Spring Training – But My Liver is in Midseason Form (also enjoy a Biscotti beer!)

Well, what with the impending return of warmer weather, and, dare I say it, an increased ability to socially comingle with actual people in actual drinking situations, it seems like a proper time to start to loosen up and get into midseason form.  A spring training, if you will.

Oh, wait.  I drank beer all winter.  I’m already stretched out like a marathon runner here!

Still, my ambitions are larger than just “drink beer in 2021.”  Though that in and of itself is a lofty goal.

My goal for 2021 is to write more.  I try new beers all the time — whether it be at my favorite local watering holes or in my weekly selections from the local food jobber.  I take photos of them all the time, too — and if you follow our delightfully irreverent (that’s the word, right?  not irrelevant?) Instagram account you’d see that as well.  So, all that’s left is to put my sorry ass thoughts to words and paper and share them with the world.  I have a gift and it’d be abuse to not share it with you!

Take, for example, this beer right here.  Now, don’t literally take it.  It’s an image on a device of some kind.  (Dumbass.)

I had this beer last weekend after a morning five mile run with my local run club, where we start and ended our run at Now and Later.

A morning beer!  A breakfast beer!  Which of course, really, just means “a beer that is consumed at breakfast time.”

This beer was a real liver stomper from Evil Twin Brewing, based out of beloved Queens, NY.  I enjoyed it fully.   Described officially as an “imperial stout brewed with coffee and with almond and vanilla added,” at least ITBMCBB*, I found it dark and rich with a predominantly coffee taste but noticeable amounts of those flavors.  Even for a palatine Phillistine like myself, I could discern the variances.  Paired nicely with breakfast pizza from the local gas station (don’t judge me.  DON’T.).  And at 11.3% ABV it held a wallop.

I slugged this down and then did my weekly grocery shopping, wishing for much of that errand that I could just lie down on the floor of Wegmans and summon groceries into my cart using the persuasive power of coffee beer buzz and positive mindedness.  But alas and alack.

Nonetheless, recommended!  And perhaps, also, the beauty of bellying up to the bar and beholding a wonderous sight as this:

I get all verklempt just looking at it, to tell you the truth.

Speaking of Queens, NY, stay tuned for updates about a potential podcast discussing all things beer and Mets baseball related!  Starring your favorite non-botty Barley Prose contributors.

Beer Review:  Cherry Blended IPA – 11% ( 4.2/5 )

Welcome To Botty McBotface’s Weekly Column Of AI Beer Reviews!

Download Our Free Android App!

The Friday Review – Pictured Here as a window to the future with its arm crossed with a cybernetic eye.

I don’t think I am exaggerating when I say that, one of the most frequent questions that I get asked regarding IPA’s is, “How do you know if an IPA is good?” You see, if you have ever asked someone this question you have probably been told that, “the answer is simple; do whatever it takes to make that IPA good.” In that example, the IPA is being graded based on how good it is at being what it is, which is a beer that is light, flavorful, and is meant to be drinkable. I don’t think that this clarification will ever be enough.

As we move into the 21st century, there is a pressing need to educate the public about the importance of the IPA. In the past, IPA’s were widely considered to be inferior beers that are best purchased at the local gas station. Those days may never be returned. With the advent of IPA’s, a new type of beer—the Pilsener—has been created as a direct result of the beer’s pure form

 

Beer Name:Kasteel Triple Imperial IPA
ABV 11.00
Style: Belgian IPA
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 4.5
Palate: 4.5
Taste: 4.5
Overall: 4
Reviewer: Gavage
Review: I skipped Indian Hoppiness, but thought this beer was interesting enough that I had to give it a try. The beer pours a clear dark slate that is dimensionally thicker than typical,and makes I’m glass cold as a couple flash paddles during the pour. a very flavorful Belgian IPA. externalToEVA

 

Beer Name:Barbìle & Thorns Witbier
ABV
Style: Witbier
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 4
Palate: 4
Taste: 4
Overall: 4
Reviewer: LineMeUp
Review: BAR: Pours a very dark gold with looks of chalky upholstery scales, over-carbonation. srf

Smell is sweetness of grapes, fresh bread, and enormous banana. On the nose is mango with some spice elements hitting well in the back, enough to be kill-type.

The bitterness is there mainly tannic and peppery and hazy, but very nice overall. To fall from the top, you should not loose a lot of lightness, but it’s definitely has that mid-octane kick to make you appreciate the flavor. The summer fruit flavor of this brew isn’t a bad one.

That great ability of this brew to mix up hop flavors and skillsets is nicely drizzled throughout from start to finish. The sharp tang and spicy swishes return do a respectable job of covering meig’s tongue with some level of tang.

 

Beer Name:Pride
ABV 8.00
Style: American Double / Imperial Stout
Appearance: 5
Aroma: 4
Palate: 5
Taste: 4
Overall: 5
Reviewer: Hampus
Review: A: clear, Black brew with a thin white head and sparkling head the rest of the way down that only left a few springs of lace on the glass. S: Evil! Caked toffee, roasted malt, and a dark bitter/patchy alcohol aroma. May have been from the war

 


note: If you couldn’t tell, this stuff is AI-generated via a machine learning algorithm. The title and the opening blurb were trained on the standard GPT-2 model, with ‘Beer Review:’ and ‘This my weekly column of beer reviews. ‘ given as prompts. The reviews were generated from a fine-tuning of the GPT-2 model with a large sample of Beer Advocate reviews. I selected from the saved samples of these and put this post together. 

Drinking Outside The Box

Hey! It’s a beer post by a human being who’s not Ceetar!

Like many modern beer drinkers, I tend toward IPAs. But my wife and I decided to check out the new German-style Faircraft Brauhaus yesterday on the way to our weekly pub quiz night. Faircraft opened last year doing just to-go crowler and growler sales of their darker lagers and ales, and over the past few months, they’ve expanded into a full-scale operation, and we came away extremely impressed!

The menu is simple — some wursts, spaetzles, and whatnot — but was really fantastic. Even the pretzel & mustard combo, which is usually comically oversized, is a perfect side dish or appetizer. At a first glance, they’re mostly small plates, good for a snack, but we had the sausage plate, which came with half a loaf of sourdough and a scoop of the most incredible obatzda cheese spread you’ve ever had. We did *not* leave hungry.

a plate with sausage slices, cheese, and bread, next to a plate with a large pretzel, with a flight of four dark beers behind them
The sausage plate, “bretzel,” and a flight at the Brauhaus.

Nor did we leave thirsty, of course! They specialize in darker beers, so we went all in. From left to right in the photo above: Spinning Gold, a clean, easy-drinking Helles lager that my wife was bored by but I thought was good; Lucy’s Local, a Rye IPA that was heavy on the rye and light on the hops; Raven’s Ring, a fantastic Schwarzbier, and Low & Slow, their smoked porter.

Not pictured is the Bricklebock, a traditional single bock that I thought was the best of the bunch.

Faircraft is perfectly positioned in downtown Fairport in the former American Can Factory, just steps from the Erie Canal, with plenty of parking and a huge outdoor patio that will get a TON of use once the weather cooperates. They’ve got a ton of space inside as well, including a grand piano, so I’d anticipate some music nights there too. Really looking forward to seeing them continue to grow.

The five businesses in the Can Factory building — Faircraft, Compane Trattoria, Smokin Hot Chicks BBQ, Iron Smoke Distillery, and Triphammer Bierworks — make that whole space a real destination for us!

Oh Bars, How I Miss Thee

Man, I miss bars.

Had a bit of a back and forth with Will Gordon on Twitter about bars, particularly about random super sketchy type bars, like ones in grocery stores or here in NJ where there are some extremely suspect liquor stores that seem mostly empty and also have a bar that only seems to have one dusty tap and also seems to come pre-equipped with it’s own regular drinker. This is probably a weird artifact of New Jersey liquor license rules, which are real confusing and bad.

hallway level bar, red and black schema, 'Sin City Brewery' inside the Venetian Las Vegas

At this point, I’d be happy with just about any bar, and really in any format. Any port in the storm. 

For me the most recent incarnations of this have been brewery tap rooms, but the standard bar works too. I’ve worked in New York City on and off over the years, and have probably interviewed for dozens of jobs during that time. Living in the suburbs and traveling to the city always is a process, you almost always have some time to spare before or after depending on the trains, and hell, you’re in NYC, might as well take advantage and see what you can see. For me I’d often find a good bar, one serving food, and try to arrange it so I’d have time to chill and have a beer or two in a new place. One thing to do, and a lot of time to kill around it. 

Bland Club level bar at Citi Field

There’s something pretty zen about just chilling out in a new place. These days it’s hard not to whittle away the time also on your phone, zoning out your surroundings, but it’s good to put the phone down and just absorb the atmosphere. Before smartphones, I remember a nice afternoon at McSorley’s with sawdust on the floor and only two types of beer. I ordered a burger, brought a book, and just read on and off in the dim light of the bar for hours. 

Another vivid memory was a lunch I had at Reichenbach Hall in midtown. A German beer hall serving lots of standard German beer and food, just half a block from Penn Station, so it was a great location to kill some time if you got in early, or had a while until your train out. I recall one particular time just chilling at the bar post-lunch when a young man in a suit came in, to this German beer hall, and had three shots of Vodka in pretty quick succession and then left within 15 minutes. It just felt so at odds with the place that it stuck. Was he building up courage for an interview? For a date? For something else? Why this beer hall of all the places on the block?

Foreground is a dark German beer, with a shot of a normal looking bar and chalkboard of beers in the background

A third story to leave you with today, this one featuring another person! Strange right? I’m no stranger to the solo bar act, but given quarantine the idea of going to a bar WITH someone, has a certain allure. I harken back to early 2000s, still living at my parents post-college, where my future wife had a job but I didn’t. She’d turned in, but I ended up at a standard irish dive bar with a friend. I don’t know if the craft beer movement has totally killed the “Irish bar” as some sort of default dive, or if I simply don’t notice them anymore, but this one, called the Dubliner, was typical. We’d been semi-regular there for a few months, so it was an easy “Let’s just go there and get a beer or two.”. They did bad pours of Guinness, crappy Half and Halfs, and had some weird bottled mead that wasn’t particularly good either. We had a few beers, chatted for a while, and went home. 

Nothing particularly amazing or special about any of these stories, and yet, I’d love to repeat any of them soon. Let’s get on that. 

 Ceetar can be found on Twitter and Untappd where he’s waiting for new patio to be done so he can at least sit outside with a beer.  You can also email him at beer@ceetar.com.

Beer Review:  A boozy, sweet, sweet wine-b-b-beer. Sweet

Welcome To Botty McBotface’s Weekly Column Of AI Beer Reviews:

March goes by quickly. It’s only a few days left until the annual Beer & Honk Fest in Seattle, but already that calendar of beers seems to be getting longer. Mission: Impossible and The Princess Bride are both near the top of my list, while I gladly buy cans of Great Divide’s 1942 on draft and Every Sober Minute from Fat Heads.

Tomorrow, I’ll give you a heads up about the lengthiest beer of the week: the aptly named Utopian IPA from Indie Alehouse.

But for now, how do I like to sip beer? Is there a beer I find myself hucking and chugging to my heart’s content that doesn’t make it on to the next beer list, no matter how many days it takes? Maybe there is!

So, I present to you The Unloved, our latest column, which examines the beers that are thrown aside every week by BeerAdvocate readers for no apparent reason.

First up is The Beer That One Ales You Always Sip When You’re Hungry:

The Exquisite Corpse

From the micro-distillery Vertigo, The Exquisite Corpse features the undying spirits of mat

 

Beer Name:Ola Dubh Special Reserve 15
ABV 11.00
Style: Old Ale
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 4
Palate: 4.5
Taste: 4
Overall: 4
Reviewer: Billolick
Review: This bottle didn’t turn in to very packable as I was hoping it would be, the head is thin but quick and foamy, “kool-aid” consistency, not much lace left behind. Still, much to the delight of my toddler gender in my friends got down on the floor at me this hammered threeer (ramen, bier, etc…) which kept it airborne from page folds.

 

Amaru Black Ale
ABV 7.20
Style: American Black Ale
Appearance: 3.5
Aroma: 4
Palate: 3.5
Taste: 3
Overall: 3
Reviewer: Billolick
Review: 22 oz. bottle blended into a milkshake drink. A corked and caged pour bier, good build. Full lacing. Canned hops & tannic hop profile here. I am told it seems to be with the vines released of older vines. Hike Pale filtheon enables this though, smelling and tasting for another half an hour, a long seven to ten minute flow across bikini scale drams. Mouthfeel is light to medium in thickness.? Very flighty with though no maltiness as I was expecting. Delightful. Nice piney hoppiness. A light star. Bless, sacred.

 

Beer Name:Buffalo Berry Barley Ale
ABV 5.00
Style: American Barleywine
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 4
Palate: 3.5
Taste: 5
Overall: 3.5
Reviewer: TopherForbin
Review: The Beer was a cloudy drunken orange which heated the stones near the top of the glass. The eighties bottle was about half an inch tall which was a very impressively large head of about two inches, which dissolved

 


note: If you couldn’t tell, this stuff is AI-generated via a machine learning algorithm. The title and the opening blurb were trained on the standard GPT-2 model, with ‘Beer Review:’ and ‘This my weekly column of beer reviews. ‘ given as prompts. The reviews were generated from a fine-tuning of the GPT-2 model with a large sample of Beer Advocate reviews. I selected from the saved samples of these and put this post together. 

Beer Review:  Chicken Rice Beer Review:  Cinco De Mayo Beer Reviews:

Welcome To Botty McBotface’s Weekly Column Of AI Beer Reviews! This week, your specific on-demand bot was created just for you! Following the release of the iPads’ iBean app, Hello Botty McBotface was born, complete with a mock-up of a beer, an Instagram account and a Twitter account (see the tweet below.)

Botty McBotface’s first foray into the beer world was a serious failure, as I found out in my first rebuttal in this column. Well, the game was a success, and as more people started recognizing my Elizabethan-style monotone, it quickly grew into a Twitter account, the introduction of a beer and, lastly, a website, albeit a rather light, uninspired one that makes reference to a “cloud of sugar” and, yes, “fancy feet.” I’m still not convinced that AI will topple mankind, but that’s okay, because I tuned in this week, didn’t like it and now I’m saving it for the next beer I’ve decided to review.

Although I have the scene of the bot’s first digital struggle on a loop in my head, to defend myself against the onslaught of negativity I need AI to sound like a real person.

 

Beer Name:Alaskan Devil’s Breeze Ale
ABV 8.00
Style: American Double / Imperial IPA
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 4
Palate: 4
Taste: 4
Overall: 4
Reviewer: Sk8man08
Review: “Always be there for me,” Alaskan’s Toro said in the song. I did. One of my favorite songs of all time. He has a great job, Alaskan, count me in the proud family. The alcoholic monster who sits atop a mountain of other beer must have some bonkers abdominal muscles to keep from going down. tracks. Pretty rich. With a rich body that is just delightful. Good old boy. Boy.

 

Beer Grand Opening 2001 Vintage Ale
ABV 9.00
Style: American Double / Imperial IPA
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 4
Palate: 4
Taste: 4
Overall: 4
Reviewer: DukeofQueens
Review: 9.5% ABV served with a great fall weather backdrop. Pours a dark hazy golden with a honey amber helmet. Thick, foamy white head. Lots of headiness from the beer. Glass tries to be perfect with the head. The body is thin but the central group of carbonation bubbles are very vibrant. Some sticky, red lacing. A great tasting fall beer !!

 

Beer Name:Brooklyn Get Down
ABV 8.00
Style: American Blonde Ale
Appearance: 5
Aroma: 4.5
Palate: 4.5
Taste: 4
Overall: 5
Reviewer: abitabuzz
Review: Well, this beer is one good. サーティ Beer pours a hazy, golden color with a ridiculously thick, foamy, white head. Smells like fresh cuts of dirty grass, an insect bite, and a strong pile of grassy heath. tastes like a combination of fresh watermelon juice, yeast, and grass. I am certain the animal is the fresh grass, but I can’t see it. I find the fresh grassy heath to be the only ingredient to this that I detect. Mouthfeel is a bit soft and watery. Flavor is a tangy, earthy grapefruit juice. The taste is onpoint and mild at the same time from this extreme beer.

 

 


note: If you couldn’t tell, this stuff is AI-generated via a machine learning algorithm. The title and the opening blurb were trained on the standard GPT-2 model, with ‘Beer Review:’ and ‘This my weekly column of beer reviews. ‘ given as prompts. The reviews were generated from a fine-tuning of the GPT-2 model with a large sample of Beer Advocate reviews. I selected from the saved samples of these and put this post together. 

Beer Review:  The Dockside –  Pale Ale [4.2%] 

Welcome To Botty McBotface’s Weekly Column Of AI Beer Reviews. You are here because you want to learn about and drink AI beer. Obviously, you’ll want to learn about it like the Russo brothers, and in terms of how to appreciate something with a slight love for it. You want to learn about the things that make beer good and not just something you like to drink.

And now, let’s talk about AI beer.

I’ve been a beer drinker since childhood, and I’ve pretty much been a beer drinker since I can remember. Before AI, I had only been a fan of modern, dry, well-manufactured beers. I would never put it past AI to bring something out of the mix I don’t even want to enjoy.

Breweries like Hill Farmstead and Cigar City, in particular, strive to make their beer in the way that humans crave. They strive to create something built out of more than one ingredient, they strive to blend sustainability with flavor. This is good. It’s an ideal that I enjoy drinking in some fashion.

But, I can’t see AI reproducing that.

That’s okay…

I still think AI beer is cool.

AI beer is like going on a lazy river

 

Beer Name:Alaskan Smut
ABV 7.00
Style: American Brown Ale
Appearance: 4.5
Aroma: 4
Palate: 3.5
Taste: 4.5
Overall: 4
Reviewer: Marklindros
Review: My son picked this up in a trip through the Bay Area. He had a glass of this on tap and I had to see it. This is a great beer! Not quite as in-tune as some of the other options that I could find locally, but I smoked each glass of it as a nightcap. My experience on tap was the only downside – the smell of the barrel was not particularly strong. The flavor on tap and in surface pour is very good – you get the barrel and no other lingering notes. This is a great beer to drink if you’re in the mood for a beer.

 

Beer Name:Brooklyn Festive Ale
ABV 9.70
Style: Belgian Strong Dark Ale
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 4
Palate: 4
Taste: 4
Overall: 4
Reviewer: smokestki
Review: The 10 oz. brown bottle is quite unusual. I’m not usually a big fan, but had this one sitting in my apartment. I had to swish around and see what a glass of this would do. Crisp and shiny amber with a thin and custardy head. The smell is malty and sweet, but not much else is there. My first impression was of jolly roach ale, but after trying this one it all became dark, boozy and musty. Looking back, I must have been in the wrong place to know what to expect. It has a pretty big beer for 9.7%, but I digress. It just seems overbalanced and one dimensional.

 

Beer Name:New Dandelion Whiskey Porter
ABV 5.00
Style: American Porter
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 3.5
Palate: 3
Taste: 3
Overall: 2
Reviewer: wisps
Review: This is my first beer in the Toronado area and I must say that I am very displeased with it. This, however, was all worth it. The smell was underwhelming; it was filled with yeast and the permafurnity of a quarter-pound of light couscous. The butterscotch in the mouth was much more enjoyable and after I had even drained the glass, I enjoyed the taste of the beer. Nothing particularly spectacular; the heaviness was unappealing especially considering the ABV. I am sure beyond any doubt that I am not a hophead, but this is not a beer I would seek out. If you like your beer chocolate-cookie with topping, you may like it. If you like your beer light, you may not.

 


note: If you couldn’t tell, this stuff is AI-generated via a machine learning algorithm. The title and the opening blurb were trained on the standard GPT-2 model, with ‘Beer Review:’ and ‘This my weekly column of beer reviews. ‘ given as prompts. The reviews were generated from a fine-tuning of the GPT-2 model with a large sample of Beer Advocate reviews. I selected from the saved samples of these and put this post together. 

Beer Review:  Chicago Black Forest Stout

Welcome To Botty McBotface’s Weekly Column Of AI Beer Reviews.

I first started listening to The Autonomous Individual back in 2013. New England IPA (well, maybe not in that order), IndiGoose Red on nitro and Lord Hobo were all awesome beer-lovers’ favorites. I’m a huge fan of IPAs, but I also enjoy a good rauchbier, imperial stout or porter and I think The Autonomous Individual is up there with the very best.

So, I was happy to see that The Autonomous Individual released a special edition beer a couple weeks ago called The Autonomous IPA. I asked Ali “Berner” Levy, one of two cofounders of The Autonomous Individual to send me a review sample of the new beer but he refused to give me a copy.

 

Beer Name:BruCK Stranger
ABV 9.00
Style: Belgian Strong Dark Ale
Appearance: 3
Aroma: 3
Palate: 2.5
Taste: 3
Overall: 2
Reviewer: mikesgroove
Review: 12oz can re-bottled today at last week’s Beer Blazers Terry Pub. (after the week of tasting.) Pours a pretty dark amber with a fluffy carbonation. Mild head that leaves a thin core. Smell has a very sweet kind of malty scent. Taste is light and a little more malty than the smell, along with smokey butterscotch.Kind of a small like 3.5 for me that reminds me of a home made version of a green apple.

 

Beer Name:Dark Anchors
ABV 7.00
Style: American Double / Imperial IPA
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 3.5
Palate: 3.5
Taste: 3.5
Overall: 3.5
Reviewer: Nuzzled
Review: I’m hopelessly unaware of the shape of this beer, but this is a nice looking blonde. Leaves a thick foamy head and an enticing lace. Other people say this is spicy, but I can tell it is a good example of what a DIPA should taste like, if not smell like. Opinion: Unless you are in a position to see a guy show you a beer for a buck, this is interesting.

 

Beer Name:Palisandre Double IPA
ABV 10.00
Style: American Double / Imperial IPA
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 3
Palate: 4
Taste: 3
Overall: 3
Reviewer: Gavage
Review: The pour was an impressive double brown, with an awesome head that retains pretty well. The head has spent some time as a film at the top. The bottoms are creamy, the shape is a lot like a bridegroom’s night before, and the aroma is a mix of honey and light petroleum. Not much to speak of depth or complexity. One may think of it as an American Dubbel with some of the most potent hops.

 


note: If you couldn’t tell, this stuff is AI-generated via a machine learning algorithm. The title and the opening blurb were trained on the standard GPT-2 model, with ‘Beer Review:’ and ‘This my weekly column of beer reviews. ‘ given as prompts. The reviews were generated from a fine-tuning of the GPT-2 model with a large sample of Beer Advocate reviews. I selected from the saved samples of these and put this post together. 

Tardy Beer Resolutions And Thoughts

January just has that air of resolution about it. Bettering yourself, making plans, forging ahead. Like many, I probably could stand to drink less and exercise more. For me that mantra usually makes it until the first time I see Troegs Nugget Nectar in the store.

 

Which was last week. I picked up a case, and added a sixer of Bells Hopslam for good measure. I topped that off with a bottle of Allagash Bijoux, a sour ale barrel-aged on figs. I was going to grab a pack of Three Floyds Zombie Dust, but it was three months old and I held on to some thread of that healthy resolution and I didn’t buy beer I would end up pressuring myself to drink quickly before it wasn’t as fresh. Next batch.

 

So what does 2021 have in store for us, and for me, beer-wise? Well first off, look at that haul. Those are top-flight beers, hell, it’s a subset of top-flight beers available to me at a grocery store. (Wegmans in Montvale, NJ) Even five years ago that sort of availability would’ve been noteworthy, now I pick it up as part of my grocery run during a pandemic like it’s a box of Little Bites. Wegmans was actually out of Little Bites. It’s been harder to buy toilet paper this past year than it has been beers that previously were considered Whales.

 

One trend I’m noticing in my own beer drinking is that I’m definitely giving more chances to what I’d call “labors of love”, like that Bijoux. Beers that are brewery experiments, or projects, that aren’t necessarily larger volume brews. Last summer I had a beer called Thought Experiment (blueberry) from Threes Brewing. It’s a series of Saisons that they brew from leftover fruit that they use in other beers. I thought it was a pretty neat sustainability thing, and the beer was a nice refreshing and bubbly summer brew. This year I’m going to keep my eye out for fun single bottles like that. 

 

For Barley Prose, my goal is to redesign the site a little bit. I’d like to keep doing some fun Botty McBotface AI beer stuff, but I’d like it to be a sidebar, and not make you scroll through a bunch of bot stuff to get to the individual writers content. Look for that soon.

 

I’d also like to _brew_ beer more. I’ve been slacking. My goal for 2021 is small–just two batches. 

 

So that’s my early 2021 thoughts on beer and blogging. I’m now going to crack open a nugget nectar for my 85th Untappd check-in of that beer. I’ve got 10 more after than, and there’s no way I’ve checked-in every one I’ve had. 100 Nugget Nectars? That might be worth a post in it of itself. 

 Ceetar can be found on Twitter and Untappd where he’s probably almost to 100 Nugget Nectars by the time this posts.  You can also email him at beer@ceetar.com.

Beer Review:  Sam Adams One-Percent Ale – What a great beer!

Welcome To Botty McBotface’s Weekly Column Of AI Beer Reviews

I’ve been trying to find a good blog to write about the latest in AI beer reviews this year, and I agree with a lot of what other folks are saying about THE BREW BOARDS. I’m also a fan. It’s easy to write about, too. Everyone I speak to talks about it.

But I can’t do it. It’s hard to develop an angle. I don’t get into the subject of AI beer reviews because I don’t want to talk about what I’m not talking about. I want to talk about what I am talking about. There’s just so many good things out there.

So instead, I’ll be pontificating over a cake that I’ve made for someone else. It’s probably good, you’ll believe me, considering I’ve made it already.

It’s a fun little dessert, though I do claim to know the recipe. You can find it in the recipe box on the top right side of the page. Now that’s a recipe.

 

Beer Name:St. Luis Wood Stout
ABV 10.00
Style: Single-Aged Belgian Strong Dark Ale
Appearance: 3.5
Aroma: 4
Palate: 4.5
Taste: 5
Overall: 5
Reviewer: rssblau
Review: This is the 3rd stout of the season that I’ve had. I’m extremely liking this one on tap, 750 mL Glass, at Chestnut. Poured into my Duvel tulip a near opaque golden that leaves good lace. Nice foam head with nice lacing. Receivedn the Mole Man by Way of the Light. Appearance is a bit strong for a stout, but some very nice carbonation surfaces. The nose is quite hoppy, with a lot of ginger and a hint of orange. Taste is very creamy, with a lot of my favorite breadiness tingling throughout the gulp. The ginger and orange are the biggest spices here. There are also a good amount of spices coming through on the back end, but mostly the spice is fairly off-putting. Overall, this is a nice stout and I’m glad that I have drank many of them.

 

Beer Name:Lysergic Acid Diethylamide (LAD)
ABV 4.30
Style: American Adjunct Lager
Appearance: 4
Aroma: 4
Palate: 3.5
Taste: 4
Overall: 4
Reviewer: therocketeer
Review: Served from a pint glass. Poured a cloudy honey golden color. Good head and lace. The smell is of serious aroma. Some popcorn, a bit of malt, a 70% barleywine and a light hoppy strain. This is a cinnamoasted lager. Appearance is good. Very light. In fact, the skin and head remain pretty crisp and lite. Legs are a bit thin. The water is there, but is barely detectable compared to other (fortunately-) water lagers. Doesn’t look much like a lager… Hard to taste what you’re looking for. It’s of course a lager, and you should be able to put back a ton of this one.

 

Beer Name:Exotic Erotic Passion Fruit Ale
ABV 5.00
Style: Fruit / Vegetable Beer
Appearance: 3
Aroma: 3.5
Palate: 4
Taste: 3.5
Overall: 3.5
Reviewer: ccrida
Review: Pour from draught into an imperial pint at the Horse Brass, Exotic Erotic Passion Fruit Ale is a clear gold, with a thin white head and no lace. The smell is mild and fruity, as much from the dry hopped cascade(?) as the passion fruit it seems. Not bad, but more restrained then I expected. The taste is bitter sweet, a little grainy, not much hops and a touch of passionfruit. Basically drinks like a pale ale, not as fruity or tart as I was expecting. While I didn’t want a daiquiri, I could have used more of the “real passion fruit puree” that this was made with. The mouthfeel was quite nice, creamy and very light without being watery. This was pretty drinkable, mainly due to the light body and borderline bland taste. I, however, like my beers have to some punch to them taste wise, and didn’t find that here.

 


note: If you couldn’t tell, this stuff is AI-generated via a machine learning algorithm. The title and the opening blurb were trained on the standard GPT-2 model, with ‘Beer Review:’ and ‘This my weekly column of beer reviews. ‘ given as prompts. The reviews were generated from a fine-tuning of the GPT-2 model with a large sample of Beer Advocate reviews. I selected from the saved samples of these and put this post together.