Tuesday 10/25

1. Stone Pale Ale - starting off with this was delightful. Bright, noticeably citrusy. I would never have guessed Stone Pale Ale because it never carries those flavors for me.
2. Alpine McIlhenney's Irish Red - a beer I haven't drank in at least 3 years. It was solid. Not as aggressive as we remembered.
3. Green Flash West Coast IPA - hard to nail down the exact beer when you are blindly served a pungent hoppy brew. There are so many good guesses.
4. Green Flash Double Stout x2
5. Drakes Denogginizer
6. Stillwater Existent Ale
7. Stone/Bruery/Elysian La Citrueille Celeste de Citracado - mellow, solid.
8. Double Bastard '09 vintage. Definitely mellowed out, but we feel it's actually better fresh.



9. Stumbling back down the hill.

Midwest Goodie Wednesday Hike

Wednesday evening's hike was much anticipated due to the midwest beer stash that was brought back recently. For some of us who are out of shape (me-cough), the hike up is fairly exhausting... it's all uphill. Too bad there aren't hikes that are downhill both ways. Funniest anecdote of the night had to be while blind tasting the Sierra Nevada wet hop... after we started to guess (and miss) breweries, one of the clues that had to be given was "basically the biggest (craft) brewery in CA." It took literally about 2-3 minutes before Sierra Nevada popped into our heads. I think this reflects more on how Sierra Nevada has taken a backseat in our minds rather than how many brain cells we had killed working our way to that beer.

Beer lineup, minus the bottle of homebrew DIPA

1. homebrew DIPA- still very tasty, such a nice hop combination
2. Three Floyds Gumballhead- when it's fresh those Amarillo hops are sooo good
3. Green Flash Summer Saison- best deal of the night beer. I got it for $4.
4. Manzanita Pumpkin beer- my winner of the night. Very nice body, spiced fairly high but not to the undrinkable level.
5. Stillwater/Mikkeller collaboration- Style was a belgian dark wheat ale I think? Tasted very smokey at first, then settled down, maybe because of the Wasabi almonds changing our palate.
6. Tyranena Brewer's Gone Wild (forget which one exactly) - Think it was a stout? See, things start to become blurred at a certain point on #craftbeerhike.
7. Lake Louie Imperial Stout - solid, nothing else to say really.
8. Sierra Nevada Northern Hemisphere- their wet hop beer. Tasty, a bit more bitter than I expected.

Baby Rattler in our way on the trip down.


Cloud cover approaching....