This Beer Brawl™ comes courtesy of John Hoyos of Hunterdon Brewing.  John selected out 6 Esoteric Italian Beers from his portfolio and brought them for us to sample at Montclair New Jersey’s Amanti Vino.  Having only had Peroni before, I was looking forward to seeing and tasting some unique Italian beers and hopefully bring a couple of new names for listeners of Simply Beer to try out.

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This week we took another trip up to Boonton NJ and met up with Kevin and Mike Malavarca from the Liquor Outlet and Wine Cellar.  This is Kevin’s second appearance on our Beer Brawl and this time he selected the theme of our show, Obscure Lagers.  Kevin describes this as, lagers which are new to market, difficult to find, limited production, or just plain obscure.  Regardless of the who, what, where, or why, we are always down to drink some beer and hopefully open up more reads/listeners to different styles of beer!

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I figured this being our 20th Beer Brawl™, we should step it up a notch, being an anniversary of sorts.  This week, with that in mind, we took the Beer Brawl™ on the road to Amanti Vino in Montclair NJ.  Amanti Vino specializes in selling Artisinal Wine and Craft Beer.  Having attended several events at Amanti Vino, I knew they had a nice space to record in.  The Beer Manager, Travis Glohs is a huge beer lover and was excited to help us out, what we ended up with is the Barleywine Beer Brawl™. (more…)

To date, this was the one I was looking forward to the most.  All the previous podcast we’ve done, we have been sampling the beers either by bottles or cans, but for this Beer Brawl we have the luxury of Draft.  If you are familiar with Andy’s Corner Bar or your local Beer Bar, Andy’s rotates through the taps quite frequently.  With the rotation, we basically were going into this Beer Brawl blind, not really knowing what we would be drinking.

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After Beer Brawl 17, I was looking at the Simply Beer Cellar trying to decide what Beer Brawl 18 would be.  I saw the 21st Amendment Hell or High Watermelon Wheat and I wanted to include it in the next Beer Brawl.  I didn’t want to do wheat beer or fruited beer again, so I decided that it would be unique and interesting beer.  Watermelon in beer and this craft beer in a can, it works for me.  So this Beer Brawl is all about beers that are Unique and Interesting; unique ingredients, packaging, and/or interesting stories behind the beer.

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This weeks Beer Brawl features one of my favorite styles of beer, American Porter.  A bit bigger, hoppier, and/or roastier then their European predecessors.  These dry beers are usually Medium to full bodied, moderately malty, and usually feature a lightly burnt taste with chocolate or coffee flavors.

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