First, I'm happy to say the eBay seller came through and replaced my two broken bottles of "Westy" 12.     Second, a few weeks ago I made it up to Russian River Brewery!  My new favorite place...    so many great beers on tap.  I brought home a 12-pack of Pliny the Elder.

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Then two weeks ago I visited The Trappist in Oakland and was able to find a Cantillon Lou Pepe Kreik (2007)..   a very rare lambic (at a very rare lambic price!).

Most of the other beers have just sat in my fridge waiting for.. this Saturday when I'm hosting a beer tasting party.   My guests are going to bring a bunch of other great brews that I may have already had, but it'll be fun to taste-test against others.   Chimay, Big Bear Black Stout,  Delerium, La Fin Du Monde, etc...

I was thirsty so I just ran down to BevMo to see what they had... ended up buying all of these:

Dogfish Head Theobroma

Dogfish Head 90 Min Imperial IPA

Monk's Cafe Flemish Sour Ale

Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary

Belgian Farmhouse Saison Imperale

Tripel Karmeliet

Lindemann's Kreik and Cassis Lambic

..another Aventinus,

and finally two Weihenstephaner Hefes (regular and dark).

I've got to find a bunch of wide plastic cups (to properly examine the note of each beer, of course) and a sharpie to mark them for my party on Sat.   I'll post a blog entry afterwards with pictures.

Hmmmm.. what to drink tonight?

I purchased a 6-pack online and unfortunately two of the six bottles arrived  broken.   The box was not packaged well at all - a single layer of thin styrofoam on all sides of the 6-pack.   The Westvleteren cardboard 6 pack holder was ruined.    I'm sure the post office was glad to get the stinky box out of there!

I have requested two additional bottles from the seller to replace the ones broken.  Hopefully he will agree and I won't have to go down the path of a paypal dispute.

The other four bottles look good, although one doesn't have the "trappist" collar on the bottle - I'll have to inquire online about that.   All have the "best by" date code of May 27 2013, which is 3 years from bottling - which means it was bottled just over a month ago.   Now I have to come up with an occasion to try it!

...which means I'll have more time to drink it!

On my way home from work tonight, I stopped in to Bobby's Liquors in Santa Clara.  There, I was able to pick up the following:

Schneider Aventinus (#81),

AleSmith YuleSmith Holiday Ale Summer (#72),

La Trappe Quadrupel (The last of the Trappists, yay!),

North Coast Old Rasputin XII (not on the top 100 list currently but still rated 'A'),

Ballast Point Sculpin IPA (#19)

I believe this brings me to a total of 22 beers out of 100... but as I suspected, my search for the top 100 is already leading me to try many, many other fantastic brews.  It's a fun journey!

I was planning on taking a trip up to San Francisco to visit the City Beer Store and Healthy Spirits this weekend... but then I found online reviews for Perry's Liquor store in Livermore.  Could all these great beers really be tucked away in a strip mall in .... a town in the east bay that doesn't have much going for it?   The answer is a resounding yes.  Apparently they get in fresh cases of Pliny and other RR beers every Thursday.   Amazing!

I'd like to present the beers I picked up tonight, from left to right.

Russian River Blind Pig (#84),

Russian River Pliny the Elder (#6) - I've had this before, of course,

Russian River Sanctification (#59),

Russian River Consecration (#41),

Russian River Supplication (#13) - very excited to find this!,

The Lost Abbey Angel's Share (bourbon barrel aged) (#86),

Stone Imperial Russian Stout (#31),

Mikkeller Beer Geek Brunch Weasel (#67),

AleSmith IPA (#57),

Alesmith YuleSmith Winter Ale (Not on the top 100 list - I picked the Winter instead of the Summer off the shelf.  Only the label coloring is different, d'oh!  Still looks like a great beer),

Deschutes Brewery The Abyss (#5) - I've had this before as well... sooo delicious,

Trappist Achel - because it's a Trappist I haven't tried yet!  6 of 7 after my Westy arrives.

The great thing about making beer your hobby is that there are so many to choose from - great common beers and great rare beers.  You really can jump in at any price point or time commitment and come out happy.

I stopped by my neighborhood BevMo on my way home to see what they had today.   Their supply is usually pretty consistent, but I do occasionally find something really special.  Today wasn't one of those days, but a few months ago I happened upon a row of The Abyss.    I bought a single bottle and brought it home before I realized what I had found.   Upon my return, the row was empty.  Bummer.

Today I picked up 6 beers.  First, a Westmalle Double and an Orval Trappist Ale, both Trappist beers I have not yet tried.  After my Westvleteren shows up, I will have had 5 of the 7 Trappist Breweries' Beers.

The second two were inspired by today's blog post on the Nor Cal Beer Guide.  I discovered Nor Cal Beer Guide when the owner, John, handed me his card at SF Beerfest earlier this year.  Check out this entry:  Awesome Gift Beers from Northern California.   I definitely want to make sure I'm very familiar with all of the NorCal breweries since I want to take some weekend brewery trips.    These two beers are Big Bear Black Stout and Brother David's Double.    Anderson Valley, the brewery that makes Brother David's Double, is in Booneville - along California Highway 128, a fantastic motorcycling road.  Unfortunately I have a strict 8 hours between bottle and throttle policy for the bike, so I'll have to either find a hotel or take the car when I visit there.

The last two are on the top 100 list - I don't know why I hadn't picked them up earlier.   They are Hop Rod Rye (#83) and Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock (#55).

Since I'm a technologist, I thought I'd mention that having Evernote (Mac/Win/iPhone/Blackberry/Android) store web clippings  and gogoDocs (iPhone app) to reference my top 100 spredsheet are making this quest much easier!

A Trappist beer is a beer brewed by or under control of Trappist monks. Of the world's 171 Trappist monasteries (as of April 2005), seven produce beer (six in Belgium and one in the Netherlands). Only these seven breweries are authorized to label their beers with the Authentic Trappist Product logo that indicates a compliance to various rules edicted by the International Trappist Association.

Brewery	Location	Year Opened	Annual Production (2004)
Bières de Chimay		1863	123,000 hL
Brasserie d'Orval		1931	45,000 hL
Brasserie de Rochefort		1899	18,000 hL
Brouwerij der Trappisten van Westmalle		1836	120,000 hL
Brouwerij Westvleteren		1838	4,750 hL
Brouwerij der Sint-Benedictusabdij de Achelse Kluis		1998	4,500 hL
Brouwerij de Koningshoeven		1884	145,000 hL

The fifth on the list above, Westvletern, produces what is recognized on BA as the best beer in the world, Westvletern 12º.    A true beer purist would only drink 12º purchased directly from the monks in Belgium, afterall, that is the only way it can be purchased (there are no resellers/distributors).  

When making an order now, the type and quantity of beer for sale are revealed. Sales are limited to one order a month per person per license plate and phone number. Also, the beer must be reserved on their "beerphone" (+32 (0)70 21 00 45) beforehand. The monks will never sell you any beer if you just drive up to the abbey hoping to get some. The reason for this is to eliminate commercial reselling, and hence give all visitors a chance to buy some.

 I'd love to make a trip over to the monastary, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.  There are individuals (that the monks would never sell to if they were able to identify them) that do sell it online for a healthy profit.   Today, I made the purchase from an individual in Belgium - a 6 pack of 12º, which will likely be split among some friends.   I'll make a blog post with pictures when it arrives!

About 6 months ago, I decided to take on the challenge of drinking the top 100 beers listed on BeerAdvocate.com (hereby referred to as "BA").    Why?   I like beer and I found myself to be grossly uninformed about the different styles.   In the past 6 months, I haven't been serious enough about it - so I'm creating this blog to help me step it up a notch.   What better way to become a beer snob than to try the best of everything?  Ok, so I'm not that much of a beer snob - I still drink Bud, Simpler Times, Blue Moon, PBR, Tecate, etc.

BeerAdvocate's list is "living" - that is, the top 100 is generated dynamically based on current ratings.     This does, of course, pose a problem:

• I exported the list to a spreadsheet, which is likely to only be accurate for the next...day?  hour?  minute?     I'll re-visit the list every once in awhile, trying to spot new ones.   Of course, this just means I'll just end up drinking more good beers.  Oh the horror.
• Some of the beers will simply be impossible to get.   I'll try to participate in beer trades (with individuals on the BA forums), but I recognize that I'll likely never actually find all 100.  I'm OK with this.

I will also be blogging about plenty of other beers I run across in my quest.

So, here's the list in spreadsheet form on Google Docs.    Everything I've tried so far is in green.

Cheers!

-Kris