[music] Episode 62 of the Bearest Podcast recorded on May 31st, 2013, certainly. [music] You know, before we start a show, usually we sit around and talk about rules. You know, things that we should mention on mic and shouldn't mention on the mic. And things that we shouldn't mention about mic. Right. One of the things that we try to do is to remind ourselves, okay, we need to stay on topic. We need to not talk over each other. We need to do this. And we have a little. I think that's totally correct. What? What? [laughter] Yeah. And most of the times it doesn't work once you mix alcohol into it. But here's for fucking wishful thinking. Here we go. I'm John Rubio. And with me today. Grant Davis. What's up, Grant? Hey, buddy. How you doing? I'm ready to drink beer. I know me too. Mike. I'm ready to drink too. Mike Lambert's here as always. Indeed. I'm returning for the second week in a row. John Harvey. Yeah. Harvey. Saying hello to Beer Land out there. Yeah. Harvey is sitting in again for Anastasia who is probably going to be out for a couple of months. She just got a promotion at work and she's trying to readjust to her new job. So she'll be back eventually, but don't plan on hearing her for the next couple of months probably. And we're doing a surly show today. Yeah. Surly Brewing Company. Fuck yeah. From Minnesota. Yeah. I'm really, really excited about this. Cheers were donated to us by Chase Smiley, listener of ours. Chase Smiley. Chase Smiley. That sounds like either a Muppet or a used car salesman. I believe that is his real last name. Yes. And he's part of the Jukeau's podcast kingdom and they do a bunch of nerd centric shows. Is he the Jew or the cow? I'm not really sure how this works. Apparently one of them's a Jew, one of them's a cow or something. I don't know. But how can you be a cow? If your mother was a cow, you're a cow. Fuck. But yeah, I had to look it up to make sure it was an accidental antisemitism coming through the thing. Just trolling you. Yeah, yeah. Because when I make racist jokes, I like to know it. So yeah, thank you so much for sending all these beers over Chase. Yeah. I'm looking forward to it because I loved most of the beers that I've had from surly. Now, before we get to our beers, I've got an email to read out from a guy named Jonathan Murphy and it says, "Dear beerists, what type of beer do you prefer to dry hop in a fresh glass?" For me, it's usually with a New England style of IPA, usually shipyard, monkey fist or long trail brown bag. This both are like sex moves, especially with either the Cascator, Hallertel, hops that I grow. And yeah, he sent us a picture of these beautiful hop cones that this guy's growing at his house. Can listeners see the picture? I know. Just imagine big, fresh, juicy cones. They're amazing looking. And the only couple of times, a few times that I've done this have been at beer events that will have fresh hops for us to add to our beers. And 5-1-2 did it once with their dry hopped IPA and it was awesome. And then occasionally at the draft house, the hop vines that they have growing, I'll go and pick a couple of cones off that and toss it into a beer. Yeah, I'm not even sure what hops they have over there. I know that the 5-1-2 was nugget and that was pretty badass. The only time I've ever seen it is in an IPA when they're just trying to kick it up an extra notch, usually just for show, but put in something like an Amarillo or something citra, just to try and give it a little extra oomphur freshness, I guess. Guys, I've never had a dry hopped beer. You've had a dry hopped beer, just not maybe something that... Not in a fresh glass. Physical hops. Yeah, not in a fresh glass. Like a Randall or a hop rocket or something. I haven't had those. That's the purest. That's a good question. Are we talking about a Randall or a hop rocket or just dry hopping any beer? Well, I believe he's just talking about dropping a hop cone into a glass or something. And I love doing that. All of them. Really. Just any IPA. If you have the opportunity to do it, like where you have an IPA and then, "Oh, there's a hop cone here." Like, just do it. It doesn't matter what hops they are. It really doesn't. No. Definitely not. I mean, a lot of the flavors you're getting from hops are pulled out by either time or the heat, the assomerization. Yeah. You have the assomerize. Yeah. Really, you're not going to get too much out of just dropping a hop cone in there except for the feel-goods. Well, and a little bit of aroma. A little bit. Yeah. We don't really have that many hops growing in Texas. It's a terrible place to grow hops. And anytime you see hop plants here in Texas, the bions are always kind of short and they have tiny little sad combs. Nubs. Yeah. I wish I could do it more often. But unfortunately here, it's not that possible. I would say for anyone listening who's not sure what a Randall is that I was talking about, it's basically where they hook up a keg to like a water filter and they pass the beer through a layer of fresh hops. Or other ingredients. Or anything. Or anything. Yeah. Like a barley wine or something through cherries. I've seen bourbon. Coffee. Yeah. Yeah. They did the cherry and bourbon at the flying saucer with the Brooklyn. Black chocolate stout. Yeah. Black chocolate stout. Yeah, exactly. That was really good. That was too. So yeah, if you're out there listening and you can find a Randall or sometimes called a hop rocket, definitely go check it out. Worth your time. Some pugs will have them easy tiger to run beer through. Yeah. Easy tiger has some. They run the dogfish head 60 minute through it and pretty frequently. Yeah, it's pretty cool. Big IPA is with like citrus fruits or like a mango. Very tasty. Very, very cool. And we got a couple of iTunes shout outs to make. One to Kyle Scott, who I've met in person, really nice guy. He says that we quenched his thirst during the current drought of his other favorite podcasts. Cool. Thank you so much, Kyle. I really appreciate it. Flash 9Z3 says he loves the show and the beer suggestions and that we're funny as hell. Some of us. Thanks. Flash. Not me. No, Harvey's not funny at all. I'm not funny. He looks funny. That's not true. You look like Macklemore's younger brother. I think somebody else told me that recently. Somebody else was also right. We got some donations this week. Ooh. Yeah, we got one from Bennett Peters. Thank you so much, Jeff Eisten sent us a fucking awesome donation and it's the second donation. And Tim Freeze sent us his third donation. Very, very, very cool. So we have Jeff Eisten and Tim Freeze, but Bennett Peters is kind of missing from the bunch. Yeah. Which two of those are Batman villains? Bennett, your new last name is Cold. Bennett. Cold. Bennett. Cold. Thank you guys so much. I want to also donate money to us for trying to get to the Great American Beer Festival in October. Yeah, I'm so excited. I really want to go. Get on thebearest.com on the left hand side of the page. There's a PayPal donate link. Click it. Kick us some money. 5, 10, 15, 20, $1,000. Do that. It'll be really, really helpful and we really fucking appreciate it. We can't go to this thing without your help. Thank you so much. And we're just going to jump right into our beers. Certainly. Yeah. They're out of Brooklyn Center, Minnesota and they were founded in 2005 by Omar Ansari and Todd Hogg. Why are they called surly? Well, it's the anger fueled by the inability to find good beer. And they're distributed only to Minnesota, I believe. They're only distributed in Minnesota? Yeah. That makes me so. Certainly. Yeah, we're certainly about surly not being in Texas. I know. I really wish we could get these more easily. Point in fact, I've actually never had any surly. I hear a lot about it. So very thrilled again to be here for the second time. Thank you. No, no problem. And we're starting out with Sinek Ale, which is a say son. It's 6.6% ABV, 33 IBUs and it's a year round offering available in 16 ounce cans and in kegs. And all of these beers are all 16 ounce pounders and it's malted with Pilsner, aromatic malts and oats, hopped with Columbus, Slovenian, Styrian goldings, and Belgian aliased. And checking this beer out, it's crystal clear. Yeah, clear yellow golden dark straw, maybe. I wouldn't go straw. It's definitely like a yellow, just bright yellow, saturated clear. You notice the head's fading really quick though. Yeah, it sure is. That smells pretty good. I get a lot of floral notes, a lot of lavender, a little bit of peach, dandelion and grasses. Yeah, dandelion grass. And pepper. Just to touch a pepper, yeah. Yeah, it's definitely phenolic, a little spicy. Maybe a little honeysuckle, that sort of thing. Totally. I was going to say that there's something a little sweet there. It's a big Belgian flavor. I mean, all these things can be found in Belgian ale, but... Yeah, it's a huge smell and it gets more and more peach juice-like also. It's been a really long time since I've had this beer, at least a year or two. Right, it smells right on the way I should, I think, for a Cezanne. Mmm. A little extra Belgian-y but... You know, that's not bad. It's really clean. I get a little bit of a cereal note. Yeah, that's really nice. Yeah, it's really fruity too. And that spice is coming out a little bit more as I drink it. I just, like I said, took my first sip and I'm getting a lot of the similar things that I was getting to the nose, but it's far drier than it smells like it's going to be. Yeah, I was going to say it starts out fruit-like juicy and moist in your mouth, I guess. Peachy, yeah. But then it really fades real quick to like a peppery kind of dryness. Everything we're smelling, but in succession in your mouth. Yeah, and it's very crackery, I guess, in malt. A lot of honey and coriander. Oh, yeah, coriander totally. That pilsner malt is really the dominant thing that I'm getting, but there's a lot of fruit flavor too. Like I said, peach, maybe there's a bit of apple skin or something. It's got that really juicy mouth feel right up front, like saturating and just refreshing. Kind of moves on to that peppery and dries out a little bit, but it's not very astringent. Maybe a little bit, but... It's a touch astringent. It's not... It's a touch, but nothing really major. I was expecting a lot more. Yeah. So that's nice. And it's really rare that you see a Seison in a can too. This is a nice beer, man. I had this once before and I didn't remember drinking it. It's really easy to drink down a bomber of this sitting out at the pool. Or a 16-ounce tall boy. Hell yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah, they're all tall boys here. 16-ounce tall boy. Perfect. They knew exactly what I was going to do with it. Their cans are really cool looking too. They have some really great marketing. Yeah, all very bold designs. I still feel it's a little weird. I know that we've discussed this plenty of times before, the idea that cans can have just as great beer in them, but there's an association with fancier beers, not being in cans, and to have a Seison in a can. It's an odd juxtaposition. Yeah, it totally is. And I wouldn't be able to tell if you didn't pour that in front of me that this came from a can. I was wondering about that. I always thought my guess would be that when you age something, that plastic lining in there, if it's acidic, might break down. I don't know. I don't know that it really breaks down necessarily, but in line with what you're saying, I've had a couple of beers that have aged in cans. Tenfity comes to mind. Yeah. And it's just okay. I think if you're going to age it, you want a bottle, but... I'd want something conditioned, really, is the... Yeah, a bottle condition. Yeah, exactly. Like, I don't know if they do can to condition. I think it's possible. I just don't know if that many people are doing it right now. I think it's probably a little bit more difficult. I don't know. Well, when you put it in a bottle, you've got the advantage too. If you're conditioning it there, if it's going to maybe over condition or possibly explode, you can put the cork in it and the cage, keep in some of that extra pressure, whereas in a can. It might just explode. Right. But going back to what Grant was saying, they're slogan, "At least on the cynic ale is beer for a glass from a can." All beer is for glass, in my opinion. Okay. Yeah, I thought that was delicious. Do you guys want to move on to our next one? Let's do it. Our next beer is Bender, which is an American brown ale. That's 5.5% ABV, 45 IBUs, and it's a year-round offering, again, available in 16-ounce cans and kegs. They make it with pale ale malt, aromatic malt, medium crystal malt, dark crystal malt, oats and chocolate malts, and hopped with Columbus Willamette, and they're also using English ale used. This is one of my favorite brown ales. Nice. I've only had this one other time. I've had coffee bender a lot more than this. Just looking at the recipe, this sounds really good. I mean, they've got the right malt profile, but they've also got the oats in there. Which will give it a little creamier mouth feel. A little slickness. Yeah, and then English ale used for an American brown ale is an interesting choice. That's going to give it a little bit more of a sweetness, you know, as opposed to like an American ale used, which would finish very dry. Right. I'm excited to try this. Yeah, I'm taking a look at it. It's a very dark saturated brown red color. Still completely transparent, though, and held to the light. Yeah, more brown than red. It's a nice cola. Yeah, you can just barely see through the glass. Oh, that smells really good. I love this beer. Yeah, the first thing I get is just this roasty chocolate, bready, toasty thing. Very earthy. Very malty. Yeah. Yeah, I'm just getting malted chocolate. A little bit hay, a little bit grassy. Macadamia nut. Oh, fuck. Yeah. Ooh. Maybe something slightly like a chocolate chip cookie, but not sweet like a chocolate chip cookie. There's some cocoa powdery notes. They're nice little grassyness too. Yeah. It's very savory. If that makes any sense. Sure. Again, super clean. Oh, yeah. That Breddy note, there's just a little bit of toffee, you get nuttiness that's going on there. Yeah. Oh, wow. If you make toast with a chocolate bread, right, you know, it's kind of like this, but no sweetness really. This may be a touch of sweetness and a really nice grassy hop. Like you said, this is a fantastic American brown ale. No, shit. This is really good. Completely on point. This is one of the few brown elves that I'd go out and buy if I had it. Yeah, brown is such a style that is so good when done well, but you don't see it done well very often. The two that always come to my mind are bender and the bill are browned from shorts. It tastes sort of like a hazelnut. Yeah. When that goes with the cocoa, it kind of reminds me of... You know what I was just thinking is how well this would go with toast and Nutella. Nutella. Yeah. Except for if it was more like a dark chocolate Nutella instead of the rich sugary Nutella. Totally see that. I mean, it's well-balanced, it's got a little bit of bitter there. But on the whole, what you're really tasting is just toasty and chocolate kind of roasted biscuit. Yeah. And it's a really full flavor too. Yeah. It's not watery. I mean, it's pretty substantial for a brown ale. Sure. But it's still relatively light-bodied. Yeah, yeah. I'm really surprised at how much flavor they're able to cram into it despite as thin relatively speaking as the body is. This is delicious. It really is. And it's making me excited for the next one. This is just like definition of a great brown ale. It's understandable. You can just drink this like water. What was the alcohol again? Five, five? Yeah. I would drink the shit out of this. Exceptional. Yeah. That's a fantastic beer. I really like when we stumble onto a really good brown ale because if you've heard our brown ale show, we're very disappointed by most brown ales that are out there. And this is two shows in a row where we've had a really good fucking brown ale last time. We did "Ailsmith." Oh, yeah. And we drank the brown ale before we started recording and it was great. It was almost like an imperial version of this where it was just slightly amped up. A little bit more toasty, a little bit more substantial flavor. But this is just so drinkable. It really is. And it's complex enough to where I'm not going to get bored drinking it, I don't think. The hops are really nice and big and grassy and bitter. And then you have all these roasts and Nutella notes and chocolate and a little bit of coffee. It's really balanced. That's what I was going to say. It's really, really balanced. Each sip, I get like a little hint of something different. So that's why it's complex. I could drink it over and over because each sip is just, I pick up something new. Yeah, I just got a little touch of licorice or anise or something. Mm-hmm. I'm curious how this warms up. Probably pretty well. And that's really fucking hard for me to think of doing right now because I'm drinking it so fast. You're so fast. Yeah. This is delicious and super easy to drink. Like, it goes down like nothing. I have like a half ounce left. I know. We can do something to warm up. Back to your point, Grant, real quick. I always say like Mark of a really good beer is you can drink it warm and it should still taste all right. If you have to drink it fucking ice cold, they're hiding something. What about like bad ice? No, no. That's a great beer and it needs to be hot. That one should actually be drinking really hot. He only drinks beers where the mountains go blue at home. Yeah. When the mountains are blue, I'm ready to go. Ah, yeah. We're going to move on to our next one. Which is our final beer before the break. It's coffee bender. So it's pretty much this same beer with coffee in it. It's 5.5% ABV just like the last one, 45 IBUs just like the last one. Same availability and it's got the same malt and hops and yeast. But this time they've added Guatemalan, think of used diormosa, full city roast by coffee and tea limited. Does it say anything about how they added the coffee? I'm really curious. Oh, there it is, Sirly Brew team developed a cold extraction process. Perfect. Yes. You add coffee to the boil, you get bitter, cold extract it, you get coffee exactly like you wanted. Exactly. You've never had any Sirly beers before. No, none of them. Okay. So I'm really interested to see what your opinion is on this one. But you know I've made a lot of coffee beers. Oh, yeah. One of my favorites. I found out very early on, don't add it to the boil. Yeah. Cold extract is the way to go. Oh, cold extract is a really good way to drink coffee, period. Yeah, shit. I do that now. I leave a pitcher in my fridge, get up in the morning, heat a little bit of that up, throw some water in it. I've got coffee. Oh, yeah. I'm not even going to smell this yet, but shit, that smells good. It looks just like the last one, but fucking cloudy. Yeah. Very cloudy. Same brownish red cola looking beer. It's a little bit lighter, it seems. I was going to say definitely not transparent any longer. This is definitely more in the translucent. Yeah. I mean, it's a ruby color, but it's dark, dark ruby to be brown. Get your noses on this one. No shit, that smells like fresh coffee beans and that bulk aisle. This is the most coffee I've ever gotten out of this beer. Same here. This is gigantic. This is awesome. So this was canned March 29th. We were raving about the Dayman Coffee IPA smell. This by far blows that away as far as fresh coffee smell. It's a different coffee smell. This smells more like a dark roast, whereas Dayman was a really rich medium roast. Really citrusy. Yeah. Citrusy, light and crisp. This is more chocolatey, deep, dark mocha. Yeah. I mean, it's not like a fancy coffee or anything. It's almost like just a regular store bought coffee, but it's like you fresh ground it and then stuck your nose in the ground. I was going to say it reminds me of this is drinking much better coffee now than when I was a kid, but just opening up the Folgers. Yeah. Folgers. Yeah. If you blindfolded me and held this to my nose, I'd be like, oh, you're holding a cup full of coffee in front of my nose. Exactly. Like coffee grounds. Yeah. I don't know. I'm going to reserve judgment because I haven't tried it yet. But from the smell, this is one of the best smelling coffee beers I've come across and maybe forever. Wow. Okay. I just took a sip and that's a hell of a lot of coffee. It is, but it doesn't really measure up to the nose for me right now. This tastes a little bit like older coffee. Yeah. It kind of does. It tastes like, I don't want to say it because man, this is kind of disappointing. Well, it's still a good beer. Let's just sure, sure. Let's get that out there. It's a great beer. It's a great beer, but it definitely has the used coffee grounds note to me in the flavor. Still tasty, but it's just different. This is a completely different spin on this beer than what I've had in the past. And I think that it's dominant coffee, right? This is a coffee dominant beer. It tastes like coffee. But in this case, for me, it tastes like coffee that has been heated too much in a shitty coffee pot. I don't know, it tastes like the one you get at a mechanics garage when you're waiting on your car. Yeah. It's stale coffee, the kind that you can just kind of see the ground coffee sitting in a filter. Yeah. I was like, go back to the smell and it still smells like what we were saying. It's still a great smell, but the Folgers, now that I taste it, yeah, I see where that went. It does taste not exactly what I was wanting it to taste like. It's same here. And that's really the only place my disappointment is coming from because if my experiences were like they were before with this beer, I'd be just as pleased and loving this beer as I was then. But this nose is so much more present and alive than I've ever had in this beer before. Agreed. Yeah. It's a really strange dichotomy that's going on here, exactly like what you were saying. On the one hand, the nose is great, big, bold coffee note, but then it tastes like just old coffee that's been sitting in a carafe for a really long time. Yeah. And in the past, it didn't do that to me. Exactly. It was a little bit more even. Yeah. And it's that weird bitterness, that slight burnt bitterness that's kind of doing that for me. And I don't know if it's a fault of the coffee right now or if it's the hops. I'm not sure. Yeah. So you guys have had this before. Yes. You think, is this an anomaly? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, it kind of does go with the lighter brown style. Like you would expect a much bigger coffee to go with something maybe like a Russian imperial stone, but the more I drink it, while the flavor is still, you know, not quite, it kind of does match well with the brown. No, interesting. Yeah. Sure. That was actually one of the things that I wanted to get to is I think a lot of other people's opinions, at least when we've had this in the past, was that it's not enough bender and that it was always too much coffee, and that it always overrode the base beer. And I feel like that's definitely doing it here because I think the spread between the nose and the actual flavor, it's far more disparate here. I don't know. What do you think? Do you get the base beer at all? Like how do you feel about that? I get the base beer. I think it's actually blended in kind of nicely like I get that coffee flavor. I think they had to make it the lighter, you know, less in your face coffee to match it with that lighter, brown beer. When I think part of this beer, the regular base beer, like the bender, is already expressing so many of the flavors that you expect from coffee. It's got some roast, it's got some chocolate, it's got a little bit of coffee flavor, and it's got some breadiness, right? This just takes that and amps all those things up more closely to coffee. I'm still also getting that grassy hop. I'm still also getting some of the other notes I got in bender, but it's far more amplified. I find that it's just coffee that's dominating. It really is. I would say oddly that I get a lot more of a peach note and in fact I'd say it's a little bit more of like an artificial peach tartness on the breathing out afterwards. Okay, and maybe the beer with the coffee. I understand the exhale part. I don't get it in the flavor. No, no. In the exhale. I'm picking up hints of peach. It's a very, very small thing, but I understand it completely. It's really just kind of like a cup of coffee. It's balanced. I get the hops. I get the base beer. It's all there. But at the end of the day, the coffee kind of plays with everything else and it's kind of like a thin cup of folders. I'm kind of disappointed. Yeah. I'm saying. I am too mainly because my memories of this beer were so much greater. But still, if you put this in front of me, I would drink it and enjoy it because I fucking love coffee. Yeah, seeing as I've never, I don't have memories since I've never had it before, I think it's great. Like, if it was on tap all the time, sure, I might order it once in a while if I needed a cup of coffee, but it's not something I go gaga over or anything. I just wish that I could have another one of these that captures this nose with the flavor that I've had in all of my previous cans or experiences. Yeah, exactly. Because the nose is awesome, but that flavor, to me, it's really getting into that stale coffee note. This just doesn't even really taste like I'm drinking a beer as much as I'm drinking cold, stale coffee that might have. Yeah. And if you want to fucking harken back to a great coffee beer, that dayman from Stone. Yeah, exactly. We just had a great coffee beer. And that was one where the flavor and the nose were so countergistic to one another. Yeah. I really want more of that fucking beer, but everybody's out. I paid $22 for a bomber at EasyTiger that day, and it was worth it. I totally would also. I drank the shit out of that bottle. Thanks for the tip there, Grant. That was all you buddy. I know. I was about to buy some for us if I could, like, on the slide from them. And I was like, $22 for one. Why didn't you call me? I would have bought one. You could have picked it up. The waiter sucked. So... It's all... Did he steal your glass? No, that was free-tail. No, no, no. No, no, no. That was free-tail. Free-tail, you owe me $15. Bitches. We should probably take a break. Yeah, let's do that. You guys ready for that? Yep. Let's do it. It's such a strange fire, wrapped around my neck bone, twisted up between my stem, between my stem. I'm tripping, falling over the face, we just couldn't get over, I tried, I tried, I tried my bed, I couldn't get it off my chest. The songs we never wrote. Oh, so on the break, we had a bracelet, which is another beer from Shirley, another one that chased Smiley and the Duke House podcasting. That was shoe-capped. I feel dirty every time I say that. They're trolling us, I swear. I know, I know. Do they even- Did you verify this was an actual podcast? I think so. I don't know. I was wasted. But we had abrasive. And the reason we had it on the break was because we only really want to do five beers on the show, makes editing a lot better, makes it a quicker show, and that beer was a couple of months old. It was a couple of months old. Yeah, it was February 25th or something when it was canned. You know, it might not have been the best example of that beer, but it was still really fucking- Hour 23, man. I know. Hour 23. Yeah. There's a video- That hops fall off. Video on YouTube that makes fun of beer geeks like us, and yeah, Hour 23 is one of the hops. Beer traders flying e-folds. If you haven't seen that video, it's fucking hilarious, please look at it. Because it's true. It's so true. And it's so sad. It's awesome. But abrasive, I thought, was really good. It had a very rich, multi-character, and the hops were very citric and tropical. Lots of bitterness, too. I agree with the assessment. It fell off a bit, but it was still really good. Yeah, it was a well-balanced beer, but yeah, it was missing some of the aromatics and some of the flavor hops. It would have been better on February 28th. I agree with that, but I was still a really fucking- Today's February 29th, by the way. This May 31st right now. Whatever. So, we're going to get into our next beer, which is called Furious. And Furious is an American IPA. It's 6.2% ABV, 99 IBUs, and it's a year-round release in 16-ounce cans, like all of these are. And kegs. I believe all of these are available. I'll draft. It malted with pale ale malts, golden promise, golden promise. Sex move. They're all sex moves, aromatic, medium crystal, and roasted barley malts. And hopped with Warrior, Antonum, Simco, and Amarillo, and they're using English Halist on this one. Cool. The description on this, a tempest on the tongue, or a moment of pure hop bliss, brewed with a dazzling blend of American hops and Scottish malts. This crimson huge ale delivers waves of citrus, pam, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum, bum. Done, done, done. And it closes with, "Furious has the hopfire, your taste buds has been screaming for." I didn't know my taste buds were screaming. And I didn't know they were from Georgia in the 1940s. I sounded like Doc Hopper from the Muppet movie. Doc Hopper, you should be friends with Chase Smiley. Oh, fuck. Okay. So. Very orange. Yeah. Little hazy. Orange gold. Almost copper. Dark orange. Yeah, bordering on copper. Some light copper. Mmm. That nose. That nose is good. That's very citrusy. For the smell, I want it bigger. I want more of that shit. And caramel- That's what we're saying about that L. Smith IPA, but once we tasted that, it all came together. Candy orange. That's what I'm getting. Candy orange. Yeah. A little bit of pumpkin. I get more pine. Yeah. I get a lot more piney. Some grass, floral, wildflower stuff. Yeah. Floral hop. I get a bit of orange out of this. I do too. And maybe some under-right mango or something. That's a lot more even keel than I remember. And the flavor? Mm-hmm. Oh, yeah, it is. Huh. This is about a month and a half old. I think the can says April 17th of this year. So just about a month and a half ago. Man, that's really balanced. Yeah. This is an IPA. It's really light. Yeah. It doesn't seem more like a pale ale. It's got a lot of malt and body. And the hops aren't very bitter, but there's a lot of flavor there, I think. I can see that they will accumulate as you drink it. If you let the beer sit on your tongue for a little bit, the bitterness will definitely come through. Yeah, and primarily the flavors that I'm getting are pine, citrus, and caramel. Those are the three main things that I'm getting, and we could probably drill further into that. It's pretty resonant. Yeah, I don't get much caramel either. Just bitter. As far as mouth, when I drink it, I really taste that hop up front, and maybe it dissolves to a little bit of sweetness, but not much else. And it's not. It's really tiny. It is very tiny, but the sweetness isn't just surface sweetness, there's kind of a depth to the sweetness. Absolutely. And it's a little darker than just sugar or turbinato sugar, I think. It's going into that brown sugar caramel territory. Yeah. It's so clean, and the only after a couple sips, I'm already noticing there are a lot more bittering hops that are just building up. Yeah. It builds rather quickly. I mean, I'm on my second sip, and it's starting to get bitter. Almost starting to chew on it. Yeah. It lingers on the mouth a lot more than the mouth feel would really lead you to believe. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the mouth feels real thin, but then the more I drink it, the more I'm getting that, you know, thick, like I just drank orange juice, kind of thick mouth. It's almost sitting on my tongue like oil, if that makes any sense. If you blended a whole orange with the peel and all, and just blended that up and took a swig of that, you know, it would have some of that oiliness and some of that bitterness, but there's also a ton of pine. Absolutely. I'm getting a lot more pine as it accumulates. It is a mark of a good IPA, right? When it's oily enough that it sits on your tongue, that means they've done a lot more late-edition hops to get that oil in there that's not, I summarized, it's still oil. It's really interesting to me that of all the beers that we've had tonight, the most consistent one so far for me is bender. I know. I've had coffee bender, I've had the cinecale, and I've had this, and all of this tastes markedly different than what I remember it being. This one's, I remember it being bigger, but I'm digging what this is right now. It's really easy to drink. I think that this is one of the easier cans that I've had, a furious to just throw back. Yeah, and it can also be context, right? I mean, we've had a lot of beers where we're just completely freaked out by what we're tasting based on the context. I don't know. I'm really digging this beer right now. It's a very aggressive IPA. It didn't really seem like it was going to be that aggressive when I had my first sip. Like you guys are mentioning, it was drinking more of a light IPA with just a little bit of bitterness and some pretty good hop flavors, citrus and pine, but now the resinous quality is kind of accumulating and there's a lot more oily qualities that are also accumulating on that too. Would you describe it as a hop fire for your taste buds? No. Or a tempest on the tongue? No. I've had other IPAs that I would definitely say that about, like palette record for green flash. That's one of those that would fucking tempest on my tongue. Yeah. This is a pretty well balanced one for as bitter as it is. I mean, there's enough malt there to kind of temper the hops and more than enough hops to temper that malt. To go with what you were saying, I think it's just a really all around regular IPA, but where it stands out is it's got a little bit more bitterness, a little bit more pine and grass and more resin on the tongue. Those are the things that make this beer stand out to me. It has less of a middle. That's what I'm remembering more of when I've had this previously. This has more of a bell curve. Okay. Previously, it seemed to be more of a plateau before it got to the bittering and then it would amp up. This has got a little bit of a dip to it. Sure. And this was canned a month ago. Yeah. Over the break, we had the abrasive and we drank that over the break because it's a little old. I think this is tasting more of an IPA than that and that's classified as a double. It is. This has got a lot more hops to it. And that might be because of the age of that double. This is definitely a drier beer than that abrasive was also. It's not dry. It's not bone dry. There's some sweetness there and I'm still getting some caramel in the malt. But it's nice. Again, usually I don't really like multi IPAs that much. This one I think is very well balanced. Yeah. It's just a solid IPA. I've really got nothing bad to say about it. We're kind of trying to figure out how to describe it here and it's nothing special, nothing bad. It's one that I would drink more often if it was around here. Sure. Again, certainly. Please distribute to Texas. Distribute anywhere. Right. Other than just Minnesota. Anywhere where we can trade for it or get it. Let's move on to our last beer. Okay. You were just waiting to say that, huh, Graham? I waited until John was drinking water. Yeah. Yeah. One thing about all these beers is they go down fucking easy. We've had a few other shows like the several that I've been on, Bells and the... Ale Smith? Ale Smith. And you were on the Seizan show also. Yeah. That was a while ago. Yeah. But the Bells and the Ale Smith, those beers were all just very, very solid. Like I think everything was just tied up. No problem. Like just very, very well made. These beers are really good. They just don't feel like they've quite got that same tie together. I guess it's hard to describe because they're all really good beers. Like, certainly makes great beers. They really do. They really do. They really do. You guys, they seem to be failing on maintaining consistency, too. Yeah. But I think that if you buy a surly beer most of the time, nine out of ten times, you know you're going to get a good beer. We're not going to get some phantone shampoo with this. Like, okay. So what I'm saying here, I guess, those other breweries that what I mentioned were maybe like you could drink anything from them and it's probably like a ten out of ten or like, you know, right on style or right what you think it will be. These beers are a little surprising and I guess they're great. So maybe like nine out of ten. Yeah. I don't know. It's hard to say. They're just not as tight. Yeah, that's a good point. They're a little bit rough around the edges, but still. But still great. Fucking great. Yeah. Yeah. I don't want anybody to think they're not great. They have great beers. They're talking about finesse. Finesse. With the Ailesmith, that was a cut above. That was something incredible. That was like top three percent tile. Fucking awesome. Yeah. This is some of the best beer that you can get out of the Midwest. I want to say like, just if you were to draw a line straight down the country, Minnesota and Wisconsin, great beer culture and I think that this is part of that cannon. So we're just going to get into our final beer, which is overrated. Ooh, I love that name. I know we do. It's a West Coast IPA at 7.3% ABV 69 IBUs and it's an occasional release in 16 ounce cans. They made it with two-row malt, Belgian crystal malt, and it's hopped with Columbus, Centennial Cascade and El Dorado, and they're using English aliased on this also. And it's just a day over a month old. Nice. This is April 30th of this year. Beautiful. Beautiful. That is a pretty golden color. And it's very clear too. It's just a slight chill haze. Yeah. Maybe just a little bit. Slight chill haze. I really, after you read the malt, so looking at this recipe, I really like it for its simplicity. Some of the best beers are just that easy. And smell that. Two-row add one specialty malt. Absolutely. Smells fantastic. It smells really good. It's so sweet. Oh God. And the El Dorado hop is a fairly new hop. You won't see that on too many beers yet. Yeah. I think that just stabilized. You can now just get that. Nice. There's a pineapple in the nose. There's a tropicality here for sure. It reminds me of those orange candies. I want to put them in my mouth. Oh yeah. Those orange kitt gummy wedges. Yeah. The ones with the sugar on them. Yeah. I kind of want to put an umbrella in my glass. I know. The aroma for some reason is reminding me of a piña colada with a little bit of the coconut. Just a touch. I was just going to say the same thing. There's definitely a coconut note here. It's really slight, but there's like a slight coconut milk hit. And there's tangerine in the nose, some ooh tangerine, definitely. Some kind of sweet orange, like a kava kava or something. Yeah. I already drank all of mine. Sorry. It's really good. Again, the head is still falling off. It's not like anything spectacular, but it's hanging on. It's rimmed around the glass. It's nice. It's there. There's a little bit of a minerality there. Mm-hmm. And it moves into that bitterness. I was going to say it's almost something salty or savory as it transitions into that. Mm-hmm. So I'm going to modify the water to add minerals because minerals in an IPA will help you get some of that IPA flavor out. Mm-hmm. Helps the hops I summarize. That's a really interesting flavor. The first two things that come to mind are tangerine with the peel and bubblegum. And brine. Yeah. Yeah. It's very much rinds that I'm tasting grapefruit, orange rind. Yeah. I get mainly grapefruit rind. And it's pretty light and pretty dry too. There isn't a lot of body to this beer. We've said a lot of the beers tonight have been dry. This is the first one I would say has an astringency. Mm-hmm. I get leaves my tongue dry. I almost would like this with a glass of water. So would I. But this is fucking nice. But it's still great. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a really good beer. And it's great in a different way than the other IPAs that we've had tonight, the furious and the abrasive that we had on the break. How would you compare this to the furious? This has less body. And I think there's less sugars and less caramel-y, deep rich molds. Definitely. I guess highlighted that's going on here. Yeah. It's not as central to the flavor profile. It seems like it's more a showcase for the hops. Sure. Then something that's going to be well balanced with the malts and the hops. This is still a very well balanced beer. There's not a lot of bitterness. There's a hell of a lot of flavor in the hops. Quite a bit of aroma actually, that aroma is getting more accentuated as they keep drinking too. I think exactly what you said, it is meant to highlight the hops. And that's why it's called the West Coast. Yeah. The malt bill is very simple. They didn't add anything complex in it to give it a lighter body and just nothing to distract away from the hops. It seems like it's inspired by ballast point. Yeah. Okay. Sculpin or the calico or there's something in the bitterness and the way that it plays with the tropicality, it's definitely doing exactly what it set out to do. I am totally getting the West Coast aspect out of this beer. A little bit reminiscent of Pliny, I think, in the lighter body and more hop focused kind of. It's a very different hop profile. Profile. Yeah. I mean, it's more citrusy for sure, but I think in the same ratios. Sure. I think the X that we had from Ailsmith, that was similar to Pliny to me. But this is, yeah, I'm with you, I'm not getting the same hop profile. It's still a really good beer. I'm really enjoying this quite a lot. The thing that's kind of freaking me out a bit about this is that it's coming off more boozy than the 7.3% that it is. I think maybe that's just because of the hops that are here, they're kind of accentuating that heat just a little bit. But it's not bad. Like I'm not going to count that against this beer at all. I think this is still fantastic. Really? Yeah. I didn't know how to bring this up. Okay. So we have another guy sitting here. His room is sitting in the wings, just listening to his record. And he passed us a note that said this beer was made as a tongue and cheek knock against Pliny the Younger. And that's why it's called Overrated. Interesting. That's funny. I didn't know that. Yeah, I didn't know that either. That's hilarious. He passed me the note. I didn't know what to do about it. I was like, "Pliny the Younger is one of those really elusive beers that I have yet to try." Same here. I have a friend who went to Russian River and he ended up having to wait in line for Pliny the Younger. I think he said he was there for three and a half hours and he showed up early. Yeah. He wasn't even near the end of the line and he was there three and a half hours. We had a Russian River show with our buddy Sean and he had just gotten back from Pliny the Younger day. Dick. Yeah. He regales us some fucking awesome stories. Yeah. Yeah. This is a pretty good beer. Do you guys want to get to rank? Yes. Yup. I'm ready. Wait. Mike, why don't you go first? I'll do it. The highlight of the show for me was having Bender again. The beer is really exemplary of the brown ale style. There's really very few brown ales that come to mind that are just fucking awesome. Is that your number one? Bender. Nice. Bender is my favorite beer that I've had this evening. My second favorite was Overrated. This one showed a little bit more grasp on the brewing process and exactly what they were trying to capture. Really, really tasty. This is right up my alley. My number three was the Cinecale. This is one of those Cezons that I really fell in love with early on. The fact that it was in a can just really intrigued me. But the flavor profile, it's really on point, really, really clean. Exactly what I want in an American interpretation of a Cezon. I think they hit just a really great sessionable beer. My number four was the Furious. It wasn't as bright and as sharp. It seemed to have more of a punch in the balls previously and it doesn't quite have that right now. It's still tasty as fuck. None of these beers are bad. We haven't had a single bad beer this evening. I think it's just a matter of placement in terms of your flavor preference. My number five was the Coffee Bender. The number of times that I've had it previously, I enjoyed it more because the flavor was more on point. This was the most perfect embodiment of the nose that I want, but it didn't have the flavor. The flavor to me was stale coffee, it was as good as any coffee that you would get at a gas station and that was kind of disappointing. It highlighted the base beer okay. But that coffee note in the flavor was just not on point for me, but that's where it stands for me. Thanks, Mike. I'll go after you. We have the same rankings. Mike and I have very similar palettes. It's stupid how often we get the same rankings, but yeah, my number one also was Bender. Dude, I never thought I'd vote a brown ale. Brown ale number one. Yeah. That is surprising. Next to a bunch of really great beers. I mean, all these beers I really, really enjoyed, but that brown ale was so good and so drinkable and so surprising. I've had it before, but for some reason, tonight, it just hit me in all the right places and I thought that beer was fantastic. Completely on point. Yeah. My second favorite beer of the night was overrated and dude, I think that's a really fucking good IPA, man, West Coast all the way. I like the dryness of it and the hot flavor was really good. It had the right amount of bitterness, dug the hell out of it. Number three, cynic, delicious, peachy, lots of spices, and it had a floral quality that I really liked in that honeysuckle just sealed it up for me. Number four was furious and that was a solid beer. Yeah. Like Harvey said, it's rough around the edges, but the flavors that I got out of it were really good. The amount of malt was perfect for it. I wish I got more aromatics and a little bit more of that tropicality, but still a really great beer. Number five, coffee bender and yeah, maybe I like stale coffee every so often. Reminds me the office, but you know, if that beer's flavor lived up to what I was getting in the nose, it would have ranked way higher. That would have probably been my favorite beer of the night, had it matched that nose. Little good beer. I had to put it at number five because yeah, next to all these, it wants to go next. I'm on it. Harvey, go for it. All right. I would also put bender number one because man, that was just so delightful. It's hard to find a good brown and they really did it and it's hard to imagine we'd have a show where three of us put a brown ale at number one. It's hard to do a really good brown. So props to Sir Lee for that. Two, I put as overrated just because I really liked the lightness and the accentuating the citrus and the West Coast hops made my day like I could drink so much of that. Anybody out there wants to send me a keg, not the beerist, just me. I would take it three surprisingly I put as the coffee bender. Okay. I mean, all these beers were good. The reason I put the coffee bender at number three was because I haven't had it before. Like you guys were saying, it was different blah, blah, blah, et cetera. And that's valid. And I did. I love the nose and I could see where they were going with that. As a homebrewer, it's really easy to put flavors and put things into big giant beers. Like, yeah, you can put coffee into a huge Russian imperial style with oak and cherries and all this other crazy mumbo jumbo. It's a lot harder to brew with some of these ingredients in a lighter style beer. So I have a lot of respect for this. It came out well balanced, tasting maybe like stale shitty coffee, but again, I like what they're doing there. And I think there's promise there in it. I would drink that again, certainly for was the cynic ale again. I guess this was just kind of the baseline. I enjoyed it. I thought it was a good beer. I'll move right past that. We already talked about it. Five, I put as furious. This was a good beer. I just thought it was for an IPA. I thought it was off on a few key points. It was a bit sweeter than I thought it should be a bit more bitter than I thought it should be. And it was pretty grassy while I enjoyed drinking it and I would certainly have it again. Just think it was off on those few key points. So well, cool. Thanks, man. There you go. I've got no problems with what you rank this now. Speaking of problems. Grant. So are you ready to go? Wild card. I know. I don't think I'm following suit with you guys, but I would say that for my number one, I was quite delighted to choose the cynic ale. Nice. Cezanne in a can? Whoa. That's crazy. But I love that it had a great easy drinking taste. I love the coriander in it. And I thought it was smoothly with this peppery note and hey, qualities I thought, you know, it made it really nice. It was really fun. Overall, it just left me pretty happy. It's a great beer. Yeah. Number two. I went with furious. This one was good. I thought it's kind of another standard IPA I've had and honestly I've had better IPAs, but I liked it overall. Like, I thought, yeah, that's all right. I don't necessarily have a whole lot to say that you guys didn't. Well, you know, me personally as a beer drinker just in life, I can really respect just a solidly done regular IPA and that that'll fill that that's fucking good. That's what it does. Number three goes to overrated. I don't like the title. I don't like the name of this. I was joking earlier when I said, Oh, I love that name because honestly, I don't like the name, even if it's tongue and cheek taking a stab at playing the elder, younger rather, it seems a little bitter of them. Even if it isn't, I just don't really necessarily appreciate the name. Aside from that, I thought it's a OK beer. It's a west coast beer, but once again, I think I've had other beers that punch it up more. If you're going to name it a west coast IPA, I would think you're a little bit bolder than they are and it was really smooth. I guess it's really smooth and subtle. It's nice. OK, cool. I normally wouldn't interject in someone else's ratings, but you said you interjected everything in life. I know. You said that was bitter of them. Is that an IPA fun? Yes. Excellent. Number four went to Bender. I know you guys all ranked this really highly, but it's just a brown ale. It wasn't that impressive, guys. Honestly, it's OK. It's a brown ale. I guess it's got some nuance to it, but whatever. Number five, maybe we're just all excited that it's dedicated to a dead dog. Yeah, it's just it's not that great. It's just a brown ale. Ellie's awesome. Hold up, Harvey, because number five goes to this fucking coffee bender when Rivio had the balls to say there was no bad beers in this show. This was a bad beer. This beer was gross. It tasted like stale coffee. I would prefer to have dishwater beer to this. This was just disgusting. And maybe this show has made me a little surly about my rankings. I think maybe you have deeper seated problems than growing a show. I was telling you my therapist. Yes, he got sleep since he had a baby. And our proctologist. Grant just peace the fuck out right now. It's amazing. You'll cry it out. He's in the hallway. Hang it out. Grant. Come back. It's terrible. He totally left. Yeah. Good show, guys. Yes. Sir. Delicious. Surly is a really great brewery, and they make some fucking fantastic beers. And Reed. And really, if I could get any of these beers at this store, I'd probably buy a lot of them very often. Are you kidding me? 16 ounce tall boys of Cezanne and multiple awesome IPAs. And deliciousness. Yeah. One of the best brown ales ever. This screams like beer. Oh, yeah. Really shit, right? Outdoors in the heat. Cezanne. I would take that cynic everywhere with me. Dude, camping barbecues with these fucking beers would be fantastic. These were great beers. It were maybe a little nitpicky, but we're very, very big. Man, that's what we really need. That's what we do. Yeah. Thank you, sir. And the Jukeau's podcast kingdom for being both Jews and cows. If that is your real name, I'm pretty sure his name is Chase Jukeau's Miley. That's an epic name. I know. They used to call me Mexican cow. No, they never did. No, they didn't. But thank you guys for listening. And thanks, Drew, for sitting here and listening live. I know. I know. Well, we're going to record a little extra after this, and Drew is going to be on that. Yeah. Shut up. We're trying to run a show here. But yeah, it was a lot of fun. Thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you guys for being here, John Harvey, second time in a row. I love you guys. And I love drinking beer. Thank you. Despite what I might have said earlier, so thanks for having me. Yeah, Mike, thank you again for being. I love it. And I would thank Grant, but he's probably out killing my roommate's dog. I think he said he was talking to his proctologist. No, that was really weird. OK. Here's a question for you listeners. Have you ever had your proctologist cold, middle of the night, and just want to chat? Because that's what happened with Grant earlier. He actually got a call for his proctologist. It was neat. And he's like 30 years old, and he's got a proctologist. He was just stipulating in the weirdest ways, like, I don't even know what those hand motions meant. It was weird. It made me uncomfortable. I know. We're just on the break, all sitting here waiting to record. He's like, chat up. He's proctologist. I don't even know what that's about. You need to take a shower. You need to take a shower. Yeah. Before you go see his proctologist. Because if he's good enough to take a cold shower-- And after. Right. But if he's good enough to take a cold shower from him during a show, then you might want to go see him. Right. How do I repeat those? Reach around. [LAUGHTER] That's a kind of a proctologist I need. Yeah. Lay on your side. Take a deep breath. This is going to be easy. I've been to a proctologist. This is going to be easy and awesome. Yeah. This is going to be awesome. Who cares if you have a fissure? You'll be great. Thanks for listening. Are you getting off? You know, it's going to be really dirty right now when I say bottoms up. [LAUGHTER] But bottoms up, everybody. That's great. All right. All right. All right. For another ending. Just, all right. What are you talking about? Dude, this was delicious and slick like a looped up butthole. Tight butthole. No. It doesn't have to be tight. It has to be nicely looped. Let's good night. More information on the Beerists podcast, including show notes and pictures, visit the beerists.com, email us your feedback, comments, questions, and suggestions at info@thebeerists.com. Like us on Facebook at facebook.com/thebeerists and follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/thebeerists. Intro music was provided by Ian Butcher in his band Deflated Ballet. Follow him on twitter at twitter.com/Ian_Butcher93. I'm John Rubio. And thanks again for listening. Bye! Bye! Bye! Bye! in the future. in the future.
