Set for the evening

Of course, I've plenty of homebrew on tap; however, since we were at the grocery today I decided to snag a few commercial offerings:

- Bell's Pale Ale. Heard a lot about it, gonna try it.
- Unibroue Chambly Noire (or something like that). CC vouches for it so it's gotta be at least as good as Kokanee.
- Schlenkerla Rauchbier Weizen. Now, I didn't really like the regular Schlenkerla I had, but I haven't seen the Weizen version so I decided it required sampling. I was going to invite Brewpastor over when I remembered he lives in freakin' New Mexico and is probably tending the flock this week.

I'm also getting ready to start applying marinade to a 2 rib roast!

Baron von BeeGee said:

- Unibroue Chambly Noire (or something like that). CC vouches for it so it's gotta be at least as good as Kokanee.

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I'm not sure if I'd go *that* far, but it's pretty good...

Well, I tried the Bell's PA and while it was good, it didn't blow my socks off or anything. Definitely a solid PA, but no super interesting hop profile that I could detect. Are these bottle conditioned? It was super cloudy, like a Hefeweizen.

A Canadian beer can save the evening (and some more Philip Rivers TD passes).

I'd agree with the Bell's assessment. I really thought it was a solid pale Ale though. The Two-hearted is the IPA, that is an even better one.

Baron von BeeGee said:

Of course, I've plenty of homebrew on tap; however, since we were at the grocery today I decided to snag a few commercial offerings:

- Bell's Pale Ale. Heard a lot about it, gonna try it.
- Unibroue Chambly Noire (or something like that). CC vouches for it so it's gotta be at least as good as Kokanee.
- Schlenkerla Rauchbier Weizen.

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Wow. I used to live in North Carolina and they definitely didn't have that kind of beer on sale back in the day. Bud, Bud Lite, Miller, Miller Light, Micholob (for those flush in cash) and Slits Malt Liquor (for those strictly in search of a buzz). My how times have changed. If you asked for Rauchbier back then they would have thought you had a chest cold.

We've passed a new law through state legislature that raises the abv cap from 6% to 15%, so we have a lot of new beer now. NC is pretty microbrewery rich now, too, especially in the mountains. We also have a lot of upscale transplants that can support a nice, gourmet grocery store which tends to carry the finer offerings.

In any case, I got to the Schlenkerla Weizen before the wimmen broke the wine out for dinner. I definitely like it better than the regular Schlenkerla, but it's still not something I would buy again. Cloudy like a Hefeweizen but without the Hefe flavors...are they using lager or ale yeast in this thing? I don't know. If it's top fermented I don't think it's a Hefe strain. I speculate the grist must be something like 50/50 rauchmalt/wheat.

Dude said:

I'd agree with the Bell's assessment. I really thought it was a solid pale Ale though. The Two-hearted is the IPA, that is an even better one.

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Definitely a solid pale ale which I didn't mind drinking.

I was specifically looking for the IPA but didn't see it. This is the first time I've seen Bell's here, but maybe I'm blind. They also had the Kalamazoo Stout which I may grab next time.