Very light and surprising hints of Belgian yeast right at the front of this beer, although it's followed by a kind of murky, watery sweetness. Strictly mediocre, and not that far off of a Bud Light kind of flavor.

Smells of fizzy, bright peaches although the fruit is not really prominent in the flavor. I wouldn't say this tasted like an IPA at all - maybe at most kind of a Kolsch with peach. I've got a vague feeling that it's possible this beer was misidentified as well.

Really quite a good stout, light, creamy coffee-noted, with just a hint of effervescent cola-like flavors right as the beer starts going down the throat. One of the better beers I've ever had here.

Opened with a spew of slow foam that kept going for minutes. Definitely the most sour-sour of the lot with a very funky, caramel, oud-bruin-like base and some bitter bite on top from the hops. Complex and intriguing, but more importantly just tastes good.

Next to all the sour flavors, this came out almost bracingly acrid. Settled down over time but I definitely didn't enjoy this near as much as usual.

Noticeably more sour than the Star Party, with just a touch of funk and a lot of dry lime. A bit of buttery sweetness evens it out. Salty on the lips afterwards. Good flavors.

Lemon and lavender are the "stars" here; it tastes a bit like someone made a squash with lavender lemonade, noticeably tart, floral, but then finishes like a beer though not especially brut). You could be fooled into thinking this was a Berliner Weisse.

Light (on the edge of watery but not quite there), citrus-pine session IPA, fizzy, with a sweet cereal finish.

Funky-yeasted caramel lager with the cloudy opacity to match. Pretty much what I expect from the style when it's not a Sam Adams.

Mellow sweet wheat, grapefruit-apricot finish that rings clear and dry as a bell. Not bitter at all. A huge improvement from the 2.0 release.

Fruity and estery like an Belgian amber with a brown sugary backbone. It was okay, but I didn't love it.

Another really impressive Strange Fellows beer. Dry sour pine-hop flavor, slightly grapey. The middle transition is just a tiny bit watery, but transitions nicely to a similar sweet what finish to the Jongleur. Yum!

Creamy dry roasty stout. The light carbonation on the drafts here really smooths out the flavor. Not too sweet, mellow dark chocolate notes.

Slightly flat, sweet but rooty and herbal. Less cereal than a typical marzen, more like a yeast-forward amber ale. Fairly flat, to boot.

This was a remarkably good beer, despite having a lot of characteristics I normally don't super-enjoy. Coriander, just a hint of ginger, a citrusy-yeasty dryness and finishing with sweet wheat. Everything in just the right balance to make this feel great.

Gave off a skunky smell while pouring, but it wasn't evident in the taste. Belgian pale with light spice notes, white pepper, but with a dry, grapey, vinous tartness.

Pure hop resin, extremely front-loaded bitterness. A bit like burnt rubber. Did not finish this beer, probably not making a good personal elegy for the brewery.

Tart, lime, shortbread cookies, very buttery.

Not sure this tasted at all Kolschey to me. Instead, it just seemed like a sweet IPA which added a weird, additional sweetness (lactic?) onto the finish instead of the typical balancing things a normal IPA does.

Really nice.

Sweetish, wheat-funky. I didn't taste the coconut at first but it became more and more obvious over time, especially after trying other beers. Never quite melded into a harmonic whole, but still pretty decent.

This beer seems almost too light at first, which in a more boring beer would feel watery. However, the remaining flavors are grassy, fresh, and slightly fruity, making more of an impression than expected.

This beer did not at all taste like a stout, and it never quite stopped being weird. I don't remember the details too well, but I do remember liking it in spite of all that.

Halfway between a pale and a Vienna lager. Fruity, malty and cereal.

A potato IPA! You know I had to try this. Not sure I tasted anything that said potato, but the resultant beer was insanely clean, with just the right amount of piney-fruity hops. Best IPA I've had at this brewery in a long time.

A dry, tart saison with a very clean finish, understated but present funk, and a moderate, vinous fruitiness. Very, very nice.

Starts with a guava-passion fruit opening, some wheat funk, and then a kind of acrid bitter finish that was off-putting at first. After a few sips I think that part of my tongue got burned out and then the rest of the glass was actually quite pleasant. Wish that first part hadn't happened, though.

First-class representation of the Brut style - dry, white wine grape opening, crisp hoppiness. Finishes quite clean. Excellent all around.

I don't like raspberry very much in general, but I think the dry tartness of the fruit made the best match for the lactic sweetness of the base beer, resulting in the best beer of the batch.

After the mango, this was almost annoyingly sweet. Realistic peach pokes through the sugar but otherwise the first few sips were not great. After I got used to it it was better, but still outclassed by the other two flavors.

Mildly tart mango flavor to start, followed by a rather sweet and hoppy IPA. The fruit does seem a little tacked on here, and the rest too sweet. But I like mango, and this was okay if you take it for a novelty beer.

On draft again, this was definitely much better than in a can.

Next to the Holy Mountain, this was super-clean and clear-tasting. Light black coffee notes with just a touch of cola/fruit to start. Transparent finish.

Good medium-bodied stout, a bit oily and "dirty" tasting. Mental image is of a few coffee grounds making it into the glass. The dirty seems reflected in the thick lattice pattern left by the head.

Very light, smooth from nitro, but a pleasant, light flavor. Like other nitro cream ales (think Hale's) but with a touch more caramel.

Extraordinarily sweet, cutting any sense of hoppiness or dankness from this beer. After that fades you're left with a strong alcohol finish. Only took a couple sips to develop a buzz with this. Didn't much get a strong sense of bourbon. Closest beer to this I've had is the Dogfish 120 Minute IPA, but this one seems to lack the IPA-ness of that one.

A roasty-burnt cream stout type of beer. I liked it just fine, but it really hearkened back to my early beer days and I think my enjoyment may have been more nostalgia than love.

A citrus-grapefruit hazy beer, with a very mild, nice opening flavor. Almost watery in its follow-through - no tart or hoppy bite. Finishes with buttery diacetyl notes that ... are kind of weird in this style. A little off in multiple ways.

Started off nice as usual but seemed to go skunky fast in the sunlight of the patio.

Very nice at first, plummy/pruney with a sharp but brief sourness and fading into quite a funky finish. The funk built up in bitterness through the glass, though; I'd say two-thirds of the goblet was great and the last bit ... took a while.

God, this party is awkward. Decent enough Sam Adams-type caramel lager. More hop presence and a bit of a metallic presence make it more interesting than a supermarket macro, but I don't love it.

Pours very dark brown; porter-like. Very roasty but also with a round, prickly hop presence. I know I said "smooth" last time but that doesn't seem accurate anymore.

Significantly worse from a can. A lot more of a tacky feeling in the throat afterwards that I don't remember from Thirsty Hop.

Roasty light porter with coconut; not sweet but the coconut is toasty and mellow. Liked this a lot.

Possibly one of the best hazy IPAs I've ever had. Clean citrus/grapefruit/pine flavors with a clean, mellow, completely non-bitter finish.

Unnaturally clear, like water with yellow food coloring. Tastes like corn syrup soda.

Smells of sweet coconut, but the actual beer is not sweet at all. If anything, it's a touch smoky, with some roast. Definite coconut which barely balances the roast rather than sweetening it. Decent, but not among my favorite coconut beers. (At least it's not hoppy!)

Another barrel-aged beer from Bellevue that doesn't fit the usual mold. This had the extreme smoothness you'd expect from an oatmeal stout, continuing into a sweetness. Finishes with an almost wine-like tannic barrel character. Cabernet comes to mind. Strongly alcoholic.

A medium-bodied, smoky porter with a bit of sourness. Lots of roast and coffee, and a buildingly bitter finish.

Very sweet, boozy, young tasting. But in a charming way, if that makes any sense? It's not thick, it's got a bit of rye bite. A little too raw to truly love, but it was fun. Maybe in a couple years it could even be great (but it seems like it would still be a little too sweet).

Cider-like, with a bright, gingery opening. Gets dry pretty quickly, but not very sour, in a way that is pretty pomegranatey. I liked the ginger, not so much the finish.

An excellent saison with complex herbal notes but which doesn't scream strongly in any particular herbal direction. Sage wasn't what came to mind when I tasted this. The lemongrass, a little more. Light and very drinkable.

A deep, frothy, fruity stout, plums or dates in abundance. It's been a while since I had a beer that tasted like this, and I'm having a hard time remembering which one it reminds me of. Maybe one of the old Ovila barrel-aged dark quads?

Fantastic sour! Smells like fresh, ripe, real strawberries, which is a rare enough thing. Flavor is not sweet, but rather a complex, dry sour with not too much bite. A very nice beer.

There was some confusion about this beer (the text description said whiskey, the label graphic said rum). We kind of felt this tasted like rum, with molassessy and uncomplicated liquor with a very smooth, balanced roast stout underneath. Better than I remember the other Hoppin' Frog heavies being.

Strong bourbon flavors, with plum-date overtones. Stout is a little overwhelmed, but not quite as much as it was with the Alter.

This was gross. Not at all what I'd expect from a Baltic Porter, this poured dark amber. Flavor was rooty and herbal. Roast coffee on top. None of the smooth lactic quality I'd expect from a Baltic.

Clean, grassy bitterness with the slightly sweet notes of a German Pils. Something wine-like about the brightness of this beer. I did like it quite a bit.

A solid dark lager, medium bodied and roasty with a creamy finish. Reminded me of German darks.

Tastes like a watermelon Jolly Rancher, with faint overtones of wood smoke and vanilla. If that sound weird to you, well, it was. But somehow I also kind of enjoyed it.

Buttery peach, slightly tart, bright, finishes clean.

Really weird. Tastes like hoppy dishwater at first, high and dry and with a weird lemon dinginess. After a while you realize that the astringency is being accentuated by vanilla, and then it feels more like a novelty than unpleasant.

Dry, light, brown-porter. Slightly watery, but also creamy with quite a bit of roast. Slightly sour in an English porter kind of way.

Caramel bourbon in your face here. The underlying stout is entirely overwhelmed by the barrel here; honestly it could have been anything. That's probably not great.

Very candy-like, almond joy type beer. Of this style, this isn't the best by a long shot. It's a bit too sweet, it's got a slightly artificial quality about the coconut. But it certainly wasn't bad.

I had a sip and had to look up what was in this, which I guess is orange. It actually tastes shockingly fake, like potpourri and anise and really feels syrupy. This on top of a thick, overly sweet stout. If the Goose Island Midnight Orange had gone very wrong, this would be it.

Light grassy hop flavor with a cereal finish.

Let's be honest, this wasn't going to make an impression at all after the other two.

Very smoothed out, with a kind of caramel honey sweetness on top. Fairly prominent wood smoke flavor. Would have been interesting to compare with a young bottle. Very tasty, though!

Whiskey forward, inky black porter with quite a lot of bitter roast. The bitterness builds up strongly over time.

Eaugh, maybe it's just its place in the sequence, but this was jarring, sweet, and rubbing alcohol-y. I couldn't finish it.

Tropical-citrus "juicy" hop flavors of the type that are common in Hazy IPAs, however this one was so mild in all of the other aspects of hoppiness (bitterness, resin, sharpness) that it crossed over into highly unusual territory. A "juicy light blonde" is maybe the closest I can come to describing it.

Medium-tart sour ale with a bright, rounded berry flavor. Very light on the funk. I really, really liked this.

Roasty, toasty stout on nitro, bit of a warm, sesame-like overtone. Kind of like a Dragonstooth on nitro. Quite tasty.

Decent enough piney hop pale, but the beer was filled with sediment which was kind of off-putting today.

Yum!

An enjoyable witbier. I haven't had a Hitachino Nest recently to compare it to, but I don't think this one grabbed me as much.

Very much in the vein of the Wild Ride Nut Crusher - closer to Peanut Butter Crunch than a Reese's. Slightly below that other beer in overall coherence of flavor, I think, but still super-drinkable. And at least this wasn't nitro.

Good, solid, scotch ale that tastes like a scotch ale. I mean, I guess that doesn't sound particularly compelling? But I like solid scotch ales. Also I'm sad since this might be the last Naked City beer I ever get to drink.

Cloudy brown ale with a savory flavor not unlike saltine crackers or pretzel. Not a common kind of beer, and one which I really like.

Tastes like a tropical chew candy. Round, unidentifiable, somewhat artificial, but also tasty. Quite sweet though.

Cloudy, butterscotch-y ale with quite a lot of whiskey character. Very well balanced, all told. Super-tasty.

Very nice, although you could have told me this was a chili IPA and I would have believed you.

Malty, strong amber with a prickle of hops on top. Well balanced.

My memory is not good here, but I recall this being a blah, generic IPA.

Definitely a Belgian IPA, has those faint peppery spice notes underneath the expected hops. It's an odd style that somehow always makes me think of rubber tires. Not as good as what I think of as my paragon of the style, Stone's Belgique.

Lots of bourbon sweetness up front, with a bit of prickle from cinnamon but not overt flavor. Not too much to say that I didn't say last time.

Very similar to the Old Schoolhouse, actually. I wouldn't say there's anything especially tropical about this. Finishes less metallic and a bit more... cocoa-like, I guess? Malty, not sweet.

Quite dark for a brown ale; I'd call this a porter. Fairly thick, creamy with a lot of roasted coffee notes in the flavor. Finishes a bit metallic, but enjoyably so.

A light, pleasant dark lager with a bit of chocolate, a bit of roast, and a bit of coffee. Creamy and clean.

At first glance this is really good; a piney, hoppy IPA with a funky/cereal finish. After a while the resin builds up in pungency and it gets a little less great, but it's still a strong offering from Fremont.

Whiskey, sweet, a little but of nutty coffee, but avoids being too heavy or syrupy. Not at the very pinnacle of this style, but maybe close to it. Yes I realize this picture makes the burger look enormous, it wasn't really that big.

Nicely round oak and caramel to open. More than a little piney hop but clean and balanced pretty well. Tastes less boozy than you'd expect at 11%+ ABV.

Only had a sip of this, but my impression is that the oaky-sweet caramel works well to cut what would have otherwise been a bit of a musty, dry cider.

Belgian saison that trends more toward the Belgian pale end of the flavor spectrum. Subtle white pepper and clove with a kind of juicy effervescence. Not sour, not funky.

A smooth, creamy nitro milk stout with an immediate hit of strong chili spice. It evens out the bland-sweetness you normally get form nitro. No hint of unpleasant soapiness. Pretty good, though that spice sticks with you.

At first this is a medium-resin hoppy IPA with a bit of toasty, spicy cereal flavor. Very pleasant. However, the bitterness builds up rapidly and by the end of a 12 oz schooner I was finding it almost undrinkable. So a real mixed bag.

A bubbly pale ale with piney fragrant hops, a little bit guava, a little bit grape. Pretty clean and fairly delightful. Not sure I'd always be in the mood for this, but it hit the spot tonight.

Smooth and inoffensive. On the bright side, it didn't have the poky hoppiness that most of the dark beers here have; on the other hand, it wasn't particularly memorable.

Funky cherry flavor; mild sourness followed by a bit of caramel and salt on the lips. More yeast bitterness than I expected, probably since this is still relatively young. Anyway, this didn’t fare as well as previous tastings of more aged vintages.

Thin, dark stout with mellow, buttery coconut. Not too sweet, not too roasty, kind of a bittersweet chocolate character. Goes down very smooth, with just a hint of metallic bitterness at the very end (maybe from the can?). A very pleasant surprise.

Dank, dank resin and not a few skunky vegetal overtones. One of the very few beers I just couldn't bring myself to finish.

A clean, funkless sour with more than a little bit of hop flavor. The tartness is puckering but not overwhelming. Someone said that it resembled white kimchi juice a little, and that’s hard to let go of because it’s not wholly inaccurate. But I did like this otherwise.

A very dark amber with a lightly roasted, deep caramel flavor. Finishes with a tiny bit of hop fruitiness. Pleasant and light, but not especially memorable.

Syrupy and yuck.

Possibly the spiciest beer I’ve ver had. Slightly skunky on the smell and flavor, but mostly strong pepper rind bitterness and heat. Seems like there’s plenty of hops but they take a back seat to the Carolina Reaper. Heat isn’t unbearable but it is strong and lingers. Can’t see myself drinking a lot of this, but it wouldn’t be crazy, either.

This bottle was over three years old at this point. Smooth, almost vaporous, with a very complex wild sourness left over. Not very accessible, but I liked it very much.

Seved super-cold as they do here at Prime, so that there were actual ice crystals in the beer. Worked surprisingly well with this beer, bringing out the mellow chocolate notes.

Noticeably smoothed out after a year of aging, this was more of a creamy-sweet-but-not-at-all-cloying coconut candy beer. If you’re going to do a coconut beer, there is a way to do it dark, and a way to do it sweet. This is the apotheosis of the latter.

An odd beer of two experiences. Smells bright and exactly like ginger ale, but drinks a bit musty-sour, with some diacetyl buttery flavors. It’s easy to get used to the flavor, but that dissonance with the fragrance never really resolves.

Watery and bland. A bit of an interesting edge on this, a toasty, grains of paradise-like exotic flavor, but it's not enough to rescue the beer.

The Blood Runs Cold was described as an East Coast IPA but this was the real hazy beer. Good but generic in its juiciness.

Canned-juice character. Reminiscent of the Raspberry Crush, almost still tasted like raspberries. Not my favorite.

Best of the flight. A clean citrus flavor mixed with fragrant hop-forward character. Finishes bitter but cleanly.

A little sad that they didn’t have this on nitro anymore, but this was remarkable nonetheless. Boozy, bourbony, sweet and delicious. Tiny bit raw around the edges from being young.

Berliner weisse-like sharp, sour opening. Clean finish. This was far too late in the lunch to remember clearly.

Chalky, inky, umami flavor. Slightly tart finish, a bit like Worcestershire sauce, which matches my previous experience with Ola Dubh. Woody but not actually very peaty.

Cherry-bourbon notes, very fizzy. Caramel, clean, sweet, but not syrupy. Delicious.

This beer is the closest to a chocolate milkshake I’ve ever had. Nutty, boozy, but smoothed out significantly by nitro, leaving a light sweetness.

“This is a porter, not a stout.” Refreshingly uncomplicated, but also not profound.

Good stout. Vegetal tequila notes dominate.

Like a coconut candy bar in mood, but actually not too sweet. An “Almond Joy” in a beer. Undeniably boozy.

Smells strongly of rum. Mellows out quickly, with lime and ginger subtly mixing to create a harmonious, possibly healing concoction. Yum!

Pours thick and profoundly dark, with a dark tan head. Amazing, smooth, very thick stout. Dark plummy finish. A “refined berserker,” it dissipates cleanly to finish. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.

A little too sweet, I think.

I have my rating but no notes on this one.

Biscuity Belgian ale, light yeast character. Pretty noticeable alcohol flavor. A few years ago I had one of these that I thought was undrinkable, but this was different; perfectly pleasant if a bit strong, but not especially remarkable.

Jammy blueberry sour, with a little more of a musty finish than I like.

Hilariously, when I ordered a Festivus they brought out another Splinters, and honestly I was too far gone to realize it, other than thinking they'd really improved the Festivus. When they corrected their mistake, yeah. Pretty perfumey.

Still excellent.

Light lager, very pleasant.

Also tastes young. Blending this with the Midnight Orange makes an orange cream stout that is probably better than either component beer. This is interesting because I first got to know Goose Island through their excellent orange cream sodas in the ‘90s.

Strong orange. Almost perfumey, but just avoids that mortal sin by a hair. Tastes very young.