I eased off new beer buying for a while but then all of the cool bourbons came out and then I had to go to Belgium and then to Poland and then to Chicago and then Mikkeller put up an awesome Advent Calendar for 2014 and allocations from Bruery and Crooked Stave arrived and well, now I’m broke and thought it might be fun to just put everything up here from 30 days of beer buying hoarding.
This is November & December alcohol purchases in a sort of combined view. And trust me, when I preview this it is pretty amazing how much was received in just under 2 months. Time to start drinking!
What does this mean for you all? Well, it means there’s going to be a lot of new reviews up here and some perhaps interesting content. In other news, my good camera stopped working earlier in the month and I’ve mailed it to Olympus for an in-warranty repair which means the photo quality of some of these is pretty bad.
Also, I’m still buying beer at the level I was when trading full-time (10-20 boxes a month) Literally every shelf I have in the cellar is full now so it’s time to move more Lambic off-site and increase the ratio of drinking to buying which can be difficult.
November Bruery Purchases
New Bruery shipment from November including Rum Black Tuesday. Another Bruery Shipment arrived later (further down)
Below, the first 3 boxes from my latest trip to Belgium:
Out of all of these, I’m most excited for the Girardin Black Label. I was told it was 17 years old but I don’t see a date on it. The source is trusted though so vintage 1997? Looking forward to this one!
I’ve been trying to buy more De Cam and the Oude Gueuze Vintage is 2008
Two cases of 2014 Fou Foune and one from 2013
IP Trade in Mass netted the Keyte and Oude Geuze 1998. The Blue Label wasn’t a purchase of mine but a friend who I share whiskey with bought this for me as a gift. I had never had it before so we already opened it up. Pretty darn good.
2014’s EH Taylor Straight Rye is not as good as 13’s but still nice. This year’s Whistle Pig Boss Hog is pretty good but the price went way up over last year’s. This is the last year I buy Whistle Pig releases. Prices are outstripping the taste of the booze. They charged $180 for these and $130 last year. I also did a small trade sending out a Duck Duck Gooze for the 2 BCS variants.
Top and Bottom, Short run to Vermont for some beer along with an IP trade for the GoM 2013 bottle. Already opened it on Christmas. Delicious.
Waited in line and grabbed 2 cases of Heady Topper to drink this winter along with real great prices on the Lambic and Rodenbach ($10.99!)
Schramm’s Mazer Club Members December releases. Apple, Nutmeg and The Statement Reserve
I ended up finding a 2nd bottle of Pappy 15 so I picked it up last week to join it’s other brother. Both are 2014 batches. Fifteen year has consistently been my favorite so these are obviously way more valuable to me than any other van winkle variant.
Finally, the last box of Belgian Lambic arrived after 3 weeks @ Customs.
Really happy to have scored both of these cheeses while in Belgium. The Cantillon I’ve had before but I haven’t had the 3 Fonteinen washed cheese.
