, I suspect, is the 14.5% ABV.
• Pumpkin beers don't seem to work at all. To a lesser extent, spiced beers also seem to fade quickly after a certain point, though they have a good year in them (Anchor's Christmas Beers are always worth trying after a year). Pumpkin beers, though, do not. Even something like Cape Ann Fisherman's Imperial Pumpkin Stout, a 10% ABV stout, doesn't do so well after just one year. The Bruery's Autumn Maple, while superb when fresh, did not hold up so well to aging. To be fair, perhaps my aging conditions were not ideal for these brews, but I still say drink your Pumpkin beers fresh.
• Barleywines are a bit of a mixed bag for me. They're usually good, but extremely hoppy varieties tend to feature a strong faded hop component. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and it works well enough most of the time. English style Barleywines (like this High Water Old And In The Way, which had a year or so on it when I tried it) tend to fare a little better than the American style barleywines, which can be good too, but again, they tend to have a big faded hop component. On the other hand, really high ABV could make up for that. I'd be curious about something like Bolt Cutter, for instance. But I'd drink something like Flying Mouflan (a relatively svelt 9% ABV, and very hoppy too) while fresh.
• The jury is still out on funky beers and sours for me. I've heard that these keep for a really long time, but from what little experience I've had, I'm guessing their character changes significantly. Baudelaire iO was fantastic fresh, and still really good with a year on it, but I think I prefer the fresh stuff. I really wish I got to try Broederlijke Liefde when it was fresh, because it felt a bit unruly, but who really knows?

The short story here is that most beers are probably best drunk fresh. Aging is a bit of a crapshoot except when you hit reallly big beers like World Wide Stout or Samichlaus. It's really cool when aging something does work out, so I feel like it's worth playing in this realm, but if you just bought a beer that you've never had before and are wondering if you should lay it down for a while, I'd probably just crack it open right now. If you like it, pick up another bottle and age that to see what happens. I know, that requires foresight, which is lame. I'm bad at it too.

I'll have to go through my cellar and catalog some of the stuff I'm intentionally aging (or, uh, unintentionally aging), but I'll save that for another post.

Voodoo has a tiny little barrel room and recently held two releases. One out at their brewery in Meadville, PA, and one in the Philly area. The Philly area one was held yesterday, and looky at what I found:

Well hello, my pretties. Gotta love the look of waxed bottles. The three small bottles are Black Magick (big stout somewhere on the order of 15% ABV) variants (one aged in Buffalo Trace barrels, one in Pappy Van Winkle barrels, and one in Laird's Apple Brandy barrels), the next three bombers are Big Black Voodoo Daddy (one of Voodoo's staple beers, a still rather large 12.5% stout) aged in the same three barrel types. And lastly, another of Voodoo's staple beers, Gran Met, a Belgian style tripel aged in Laird's Apple Brandy barrels. Supposedly, these suckers stayed in the barrels a little longer than planned as Voodoo was opening a brewpub and availability of the packaging line was maxed out.

Anywho, the Philly area release was held at the Blue Dog Tavern in Chalfont, PA (i.e. north of the city). I got there a little over an hour before opening, but while there was a sizable crowd ahead of me, I was there in plenty of time to ensure that I got a bottle of each barrel room beer (some variants only had 72 bottles available at this release). About a half hour before the doors opened, the staff passed out wristbands so that they could do a "deli-style" release - they call your number, and you go to a table to pick up your allotment. Very orderly and convenient, and it allowed me to sit at the bar and try a couple Voodoo rarities, like this beauty:

They call this stuff 2 Live Gran Cru Greatest Hits - Vol. 1, a blend of Big Black Voodoo Daddy and Black Magick aged in Pappy Van Winkle barrels for 15 months. Don't mind if I do. Massive bourbon and oak in both the nose and taste, but plenty of malt to balance that out, leading to that great caramel, vanilla, and oak character I love so much. Clocking in at 13% ABV, it's got a pretty big boozy component too. Big, chewy stuff, smooth with a big boozy bite. Fantastic stuff, and hopefully an omen of what those bottles will taste like. It was a small sample, but I'll give it an A- for now...

My cellar is getting crowded again, and I've even got more stuff coming. It's going to be a fun summer.

In a moment of weakness (or strength, depending on your point of view), I finally broke down and ordered some Cantillon (amongst other rarities) direct from the source. I'd heard some good things about Belgium In A Box, and I'm happy to report that they're everything they're cracked up to be. As you might expect, shipping from Europe is an expensive proposition, but near as I can tell, Belgium in a Box is very fair about that sort of thing, and the packaging was great. Plus, I got an added bonus:

Yep, after unpackaging some great beer (and doing the requisite Gollum-like pose while chanting "My precious" for some), I noticed an extra little box, and inside was a very nice Cantillon Gueuze glass, free of charge. This was very generous of the proprietor, Kurt, so I was very grateful (and apparently I'm not alone in singing his praises). All of which is to say, expect things to get Loony (also ghostly and, uh, 3 Fonteineny) in the coming weeks as I work through this box.