I was surprised to see this at my local Stew Leonard’s Liquor store.  We’ve had the main line (6-packs) of Ithaca beers for awhile in NJ, but this is the first time I’m seeing the Excelsior series.  Ever since I had the Old Habit, I’ve been looking to try more from this series.  The Ithaca White Gold is a “Rustic” Pale Wheat ale that was additionally fermented with Brettanomyces, now this makes me happy!  I love the funk and tartness that comes with this strain of yeast, but lets hope I’m not putting unobtainable expectations on this beer.

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The hoppiest beer in Belgium, hummm… well I need to see for myself.   XX Bitter Belgium Golden Ale says right on the bottle, “the Hoppiest Beer in Belgium”.  I don’t know how many IBU’s this beer, but it has a best before day which is 2014. 2014, an IPA with a best by date 4 years away??? There must be something else going on with this beer.  After a looking at the Shelton Brothers (importer’s) website, it turns out this hopped up Belgian IPA also makes use of a bit of brettanomyces.  Hoppy and Bretty, must try!

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Yes, you read that right.  2 weeks ago we had a blizzard here in the north east which got me thinking; “Had anyone made beer from snow?”  With no positive responses, I decided, what the hell lets give this a whirl.  After a quick ph test, I found the snow and my normal brewing water was the same ph, so I gave it a shot.

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I love doing these Beer Brawls™; where else am I going to sit down with a bunch of beer geeks and drink 9 different beers feremented with brettanomyces yeast.  This beer brawl brings us back out to the Liquor Outlet in Boonton New Jersey where we met up with Kevin and Russ to explore some wild beers.

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You’ve been waiting for the next Beer Brawl™, here it is Beer Brawl™ 29 Battle of the Funk! After having Brooklyn brewery’s unrelease Wild 1 (an oak aged, Brettanomyces spiked Local 1) I wanted to do the next Beer Brawl™ with beer that had been fermented with Brettanomyces.  Surprisingly, there are a lot of beers on the market that are “funky”.  So, for Beer Brawl™ 29 we are going to be sampling the following funky to almost sour beers:

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