You are not worthy -- a beer thread

Yep but that's not why I am a village idiot. Just enjoy laughing as the best medicine (and beer).

 

The Elder is one.


The other is an East Coast beer.

 

I'm as giddy as a school girl. I almost wrecked my truck when my friend told me I had won the Pliney at our beer club raffle. I'm going to do a side-by-side taste test today.

 

Knowing your beer background, I'm struggling to think of the second one, because it's not like Dogfish Head 120-Minute IPA is the Great White Whale or anything. If you didn't say East Coast beer, I would have said Westvletern, or a Founders Canadian Breakfast Stout pulled from the deep.

I remember we ran a story a couple months ago about black market beer prices and what breweries were doing to try to stem that. Found it online and it talked about how this one beer -- Heady Topper by The Alchemist -- was so popular it was going for $800 bucks or so a bottle, and the brewer had to shut down its retail store because it was so overrun with beer tourists that it was making the locals angry. And Vermont qualifies as East Coast.

So I'll enter Heady Topper as my guess and, if that's right, also enter the follow-up question of what sins you had to commit to get your hands on it.

 

Everyone says Pliney the Younger is better. I've only had Pliney the Elder.

 

Yep. It's Heady. I'm fucking stoked.

I competed in a pretty large homebrew contest in Nashville last fall, and Kimmich was the guest speaker. He brought enough Heady for everyone to have half a can.

Fast forward two months and a guy from our beer club posts some pictures from a pub in Vermont. His family is from there. I ask him if he's bringing back some Heady and he didn't know it was made there. "I don't normally buy canned beer, so I didn't pay attention to it," he told me. So, after I picked up my jaw, I told him to bring back all he could fit in his truck.

So, at the beer meeting last night, he brought out a couple cans and we split 'em. As I was walking out, he slipped one in my coat pocket and gave me a hug.

I had to leave before the meeting was over, so I passed my raffle tickets off to the guy sitting beside me and asked him to call me if I won the Pliney, which was donated by a new member who just moved from Portland.

I hit the beer Powerball.

 

That's one beer trend I can get behind -- the return of the can. Much more portable, gives brewers more flexibility for design and if you drop one on the ground, you don't have to spend 15 minutes making sure all the glass shards are accounted for. It took a while to get past the prejudice of the can as the vessel of the macrobrew, but I for one welcome our new aluminum overlords.

 

I like to be the center of attraction
Let the people know just who I am
Like my movie shows with lots of action
Take my beer straight from the can
Cause I'm a man -
Cause I'm a man.

 

I'm surprised it took so long to get to Heady Topper. It is number one or so on Beer Advocate and here in Mass it is a big thing among beer drinkers. Waterbury, VT has been in the NYT and Boston Globe within the last year, also.,

Heady was never going for $800 a bottle (it isn't sold in bottles). It sells for $72/case of 16-oz cans. Bars in central VT will charge around $8/can, I believe. I have heard that bars in the Boston area would get it and sell it for much more than that, but nobody was paying $800/case let alone $800 a can.

The Alchemist said it will be opening a retail shop in downtown Waterbury, but I haven't seen any updates since the brewery shop was closed.

In the last year I have had about 3 cases of Heady Topper. It's amazing how it shows off multiple hop profiles.

For beer drinkers, Waterbury is a great place. In addition to the Alchemist, Lawsons and Hill Farmstead are in the area. There are four bars downtown that feature these and other craft beers, (Availability is a problem). Also, you might not be able to find these beers sold in stores outside of this area.

[EDIT]
.A woman was arrested for trying to sell five cases of Heady Topper for $825. It was after the restriction on retail sales, though.

http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/article/20131231/NEWS02/312310025/Woman-accused-selling-Heady-Topper-avoids-prosecution

 

Kimmich told us in November that he'd had to deal with blackmarket sales across the country -- one, an LA man trying to sell it for $500 a can.

 

Great newspaper logic. A single, second-hand related incident is somehow a trend. Oh, forget the fact that the guy was trying to sell it. Don't bother to confirm whether anyone would buy it.

 

I'm sorry. Did I say it was a trend?