★ Reviews: 2 Years in Beer – Top 100 Sampled (part 2)

18 Bottle Gueuze Tasting - Ghent Belgium
A gueuze tasting I attended in February at a boy’s dormitory in Ghent Belgium. Everyone was like 16-17 years old (legal drinking age in Belgium). Still a fun evening.

A year ago, I wrote about sampling the top 100 beers in the world. I had 25 of the top 50 beers on RateBeer and 60 of the top 100 BeerAdvocate beers. I mentioned though that this was without really trying to sample top beers and happened organically. The same thing was the case this year. In 2013, I did normal drinking and didn’t try to tick ‘em all. I also traded less for top beers and sort of drank whatever was at tastings or available to me. I’m writing this first part not knowing how I did so let’s take a look.

Thanks Fuj for reminding me to look bad on the last 2 years in beer by seeing how many of the top beers I had a chance to try in this short time as a ticker.

In 2012 & 2013:

RateBeer Top 50: I’ve had 35 of the top 50 beers on RateBeer.  (an increase from 25 last year)

Beer Advocate Top 100 (Most Popular): I’ve had 90 of the top 100 beers on Beer Advocate (an increase from 60 as of last year)

This year, it’s way easier to type out the beers on BA’s top 100 that I HAVEN’T had because there are so few now. Interestingly enough, I’ve had Morning Delight, Prairie Bomb, Atrial, Hunaphu’s Brandy barrel offered to me for Hill Farmstead but I haven’t taken them up on it because I’m just not trading as much. With the drop in trading, it may be that this list actually grows in 2014.

Here are the beers on BA’s top 100 I haven’t had:

  • 2 Pliny The Younger
  • 43 Morning Delight
  • 48 Cable Car
  • 64 Prairie Bomb!
  • 69 Hunaphu’s California Brandy Barrel
  • 80 HoTD Matt (but I have one in the cellar to open soon)
  • 82 Bad Boy from Alpine
  • 83 Atrial Rubicite
  • 88 Baudoinia
  • 93 Murda’d Out Stout (but sadly, I’ve traded for this beer twice and both times traded it away)
Also last year, I put some beers down that I wanted to review in 2013. Here’s that list:
  • 3 Bourbon Barrel Aged Vanilla Bean Dark Lord
  • 8 Peg’s G.O.O.D. Rare D.O.S.
  • 14 Kaggen! Stormaktsporter
  • 18 Duck Duck Gooze
  • 23 Dark Horse Bourbon Barrel Aged Plead The 5th
  • 31 Cable Car
  • 32 Bourbon Barrel Aged Dark Lord Imperial Stout
  • 33 Peg’s G.O.O.D. RareR D.O.S.
  • 37 Hoppy Birthday
  • 57 Imperial Eclipse Stout – Elijah Craig (20 Year)
  • 65 Churchill’s Finest Hour 2012
  • 73 Bell’s Bourbon Barrel Aged Batch 9000
  • 88 Bourbon Barrel Aged Hi-Fi Rye
So awesome that I got to try all of these except for Cable Car, Churchill’s 2012 (I did have 2013 though) and Eclipse EC20. The EC20 is actually in my cellar. In fact, I got to try almost all of these in 2013 because of readers of this blog. After last year’s post, a huge amount of people contacted me and I received every single beer that’s in Bold. The others I haven’t tried yet or had at tastings. 
 
So despite the drop in trading, 2013 was still a great year in beer. Since I have some free time this morning, here’s the list of beers from RateBeer’s top 50 that I haven’t had yet but would like to:
  • Cigar City Final Push Imperial Stout (my buddy chris has a bottle in his cellar that I’m trying to get him to share)
  • Mikkeller X Stout
  • Raspberry Eisbock ( have a bottle in the cellar)
  • Good King Henry (Leighton from UK sent me a bottle last year. I just need to open it)
  • Oak Aged Yeti (also have a bottle to open downstairs)
  • Stone RIS BA version
  • Old Stock Brandy Barrel
  • Mikkeller George Bourbon Barrel (I had 2 other versions of this beer and both were fantastic! This is a stand out stout for 2013)
So I think I can knock out 4 of the top 50 on RB easily in 2014. Finally trading for a Cable Car would be cool but I really don’t want to put up the beers needed to get it. That’s probably the only beer I really want to try but would require sending out HFS beers for which I don’t want to do anymore. So that’s fine with me.
Thanks Fuj for reminding me about this and for picking up that keg for me :)

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