Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion The Water Cooler beer thread

Unfortunately, all I've got here is rain. (being, as I am, in the SF Bay Area).

I like my nog with a little "Old Charter" or "VO" or "7".

On my travels a couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to sample 10 or 15 different kinds of Asian beer. All pretty good (disclaimer: I'm no connosieur - is that even how you spell that word???) and all had a North American style. You can certainly see the Anheuser/Busch influence. My understanding is that the major Chinese brewery Tsingtao (pronounced 'shingtao') aligned with Bud and has been a major influence on every brand in the area.

My personal favorites though, were Beer Lao (found everywhere in Cambodia) and LaRue Beer (found mostly in Vietnam). But there were lots of good ones to choose from and in those 2 countries, a can was routinely had for $.50

The other great thing was Red Bull was everywhere in those countries - and they free-pour booze so all the drinks are damn strong!!!

This thread needed a bump!

And I wanted to thank Sid for the helpful comments about the Asian beers he sampled.

I highly recommend Pike Kilt Lifter Scotch ale. Very strong, wonderfully malty and rich, but nicely balanced. A recent and enthusiastic favorite.

Now, could somebody please rename this thing to include the "OT" prefix so that nobody gets confused or offended?

Nice bump, Tom. Babys in my lap frequently now so my eloquence will suffer. Had an occasion to try the Unibroue La Maudite. Not bad. Reminded me alot of many red homebrews I made where I packed alot of 2 row and crystal malts into the mash.

Unibroue?

I'm deeply offended. In high school my buddies suggested I try to get on the WWF with the moniker "Otto Von Unibrau". You obviously never considered that any of us here would be "uni-browian".

Settle down over there. I've been known to do some "top o' tha nose" plucking, myself...

But to bring this post back on topic, I recently had a beer called Brown Shugga' by Lagunitas. This is not a beer you can down quickly. At 9.9% alcohol, it would mess you up.

Here's a review.

I live in Chico, right next to the Sierra Nevada brewery! It's the largest independent brewery (in the US?). The owner is a great guy, and they have awesome food for reasonable prices. It varies from pizza to hamburgers to steak. They're currently growing their own hops for specialty batches. They also have a very nice auditorium. He hired local workers to put in custom marble staircases, murals on the walls, and all sorts of things. Beats the heck out of the Budweiser plant.

My personal favorite is Sierra Nevada Wheat with a lemon. Crystal Wheat is pretty good as well. Pale Ale is the commonly seen varient. Has anyone tried a Bigfoot? They have a reputation. There are quite a few other ones. I'm not big on Celebration (Seasonal Winter Ale). Their brown ale is alright for a dark beer.

Chico State is known as a huge party school. I think they got #2 in the last Playboy list. The previous list had them at #1.

Time to drag this one out again!

I had my first taste of barleywine yesterday at a local bar&grill, and I apparently started out with the best one available in the US: Rogue Ale's Old Crustacean Barleywine. Talk about a meal-of-a-beer! I had no idea what I was in for. Semi-sweet, thick, and very tasty. Just one made me hand my keys over. (The alcohol content is similar to wine at over 11%!)