Drinking a wedding gift. Thanks Dave!

F-/! It. Headache be damned.

This is how us working folks do it

Happy New Year!

Now that we've closed out the year, it's time for my Top 5 beers of 2015. Since I share every beer I open, I also get the added experience of good company and it's usually a special occasion. So in no particular order, here we go:


#1 beatification batch 3 (750ml) with Jetch after meet and greet with Toadies (and before the show). Yes, I wanted to dangle my dong in the glass.

#2 bourbon county vanilla rye during dessert at a big meal in Yountville, CA with old friends. (Also got a pour later thanks to jah)

#3 (I'm cheating here)... Every beer on my birthday vacation in Kauai, which was enjoyed with my wife or brother and some were drunk while watching my son play on the beach - bourbon vanilla dark lord, west Ashley (Also had it with NoCol at his tailgate. Consistently a "**** yeah" beer!) , Toronado 25, King Sue, Duck Duck Gueuze, Pliny, Heady Topper, Fuzzy, and Veritas 15. I should vacation like that more often. I think I'll tell my boss that on Monday.

#4 cable car at Toronado in San Diego with Steve00. Great beer! Great bar!

#5 Pliny at RRBC - anytime I can step foot in the brewpub and have my favorite beer takes me back to the good ole days and makes everything in my world seem right again, if only for one beer. It's certainly difficult to cut myself off after one beer, but it's worth it to have that moment. This year I got to have my Pliny with a winemaker friend from Napa (and my son played ipad while we talked).

Honorable mention goes to Prop and Regal with my wife in Chicago a few weeks ago in an old Irish bar. That was a lot of fun.

I know you all drank well so I'd be interested in seeing your top beer moments.

Cheers, fellow beer threaders. Life is good and I hope you guys drink some bad ass beers in 2016.

(For those that care, my wines of the year were a 1996 Salon champagne and a 1975 Yquem)

Here's to a good 2016, crew

Great thought BSD. Since this was my first year to plunge into beer trading I was able to try some really great beers. I sent off my first cross country shipment and it arrived safely, which I fretted about in route. I was also able to travel to some great beer cities in San Francisco and San Diego.

To narrow it down to my favorite moments it would be the following two:

Got lucky and found some Pliny in San Diego and cracked it open on our porch with a view of the Temecula wine country. Hard to beat that combination.



My other top moment was finding an amazing bottle shop in Paris. They had an overwhelming amount of excellent beer. Bought and drank my first Cantillon on our last night in the city. Iris was an excellent beer and it topped off an amazing experience with my wife in France.

Cheers to the new year and to the great beers ahead of all of us.

Top beers of 2015;
20 beer flight with the wife at Russian River
Westbrook Gose on the beach with family
Atrial on tap at Jester King with old friends and the kids running around
First beer in the new house - 2014 Sucaba
Favorite non whale beers of the year;
Hop Delusion
Live Oak Berliner

Damn non edit able emoticons....should have been a happy face. I was trying to insert the frown at my mention of the Ole Miss game.....

Okay, here I go for the top 5 beers/ beer moments for 2015...

Visited my oldest son in Missouri and headed to Side Project in St. Louis, where we loaded up on Saison de Ble


Both my sons and I summitted Longs Peak in Colorado , and as a reward we enjoyed a West Ashley on the back porch of our cabin.


Down below our cabin in Colorado on summer vacation the whole family gathered on large boulders overlooking a rocky stream at the back of the property and enjoyed a Love Buzz Saison and a JP Baudelaire IO


My youngest turned 21, so on his birthday I let him choose any beer from my 'cellar' to celebrate, and he picked JK La Vie En Rose, which we enjoyed together on the back patio.



On the same visit to my son in Missouri, we chilled out at his apartment waiting for the Ags vs.Ole Miss game watching other college games and enjoying a growler of HF Double Galaxy.


Cheers to all my fellow craft beer loving Aggie brothers in 2016!!

Its hard to pick five overall best beers of the year, but here goes:

1) Casey Balaton Cherry Cut
2) Bourbon Vanilla Dark Lord
3) Bottle Logic Fundamental Observation
4) Side Project Abricot du Fermier batch 2
t5) Casey Brett Loves Citra batch 2 / Casey Hop Mess