BJs is great, but I think they do pizza better than beer. Man I love that stuff, but they're only down south.

Ok, I might as well come clean now. I drank not one, but TWO CANS OF MILLER HIGH LIFE today. My friend was throwing a white trash party, and that's what I brought. The secret to making it taste good is to first take a sip of Keystone Light, then use the Miller HL to wash the nasty flavor away.

my sister-in-law stopped and stayed with us this weekend. she has been on a 5 day road trip from cali to austin.. anyway, she brought me a 6-pack of west coast beer. it is called 'extra pale ale' from the slo brewing company in san luis opisbo. i assumed it was from a micro brewery there, til i read the label on the bottle, and it says "bottled in chicago, ill"..

without being too harsh, i would say i didnt care for this beer at all.. when it says "extra pale", thats exactly what it means. the beer had a very stale , unpleasnt taste to it. and it left a bitter aftertaste. definitely not a beer that i would drink on a regular basis. i will finish the six pack just because i cant let it go to waste, but i am terribly unimpressed with it as a whole.

bigjohn

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! I created a monster! In its short life, the politics thread has already managed to overtake the beer thread! waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! drink more people, then the politics don't matter so much! (the previous statement is a load of crap, btw.)

ringmir, you're going to pay for that. The Karmic backlash will be terrible, I'm sure. I had already noted with immense sadness that the serious, albeit civil, discourse on the politics thread had overtaken the joyful wanderings of the beer thread.

Obbeer:

I like the Stone beers a lot. Any brewery that makes credible strong beers has my respect and gratitude. It seems to me that there is slimmer margin and lower sales volumes compared to chick-friendly beers. Stone (and others) are creating big, satisfying beers for real beer drinkers.

The SLO beer is probably just another marketing ploy. There are lots of beers that exist in name only, being produced by the beer factory du jour. I've always hated Pete's Wicked for that reason. There are others, including the once-venerable Sam Adams. Beer needs a sense of place; an inorganic marketing campaign impugns my sense of joyful drinking.

Peter, I hope you feel better after unburdening yourself. You are welcome home any time, prodigal beer drinker.

Newcastle is one word. Sorry - Mark will undoubtedly berate my sense or propriety, but that was killing me. It's known as Newkie Broon to natives, btw. I like somewhat sweeter and stronger beers, personally, but that is clearly the standard by which all Northern English Brown Ales are measured.

Deschutes Obsidian Stout is fabulous with vanilla ice cream.

Gordon Biersch Marzen, another San Diego beer. I had my wedding reception at Gordon Biersch Beer Garden in San Diego. Beautiful place for a wedding (chick thought), great place for a wedding with beer (guy thought)

My bad on the "Newcastle" spelling

lomb7, I had my wedding "reception" at the GB in Vegas. Couldn't have been happier.

bigjohn, SLO Brewing used to have quality beers. I haven't had one lately (years) so I can't comment, but I agree with Tom that many excellent beers are being ruined by marketing, accountants, and multiple brewing locations. Add Redhook to that list Tom.

BJs was incredible when their first brewery opened years ago in Brea. The brewers there were great guys and really did a good job making BIG, BIG, BIG beers. They were kind enough to be my yeast suppliers for a couple of years. They frequently made beers that were so high in fermentables that the yeast (wyeast 1056 most of the time) would conk out as the alcohol content rose above 10%. 5 pints of that stuff ($2 pints at happy hour!) was about all I could handle.

Anyways, their quality suffered when they opened new breweries and tried to have each site specialize in making only one or two beers. Don't know how good they are now.

One of these days I'm going to make a barleywine...haven't gotten around to it yet though. I figure I'll toss in some champagne yeast to finish it off when the yeast conks out on me. Have you ever used wyeast 3021 or 3347? Or white labs wlp715? I'm going to have to look into it, figure out which is best...

I believe on a couple of occasions I had a reason to use champagne yeasts, but I just used the dried version. Both of those you listed seem like good choices I suppose. With the proper ale yeast and some energizer I believe you can get up to about 11-12%, but the champagne yeasts are more often used.
I'm sure you know this already, but super strong brews require a lengthy mellowing time in the bottle - a year or more sometimes. Hard to wait that long. You'll also need proper cellaring facilities.
I cleaned up my garage and rebuilt some brewing equipment this week. Got it all ready to go, except I need a new mash tun. Ice chest style, infusion mash tun. Any thoughts on design, copper vs PVC, or maybe used on line sources?
Thanks

I have been doing extract brewing for a while and am looking into making "the move" to all-grain myself. I'd probably set up something like this for my mash tun. There's some variations where instead of the slotted copper tubing people use the stainless steel hose braid that some flexible tubing comes wrapped in. I've heard that with a little trial and error people get 75-80% efficiency with a simple setup like this, so I don't think you can beat it for cost effectiveness. Looks like a pretty simple saturday project if you've got a torch, otherwise the stainless hose braid is probably easier and supposedly works just as well.

Yeah, my friend made a copper one like that. I've also seen PVC versions, which strike me as easier to assemble (I'm torchless).
The primary advantage to going all grain is cost. You may not notice any improvement in your beers (assuming you're using some specialty malts now in your extract beers), and the grain creates a lot more work and possibility for problems like tannic harshness and infections.
OTOH, when you hit a good one there does seem to be a little more "pride of the creator" in your enjoyment of the beer.