Beer, Weeken of Drinken

Friday night started out with little plans, that morphed into a somewhat full weekend. We were going to go meet Evan at Jupiters Classic around 7:30, and that left some time before, so Kriddy and I went to Crane Alley to have a beer or two.

CA, recently got in several New-To-Me beers, so I started (and kind of finished) there. First up was the t'smisje Double IPA. (Sorry for the dark picture) I wasn't able to capture it, but all the t'smisje's are bottle conditioned. There is a friggin yeast cake on the bottom of the bottle. If you leave a tiny amount of beer in the bottle, and swirl it around, then pour it out, it looks like a yeast starter. This one had some massive head, looked like merange going into the glass.



If a bartender did the bottle roll thing that they seem to like to do with hefe-weizens, that bar would be out $10 as there's no way I'd drink that beer.




The second beer on Friday night was the Fiori. This one says it was brewed with vanilla and corriander. It was definitely a spiced beer. Wasn't horrible. But not really the style for me. Meanwhile, Kriddy was drinking a Victory Storm King.

We then went to Jups classic and had a couple of beers, including a Tucher dunkel, and the bartender did the roll thing... man, I hate having a beer that's not done my way. I don't want the yeast, it's cloudy enough, I also don't want fruit in my beer.

After we left, went back to Kriddy's and I had a De Dolle Bos Keun. This was a Belgian Strong Pale Ale. It took me like 2 hours to drink, after about 20 minutes to pour. As you can see, there's very agressive carbonation in this thing.




Saturday, went back to Crane Alley in hopes of watching the Illinois football game. For some reason it wasn't on at CA either, the TV said it was Illinois, but the team playing was Northwestern.

I started our time there with the tsmisje Wostyntje. This was an odd beer. Brewed with Mustard seed. That's something you just don't normally see.

Kent Goldigs hops is added at the beginning of the boil while Challenger hops, dark candy sugar and the crushed mustard seeds are added after about 50min. into the boil. The addition of light candy sugar and fresh top-fermenting yeast to the bottle starts the secondary fermentation in the bottle. After three more weeks Wostyntje is ready to become part of your dinner.

Wostyntje has a unique bitterish finish, which stems from the use of "Torhout's" mustard seeds.

I was drinking this one with their corn chowder soup, and at first the mustard wasn't noticable, but it came out as the drink warmed, it wasn't like drinking a bottle of mustard, there was just a hint.

The final new beer for the weekend was De Dolle Oerbier. You can see the bubbles on this one too. The beers this weekend were all very bubbly.



I'm not sure if any of these would be my favorite beers, or even come close to my favorite style. Most of them were priced at $9 or $10 at a bar, so that would probably preclude many people from buying them. It was an interesting drinking weekend though.

Sunday didn't have anything special, just ate wings and watched football at hooters, while drinking some Boulevard Pale, Killians, Bass and Sam Adams.