Beer

[MacGuffin]

Best we have in town here, is a bar with 20 beers.

But I suppose you don't require any more sorts, when you're through with trying them all

[Ladamaha]

Originally Posted by bone

took a pic of my basement


need beer?

Can I have ten minutes alone with your basement...anyone know a good place to rent a van?

The alcohol monopoly bastards over here don't stock Duvel anymore, or at least at the moment. Idiots. How much is it there for a bottle?

[Cobol74]

Alcohol monoply - wtf? Move now.

[Adunaphel]

Is that like normal monopoly but you have to drink stuff instead of pay rent?

[Ladamaha]

Originally Posted by Cobol74

Alcohol monoply - wtf? Move now.

Well, alcohol retailing monopoly for anything over 4,7%. Quite common in the northern socialistic states of EU.

Originally Posted by Adunaphel

Is that like normal monopoly but you have to drink stuff instead of pay rent?

Collecting drinks instead of money would work better.

[Adunaphel]

Originally Posted by Ladamaha

Collecting drinks instead of money would work better.

No, no, the whole point in this is that the people who are losing get more and more drunk and thus play worse and worse

[Ladamaha]

Originally Posted by Adunaphel

No, no, the whole point in this is that the people who are losing get more and more drunk and thus play worse and worse

But if you had to win to win, wouldn't it make it more challenging?

[efoolution]

Since a lot of people here were so enthusiatically about duvel ... I had some this weekend ...



And I didn´t like it. It has the same problem that many stronger beers have (IMO of course). Too strong herbal taste.

I also had this ... Murphys Irish red ...



And THAT one I really liked. A beer perfect for my taste, nice balance between malty and bitter. Sadly hard to find here on the mainland ...

[MacGuffin]

You have a McDonald's Coke glass

[bone]

wow, wasn't expecting this many reactions

Originally Posted by MacGuffin

Are you preparing for WW III or did your car break down for a month or so?

that's just an average stock . when kept in the dark, beer doesn't go bad fast, so you don't have to worry about that and just buy, eventually the crate will go empty. and if you are drunk from one sort, you don't feel liking drinking the same beer the next day, so you just pick another

Originally Posted by Cowboy

I can do you one better than 60, my parents own a bar, they specialise in Belgian beer's, there up to 183 different beers at the moment and its still rising...

where do you live? do they have pale Westvleteren? if they do, i'll be there tonight. everyone i know has only the dark kind, and i SOOOO want to try the pale version.

Ow, and for the record , some of the best evenings of my life have been spent in British pubs or in belgian bars with Schottish people
We realy are alot alike sometimes I agree.

QFT, i've had some great evenings with english tourists as well (who for some reason...kept speaking french )

Originally Posted by Ladamaha

Can I have ten minutes alone with your basement...anyone know a good place to rent a van?

The alcohol monopoly bastards over here don't stock Duvel anymore, or at least at the moment. Idiots. How much is it there for a bottle?

in a bar, you'll pay 2.5-3€ a bottle, in a shop, you get 6 bottles for around 5€

[Clockwerk]

We have a pretty good bar here in the beer wasteland of Oklahoma, stores can't sell anything over 3.2%ABV refrigerated so no good live yeast or non pasteurized beer can be purchased from a regular store. So bars are the only place to get good cold beer. My favorite bar (Mcnellies) has ~60 beers on tap and another ~300 in bottles, pretty decent I think. Maybe on of you Belgians or Germans can tell me what on that list I am missing out on by drinking old faithfuls on Duvel and Ayinger Marzen.

[Cowboy]

Originally Posted by Clockwerk

We have a pretty good bar here in the beer wasteland of Oklahoma, stores can't sell anything over 3.2%ABV refrigerated so no good live yeast or non pasteurized beer can be purchased from a regular store. So bars are the only place to get good cold beer. My favorite bar (Mcnellies) has ~60 beers on tap and another ~300 in bottles, pretty decent I think. Maybe on of you Belgians or Germans can tell me what on that list I am missing out on by drinking old faithfuls on Duvel and Ayinger Marzen.

that Belgian section is rather poor I'm afraid ...

Chimay : definetly try it, I'ts on of 7 official 'Trappists' beer (named after the order of monks who make it) and a definete must drink, The chart doest say witch of 3 varieeties it is and all 3 are very different in taste, but witchever one it is its gonna pack one hell of a punch, so don't drink it as the first beer of the evening to avoid numbing your tastebuds.

Hoegaarden is Belgium's best none white ale (weisbeer the germans keep banging on about) .....masse produced , nothing wrong with it....not that much for it either, I suppose its worth a try if you never had it, but 5.5 dollars is way to expensive for something that realy isent that special.

all 3 lindemans...... fruitbeer, masseproduced ,over commercialised way to sweet fruitbeer....I avoid these things like the plaque, but hey some people like candybeer I suppose .....

Pauwels kwak (simply called KWAK) : YESS , definete yess ,delecious dark beer with a rich full taste made in a traditional fashion by one of Belgian's best breweries....If I would have to make a box containing lets say 5 different beers to promote the Belgian beerculture 'abroad' this would definetly be in in.
Ask them If the have the special glasses this normaly comes in, nice to look at in itself....

Stella : Belgian version of Coors/millers, heineken to the dutch..... you name it, One of Belgians most popular mass production simple blond ales , like I said so before whe drink it when where thirsty.......again 5.5 dollars is insane..... I got 3 crates of the stuff in my basement at any given time.....I'ts that common

[Cowboy]

Originally Posted by bone

where do you live? do they have pale Westvleteren? if they do, i'll be there tonight. everyone i know has only the dark kind, and i SOOOO want to try the pale version.

Near Sint-truiden, but I'm sorry whe do not stock westvleteren in any variety at this time.
Problem is whe work to have EVERY beer on the menu in stock ALL the time, with westvleteren i'm still working on a steady supply at affordable prices to avoid having to charge people 25 eu a bottle to keep demand reasonably down and profitmargins up
I've had all 3 kinds Btw..... to be brutaly honest none realy wouwed me... maybee just me.

[Clockwerk]

Originally Posted by Cowboy

that Belgian section is rather poor I'm afraid ...

Yeah Chimay and Hoeggarden are among my favorites but I have never been a fan of Stella, I will have to try Pauwel Kwak. Did you scroll down to see what they had in bottles?

[Cowboy]

Originally Posted by Clockwerk

Yeah Chimay and Hoeggarden are among my favorites but I have never been a fan of Stella, I will have to try Pauwel Kwak. Did you scroll down to see what they had in bottles?

ow hang on.....dind't even notice that, well that's more like it! I feel like an idiot for missing this.

to much to go into real detail on every one but some highlights I would like to recommend:

Karmeliet, made by the same people who make above mensioned Kwak and voted best beer in the world about 2 years ago, and personaly I feel it deserves that title, its expensive over there but worth it IMO, blond, strong ,smooth slightly bitter taste with a verry light hint of lemon, a must try!

Barbar blonde ale is also worth a try, strong nice and simple high end 'strong' ale, a starter this one.

Lindemans 'geuze' : while I usually stay away from lindemans for a number of reasons, its the only 'geuze' type beer on the list so that makes it a must try, I'ts a fruitbeer (I usualy stay away from these to) but its a 'geuze' zo it comes with a twist, a sour taste instead of a sweet one, something special to say the least....
Gueze has been a Belgian specialty since the middleages and a 'geuze' type beer, (of whatever brewery) is just something you have to try in your life.

Orval , Rochefort &Westmalle: all 'trappist' beers ( as mentioned with Chimay above) , that makes em must try's, all very different in taste but all worth a try..... a man should not be considered a man until he has tryed al 7 trappist

St. Bernardus 'Abbot' : probably the closest you can get to the taste of an actual 'Westvleteren' (the most rare of the trappists) short of actualy beeing one.
This brewery , now called 'sint Sixtus' actualy MADE the stuff until 1992 long before westvleteren became world famous (and infamous for being hard to get a hold off) and well......they remembered the recipe

[MacGuffin]

I already posted this in another section of the forum but since it's definitely beer-related, I post it here, too:

Germany's most entertaining set of statistics is traditionally released on the final day of the annual Munich Oktoberfest, when the full extent of the world's largest beer festival becomes clear with the quantity of beer guzzled, the number of oxen and chicken devoured and the intriguing array of items lost.

This year's set of figures contains both good and bad news. The number of visitors during the 16-day festival fell to 5.7 million from 6 million last year due to terrorism fears which prompted police to throw a massive security cordon around the festival site during its second week.

But on a positive note, beer consumption remained unchanged at 6.5 million liters, meaning that this year's visitors were more diligent drinkers, despite the 6 percent rise in the price of a liter to around €8.60 and the biggest economic downturn since the 1930s.

Sales of non-alcoholic drinks went up by 10 percent, according to the figures provided by the city of Munich's department for labor and economics. The total number of oxen eaten in the 14 giant tents reached an impressive 111, up from 104 last year, while sales of fried chicken fell 3 percent.

The festival's director Gabriele Weishäupl praised visitors for remaining patient despite the heightened security measures, which included increased bag checks and severe traffic restrictions. "Our guests voted with their feet and remained faithful to their Oktoberfest," she said in a statement. "And everyone felt well protected."

The economic downturn does appear to have hit sales of souvenirs such as Bavaria felt hats and, food and tickets for fairground rides, which were all down.

Beer glass theft fell sharply, according to the key indicator of glasses confiscated from inebriated visitors by watchful security guards at the tent exits -- some 145,500 glasses were seized this year, down from 200,000 in 2008.

The Muinch police reported collecting a total of 759 "beer corpses" -- people who had drunk themselves to oblivion. That was up sharply from 2008, when 565 were reported. Three people actually died -- an Australian man was run over by a local train after visiting the festival, a 51-year-old man choked on his own vomit and a reveller from England died when he fell out of his hotel room window while trying to urinate out of it.

People also seem to have kept a closer eye on their belongings this year, with the number of lost items falling to 4,100 from 4,400. The tally included 1,250 items of clothing, 700 identity cards and passports, 420 wallets, 320 mobile phones and 75 cameras.

Among the more unusual items found were a fishing rod, a chess clock, a toaster, a ballet skirt, three crutches, a miniature pinscher and a milk tooth. A total of 18 children were also lost but all of them were reclaimed.

On Monday, the spokeswoman rushed out a statement to add another lost item to the list -- a set of dentures. "After no dentures were handed in in 2008, this continues the tradition of lost Oktoberfest dentures in the statistics of the festival's lost items office," the festival's spokeswoman, Gabriele Papke, said in a statement, with an unmistakeable air of relief.

cro

Sauce: http://www.spiegel.de/international/...653353,00.html

About that Englishman: What a way to go And imagine how his family gets the news:
"Oh no... how did he die?"
"Weeeeell..."

[Cowboy]

Man I'm planning to go to the oktoberfests for forever now.....something always comes up dammit ...... that and the fact I can't be around Germans for more than 5 minutes whithout asking for my grandfathers bike back

[MacGuffin]

Originally Posted by Cowboy

Man I'm planning to go to the oktoberfests for forever know.....something always comes up dammit ...... that and the fact I can't be around Germans for more than 5 minutes whithout asking for my grandfathers bike back

I guess the most ambarrassing part will be, that no one understands that joke

[Cowboy]

Originally Posted by MacGuffin

I guess the most ambarrassing part will be, that no one understands that joke

Wait until you hear me telling it in my euhrmm......'perfect' German

[MacGuffin]

You're aware that you could be beaten up for that by drunk Bavarians?