Sierra Nevada 12th Release Harvest Wet Hop Ale

Good fresh hop beer, lots of clean hoppiness- not up to following the Rogue though.

Rogue Independence Hop Ale

Wow! And amazing ale!
Quite delicious-lots of upfrint hoppy bitterness, no unpleasant aftertaste. Full, big mouthfeel-nice complexity to the flavour.

Battle Creek Fresh Hop Organic IPA

Nice red colour, healthy head. Flowery and skightly sweet. A decent but unremarkable IPA.

Rogue Morimoto Soba Ale

A crisp, pleasant beer with some mushroom aftertaste. Nicely hoppy, enjoyable, nioce bitterness, not much else to distunguish. Not a lot of character; probaly better with sushi than pizza.

Stone Vertical Epic 08.08.08

Very Tasty! Kind of explodes on the tongue with rich hoppiness. Nice head.

"An irreverant, exuberant, counter cultural trippel- this trippel rolls into your mouth like a true Stone-and punches your tonsils on the way down." Definitely a Worthy Ale (Pizza Boy).

Avery Reverend Quadruple Belgian Style Ale

Drinkable but not inspiring. A bit funky. Improved by drinking with food, especially pizza.
Pizzaboy says a tasty ale in the abbey style- flavour is reminiscent of "The Kaiser", another Avery offering. Compares to other ales Pizzaboy likes and goji and nexus don't.

John BarleyCorn and FiggyAle

John BarleyCorn BarleyWine Ale is quite pleasant and tasty- very much a keeper.
A bit too smooth and polite, didn't taste like a 10% brew.

Brasserie de Blaugies Fig Ale
Lots of head
Funky and ginger aley- grows on you- like a tumour. Improved by good pizza.
Leaves bits of fig(?) in the bottom of your glass.

Hanssen's Artisanaal Mead the Gueuze

Light, less sweet than most meads. Like a dry champagne with yeast notes. Pleasant but not remarkable. A bit overtaken by yeasty goodness.

foam reading

Pizzaboy: "query- if you can tell a fortune in tea leaves, can you tell a fortune in beer foam?"
Goji "You will wake up with a headache"
PB "Yeah, I'm totally seeing that"

DesChutes Abyss

Not to Goji's taste.
Lovely creamy brown head and some nice tight layering, looks like espresso. Heavy and Molassassy, lovely bitterness. Very dark stout, thick and smoky an d bitter. Label note reads like a Barry White song.

Brother Thelonius

Brother Thelonius Belgian Style Abbey Ale is a tribute to Jazz great Thelonius Monk. Goji and Pizza boy like it- nexus thinks it's nasty- she'd pour it on the plants but Goji's glass would be in the way. A portion of the proceeds go to the Thelonius Monk Jazz Endowment. Pricy but good. Everyoe liked the bottle art no matter what they thought of the ale.

Cru Dor and Old Stock

Cru Dor Organic Belgian Style Ale- Funky. Winey. We wouldn't pour it on the plants.

Old Stock ale 2007
By North Coast Brewing Company
11.7% alcohol Goes down like an ale but with a barley wine kick. Flowery and tasty.

St Bernardus Christmas Ale

We have pretty much decided that the brewers at St. Bernardus are the beer and ale gods. They just don't seem to be able to set a foot wrong when it comes to producing an outstanding product. Goji says that if Bernardus is not the patron saint of brewers he should be.

We poured this fine ale gently down the side of our glasses and were rewarded with a BIG head which subsided eventually into some fine lacing on the sides of our glasses. The aroma was subtly yeasty but with no really dominant notes. The flavor also was flowery but so balanced that none of us ccould quite say much other than how delicious it was. The aftertaste was also mellow and balanced, lingering pleasantly on the tongue somewhere between the oh and the wow.

Pizzaboy said this outshone everything else we tried tonight; nothing else came close and that included this year's Stone Anniversary Ale which I am finishing as we speak.

Stone 11th Anniversary Ale

Well, it was only the two of us here tonight sucking down Pizza boy's chili and tasting 2 new brews. The first was... disapointing. The second was, dare I say, controversial. It is billed as a IPA but DARK, and we all know that Stone doesn't kid about any such description. Goji didn't spit it out. Well, she didn't QUITE spit it out. She is an IPA aficianado but a bit afraid of the DARK? Perhaps. She said it was hoppy enough but the molassasey tones overpowered the IPA lightness that floats her boat. I on the other hand enjoyed it. It was tasty, rich and had a nice bite, well, more of a fierce nibble really. Tasty but not overly distinguished. 8.7% alchohol by volume.

Firstly,
Nexus

Monty Python's Holy Gr-ale

Not worth going on a quest for. A decent beer, but just a beer nonetheless. We expected more from an ale with the grail.