Troeg’s Anthology # 2

Yesterday afternoon, I received a $ 20 rebate Hewlett-Packard for buying some printing cartridges. This gave me all the reason to convert that cash to beer, subsidized and sudsidized. That gave me about half-off the price off a case of the  sampler Troeg’s Anthology # 2. Hey, I suffered for that refund, having to fiddle with the online rebate center of STAPLES for over an hour, a website that was supposed to make rebates quick and easy.

If you didn’t read last week’s post, I am bifurcating into either buying Yuengling for the base of my beer supply or homebrewing high end-Belgians seasonally (Wit is next).   The middle part of the beer pyramid is drinking microbrews when I am out at restaurants and the like. I am trying to avoid buying microbrews for home consumption because of cost.

Yet, I just can’t drink anymore of the Yuengling Bock in the beer fridge right now. I am just not super-fond of it. I think Yuengling beers will always be “B” student beers. Close enough in price to the “D” big brews, Yuengling looks like a genius taste-wise compared to these giant brain dead dunces.

Seriously, how much longer is it going to take until consumers get it that the big breweries make bland beers reminiscent of  Wonder Bread?  Shows the power of advertising and marketing’s ability to create associations to sports and hot girls. Creativity with Coors, Bud, and Miller, end with their commercials.

So, yesterday was a deviation from the modus operandi. The weather was grand, 70 degrees, and we were heading over to another couples house for a barbecue. Sounded like appropriate justification for a $ 38 case of beer.  We were not disappointed in the Troeg’s varieties. All of them were winners–it is a scholarly collection of tasty tomes. Plenty left to stock the library of the beer fridge. The Dreamweaver Wheat seemed to please my palate the most…since Wheats are a more summer-like beer, I think that made it right for a balmier early evening outside around the BBQ and the smells of steak smoke.

I am really looking forward to the new brewing facility being built in Hershey, Pennsylvania. The Harrisburg location has little charm but it was a good place to launch one of the best microbrew brands in the United States.