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42 minutes ago, thecoffeecake said:

I'm trying to watch this game 7 at a bar, and some scumbag has been lecturing his buddy about everything he thinks he knows about beer. sh!t drives me crazy.

The WORST... I'm sure he's a great brewer himself too smh 

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  • 2 weeks later...

So the beer review website, RateBeer, is being sold to ZX Ventures which is a venture capital team backed by InBev/AB.  Because of this, Dogfish Head's owners have asked RateBeer to remove all of it's listings from RB and many other craft brewers are following.

Quite frankly, I really don't use RateBeer.  I never found their reviews to be all that helpful and found many to be quite out of sync to what I experienced.  Of course there is always personal tastes, but I have always found BeerAdvocate to more reliable with their ratings.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 3 weeks later...

I'm just going to vent ....Lone Eagle just suc... needs work.  The dogfish head brewer they hired on just doesn't get it and I swear he doesn't clean out the lines. It's just sloppy. Or tastes it.   I keep trying them, and no one wants it to go away ....but dude!!!

And my boyfriend Devs84 hit on the head - dude never names the beer right   What gives even?   Dogfish head let him go for a reason    And yet I'll persist in going   Bluefish Baja tacos down the street... I'm obsessed with 

I would recommend anyone who likes beer makes the effort to find Conclave. I'm not telling you where it is Their Gravitational Waves is incredible. They stick to their guns and make what they make how they want to.  

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  • 2 weeks later...

Does anyone else have a NJCB club card?  If so, how do you like it these days?

Reason why I am asking is that I am in my 4th or so year of having one and it seems like (at least to me) that he discounts are getting worse and worse as they add more and more places that accepts them.  When I first joined, they had about 310-ish places that accepted it.  Now it looks like the list is at about 650-ish.  However, the discounts have gone down where places that used to take 10-20% off the entire bill are switching to stuff like $1 off growler refill.  The savings used to be able to pay for the card by March/April for me, but now here I am in August for 2017 and I don't think I have saved anywhere near the $25 a year I pay for it.

To be clear I do not blame NJCB at all for this.  I know these discounts are basically dictated by the businesses that are apart of it.  What sucks is that a lot of these places tend to accept or deny the discounts I am supposed to receive on a little more than a whim these days.  I complain to Mike and the NJCB people and while to their credit they are very responsive and apologetic, a lot of times their hands are tied and it is already after the fact.  I also see liquor stores that accept it now playing games to deny giving me a discount.  A store near me (who will go unnamed) play a game where for a 12-pack they list the price as a "sale price" that is the normal retail prices at other nearby liquor stores and post a ridiculous jacked-up "retail price" on the sign.  That way when I try to use the card on that item at the register they deny me saying it is already on the "sale price" and that the card only works on retail price.  What a load of BS.

In summary I am thinking this may be the last year I have the card.  It just doesn't pay for me anymore with my interest in craft beer starting to wane a bit and with stores/bars playing games to avoid giving the discounts.

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Update:  Right on cue I see that Mike from NJCB put out a post on the NJCB members FB group about 45 minutes ago that he kicked out a bunch of places due to non-compliance.  Very happy to hear this and again I do not blame the folks at NJCB for any of this.  This is squarely on the businesses that participate.

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On 18/07/2017 at 5:56 PM, Pepperkorn said:

I'm just going to vent ....Lone Eagle just suc... needs work.  The dogfish head brewer they hired on just doesn't get it and I swear he doesn't clean out the lines. It's just sloppy. Or tastes it.   I keep trying them, and no one wants it to go away ....but dude!!!

And my boyfriend Devs84 hit on the head - dude never names the beer right   What gives even?   Dogfish head let him go for a reason    And yet I'll persist in going   Bluefish Baja tacos down the street... I'm obsessed with 

I would recommend anyone who likes beer makes the effort to find Conclave. I'm not telling you where it is Their Gravitational Waves is incredible. They stick to their guns and make what they make how they want to.  

I just picked up a 4 pack of Lone Eagle New England Chowdah and I need to take it back to the brewery.  Tasted like straight up band aids.  Very disappointed.  I don't think I've had one of their beers that I would order more than once at a bar.  

Soon the whole "hyper local" draw is going to wear off.  The market is so incredibly saturated right now with micro operations that it just isn't worth investing time or money in the run of the mill, nothing special beers they churn out.

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9 hours ago, Crisis said:

I just picked up a 4 pack of Lone Eagle New England Chowdah and I need to take it back to the brewery.  Tasted like straight up band aids.  Very disappointed.  I don't think I've had one of their beers that I would order more than once at a bar.  

Soon the whole "hyper local" draw is going to wear off.  The market is so incredibly saturated right now with micro operations that it just isn't worth investing time or money in the run of the mill, nothing special beers they churn out.

I've had a few Lone Eagle brews in the past year.  Their standard ones are alright, the more "outside the box" type ones are very hit or miss.  The only NJ brewery to me that has more hits than misses when it comes to these weird beers is Carton.

I think it goes beyond the hyper local brews.  It is for the entire craft beer movement in general.  It is incredibly saturated and I think a lot of the brewers and beer folks are a little overly optimistic about how much the market can handle.  Within a 20 minute drive of my house, I can count at least 5 micro/nano breweries (with at least 2 more on the way) and 2 brewpubs that make their own beer (with 1 more currently on the drawing board).

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  • 3 months later...

Been a while since I've chimed in here:

La Cumbre (Albuquerque, lol) - Slice of Hefen is one of the best Hefeweizen beers I have ever had. Solid flavor from the first pour to the last sip, has a head retention similar to that of Sam Adams nitro.

If you're ever in the middle of bumblefvck West Texas or Eastern New Mexico, avoid Roosevelt Brewery like the plague. The beer was solid three years ago, and it went to absolute sh!t when the owner/head brewer tried to go all organic and use wild yeast instead of normal strains. The result was sour as sh!t beer, consistently dirty lines and next to no carbonation in their beers.

If you're traveling abroad, Bomonti is a solid cheap Turkish beer that can be equated to a Miller or Coors heavy, but more malty than pilsner.

Edited by jagknife
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14 hours ago, jagknife said:

Been a while since I've chimed in here:

La Cumbre (Albuquerque, lol) - Slice of Hefen is one of the best Hefeweizen beers I have ever had. Solid flavor from the first pour to the last sip, has a head retention similar to that of Sam Adams nitro.

If you're ever in the middle of bumblefvck West Texas or Eastern New Mexico, avoid Roosevelt Brewery like the plague. The beer was solid three years ago, and it went to absolute sh!t when the owner/head brewer tried to go all organic and use wild yeast instead of normal strains. The result was sour as sh!t beer, consistently dirty lines and next to no carbonation in their beers.

If you're traveling abroad, Bomonti is a solid cheap Turkish beer that can be equated to a Miller or Coors heavy, but more malty than pilsner.

The latest craft beer trend or craze is heading in that direction (might already be there actually).  Wild yeast is big and there is a nano-brewery in NJ (Pennington I believe) that opened or is about to open that specializes in beer made with wild yeast.  I really have to be in the mood for them as like you said they all have a pretty sour taste to them and I am not a huge fan of the sours.

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On 11/22/2017 at 12:13 PM, Martyisth3b3st said:

If anyone is ever in the Vero Beach / Jupiter area of south florida, you're doing yourself a disservice if you don't stop in to Walking Tree Brewery and have a Sandy Feet. It is flat out the best beer I've ever had.

Just checked the beer out and looks to be an American Pale Wheat ale.  I am actually glad a recommendation was made for a beer that wasn't an IPA or Stout.  Been a while lol.

I got an email last week that I was auto-renewed for the NJCB card for 2018.  I totally forgot they auto-renew those now and quite frankly at the rate I am going 2018 will probably be my last year.  Been in the club since either 2013 or 2014 and this past year was the first year I struggled to recoup my $25 investment in the card.  Plus I rarely check out the NJCB members only FB group that I used to scroll through just about every day.

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  • 2 years later...

So Alchemist in Vermont is distributing Heady Topper and Focal Banger all over the country in limited amounts.  I'm in Jersey City and have been taking some trips here and there to liquor stores in Jersey City and Hoboken to snag four packs where I can find them.  Not sure if it's going to be a permanent thing, or if it's just COVID-19 related.

Anyway, while I'm not a beer snob, gotta say both are very good and worth the hype, although maybe not worth the hype of driving all the way up to Vermont just to get it. 

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17 hours ago, DevilMinder said:

Heady topper is one of my favorites. my cousins and friends always buy it for me when they see it in Vermont.

 

I'll have to look and see where it's being distributed

 

 

My advice, go into any liquor store that doesn't have a social media presence that generally sells craft beer and take a look in the refrigerators.  If you don't see it, ask the clerk if they have it in the back.  So far as I can tell, stores are only getting one or two cases of each. 
 

Update:  looks like they’re going to make deliveries to NJ every four or five weeks for the foreseeable fiture.

 

Edited by Daniel
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So I see my last post on here was 2.5 years ago.  In that time I have:

1) I forgot about the auto-renew for NJBC membership for 2019 as well.  I didn't for 2020 so this past December 31st was my last day as a member.  The next day or two later I was promptly booted from their private FB group.  I think in the time I was in their private FB group (3-5 years), I think I posted maybe 6-10 times.  I would also estimate that for 2019 using the card I saved a total of about $5-10.  The card cost $25.  While the number of places have gone up that accepted it since I first joined around 2013 (was about 300 and in 2019 it was over 600), the deals have gotten worse.  I do not blame NJCB for that as it was the restaurants/bars that were dictating that and too often the places would either not honor the card or play games.  A large liquor store that I shall not name in my old town used to not accept the $2 off any craft beer purchase if it was on-sale by the store.  Naturally that was never mentioned in the discount details and my favorite beers were perpetually "on sale" though the price was in-line with normal retail prices.

2) Throughout 2018 and 2019, I drank maybe 1 beer every 2-3 weeks.  I just stopped caring.  I will say that the virus has made me picked up the bottle more often, I am right now at a 1 beer a week pace.  Much different than in 2012-2016 pace of at least one every other day.

3) I stopped caring about every new brewery.  Frankly, there are way too many mediocre breweries out there.  For every good craft beer I have had, there are maybe 10 that are average to awful.  Plus too many breweries get too caught up in creating something "unique" by throwing sh!t in their beer like kid's cereal's, fruit and lactose combos, and exotic ingredients that they cannot even get a solid pale ale or amber down.

4) My trip to Germany and Austria in the summer of 2019 really opened my eyes.  It was my first trip there since I have been old enough to drink.  In Austria, they have about 2-3 breweries that supply a majority of the beer in the entire country.  Their coverage is carved up regionally and if you step into a bar there, most likely the bar will only have that one brewery's beer (though they may have a handful of varieties).  These beers absolutely blew every single craft beer in NJ out of the water in terms of taste and quality.  They didn't throw sh!t against the wall and hoped it stuck in regards to flavors, they don't try to create artificial excitement with "limited releases" and they were half the price of the beer over here.  They proved that smaller isn't always better.

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