Stone Collaboration With Stillwater and Evil Twin Brewing Details - The Perfect Crime

Stone, the SoCal Craft Beer giant, has been leaking details of their newest collaboration beer in conjunction with Stillwater of Maryland and Evil Twin Brewing of Minnesota via their twitter feed in the past several hours.

"The Perfect Crime" as it will be called is set to be brewed by Brian of Stillwater, Mitch of Stone and Jeppe from Evil Twin Brewing.  To produce the Smoked Black Saison with Oak Smoaked Wheat they will employ the following hops and malts.  They will be using Cluster, East Kent Goldings and Chinook Hops, as well as Wheat Malt, Oats and Carafa for the malt.

All of this information has been pulled together through Stone's Facebook, Twitter and Instagram feed.
The photo below of Jeppe of Evil Twin was found on their Instagram.

Growler & Gill Craft Beer Shoppe reaches it's goal!

Wow!!  We were blown away by the support Growler & Gill Craft Beer Shoppe received on our Kickstarter campaign.  95 people from our community and across the country each donated between $10 and $1000 to see us succeed.  Now we can't fail.  We have begun the process of picking local contractors from Rockland County to begin the hard job of turning our space in Nanuet into a cool, comfortable place to enjoy craft beer.  We will be posting pictures both here and on Growler & Gill's Facebook page as work progresses.  So stay tuned!!

Help Kickstart our Craft Beer Shoppe

Doreen and I have embarked on a craft beer journey more exciting than any of our previous adventures.  We've decided to open Growler & Gill Craft Beer Shoppe.  We have secured a space and are now in the process of making it into a cool comfortable spot to experience the world of craft beer. To that end, we have turner to Kickstarter to help us out.  Check out our  Kickstarter Video and become part of our Beer Odyssey!  You can also follow our progress on Facebook or Twitter .  If you are a Craft Beer lover or have friends who are, please Share this page with others by using the Facebook and Twitter buttons below.  Cheers!!

Bud Light Platinum

By Tom

I stopped by my local beverage center today and saw that they were doing a tasting...of Bud Light Lime and Bud Light Platinum.  I thought to myself, “seriously?”. I did want to at least taste the new Platinum and I saw this as a good opportunity to try it for free.  No need to try BL Lime - I actually like that one under the right circumstances. The BL Platinum is sweeter version of Bud Light with a 6% ABV and it comes in a cool blue bottle.  AB Inbev, who owns Budweiser, is trying to win back some people who have left the fold for better craft beer.   If I was at a party and that’s all there was, I’d probably have a few too many, but I wouldn’t choose it over anything decent.

The girl doing the samples was young and very pretty...I think she liked me because I got a cool hat.

OK, anyone who asked could get one too. I also tried 3 of the “Shock Top” beers: Raspberry Wheat Ale, which was actually OK, not too sweet, very light; Lemon Shandy which is horrible, I don’t like lemon in beer, all other citrus - yes, lemon – no.   Finally there was Shock Top Wheat IPA. It doesn’t taste like an IPA, it only has the very mildest hop flavor but I think it’d be an acceptable hot day beer. This one in particular might be a good starter beer for someone looking to broaden their horizons from the macro brews. A baby step. That’s the best I can say for these “macro-craft” beers.

I don’t think I’d ever actually buy any of these unless the choices were extremely limited. I felt a twinge of guilt as I, donning my new Bud Light Lime cap, paid for my bombers of Hop Stoopid and Hop Manna IPA.   Hop Manna is a really nice, refreshing IPA which is significantly lower on the bitterness scale than Hop Stoopid, somewhat reminiscent of Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra. Though Hop Manna is made here in NY by Shmaltz Brewing, the cascade, citra and centennial hops give it that wonderful west coast aroma and taste.  Mission accomplished!

Dos Costas Oeste

Happy Mother’s Day beer lovers!  We broke into my brother’s stash of “special” bottles over the weekend to celebrate the holiday.  In the beer frig were some hold overs from the fall like Pumpking  and three bottles with matching labels. 

 These beers are a collaboration between Cigar City Brewing in Tampa FL and The Bruery in Placentia, CA, hence the name, which translates to “Two West Coast Breweries”.  Both breweries produce outstanding beer so I was expecting quite a treat.  First, Why 3 different bottles?  It turns out that the brewers wanted to experiment with aging this saison in 3 different types of wood: Cedar, Grapefruit wood and lemon wood.  The bottle we opened over Mother’s Day dinner was the red -labeled, cedar variety.

So on a beautiful May afternoon, I poured this deep orange beer into a goblet and took in its aroma.  I could detect Belgian yeast and coriander, but could not pick up the other ingredients right away.  My sister-in-law Irene noticed the orange scent, but no one could tell that ginger is also used in this brew.  These flavors mixed well on the palate as we drank it.  The fruity overtones made it perfect for this spring day.  At 9% ABV, it’s not meant to drink all day long.  But as a precursor to a great meal it was right on the mark.