Lagunitas beer

I think their seasonal "Brown Shugga" barleywine was okay, but just about everything else I've had from Lagunitas was mediocre or bad.

A couple mos ago I had some Lagunitas Maximus, which had a great head, lace galore, and no funky aftertaste at all, at all now lad. Twas hoptastic. So maybe for you it was bad handling, but I understand the feeling about gettin' burned. Or my olfactory bulb is dimmed from yrs of abuse...You are right to paraphrase Chief Joseph about your Uncensored...and everything else, but that's another Story.

While I do enjoy a "good" extreme beer ...Pliney the Elder, my current fave.... I have to agree. Of the two beers I bought at the time, it was the brighter lighter Hoegaarden that finally pleased my poor pooped palate.

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I suspect there's little the brewery can do for their beer after it leaves them. If some distributor fork lift driver moves a pallet off to one side of the dock in the hot afternoon sun to make room for some other load, how can Lagunitus know or what can they do. Even Coors, which used to refrigerate all there trucks cuz their beer wasn't pasterized (do they still do that?) can't do anything about the idiot store manager who builds a Labor day beer island on the store floor and lets all the Coors warm to room temp. What brewers can do is make sure they use the best brown bottles to keep out light. And like Sammy Adams, make their six-pak cartons extend higher up to keep more of the bottle covered when they are being light-struck by all the fluorescent lights the idiot store owners have in their cold cases.

What you as the drinker can do is buy only sealed full or half cases of beer, or at least reach back for the six-pak furthest away from the lights. My recent sixer of Hoegaarden was mercifully unskunked, despite the inferior green bottles and the glaring lights. I've no doubt it was because of this practice. I even removed the light in my fridge. ;)

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I disagree with most of the posters here. I like the fact that Lagunitas experiments with many different styles, it keeps things interesting. Maybe some of the beers don't turn out to be legendary, but I appreciate the effort nonetheless. Personally, I like the Maximus IPA, Regular IPA, Hairy Eyeball barleywine, and the Imperial Stout.

You might want to check out the several thousand reviews for Lagunitas at ratebeer.com. Every beer they make rates better than average, and the lowest rating is in the 69 percentile (happens to be their pilsner, which I agree has fallen off a little bit).

Billions eat at McDonalds and drink at Starbucks. Popularity has never been a defining measure of quality.

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I tried Hairy Eyeball. The bottle I had wasn't labelled as a barleywine, and even after tasting it I had no idea what style of beer it was supposed to be. Lagunitas' imperial stout was the worst example of that style I've ever had. It was light-bodied, far too light-colored for a stout, with very little going on in the palate; I'd never have guessed it was supposed to be a stout, let alone an IS.

You're right about forklift drivers and store operators. The problem around here is that the distributor doesn't seem to give a damn about something as basic as servicing his accounts. Bar runs out of IPA, for example, and the distributor says he doesn't know when any more kegs will be available. Either the brewery doesn't know when they'll be brewing more IPA (doubtful) or the distributor doesn't care enough to call and order more beer (much more likely). Result: bar gives the tap handle(s) to a brewer who cares about selling beer.

I'm pretty sure Lagunitas still offers kegs, but I've not seen one in a Texas bar in a long, long time. If I'm running a brewery and see that all of a sudden a huge market goes dry - when I used to sell a boatload of beer there - I'd check into it, maybe see if I can't do something to improve the pipeline. Lagunitas, to my knowledge, hasn't done that.

Penalty.

dave in austin

Have you ever visited the ratebeer website? Just about all of the most popular beers (Bud, Miller, Coors, etc.) are among the lowest rated beers. The very obscure and least known beers tend to have the much better ratings, as long as they taste good of course.

The people that rate the beers at ratebeer seem to be very knowledgeable beer drinkers, IMO.

There a couple thousand ratings about the Lagunitas beers at ratebeer that mostly disagree with yours and others assessments. Now I respect your opinion, but find it very odd that just about every post in this thread is dissing Lagunitas, when most of the beer-drinking public seems to like this brewery.

I never heard of the Uncensored before. I know I didn't like their Censored Ale as it was just too light tasting on all accounts.

Maximus was the only other one I've tried and I liked it al lot.

Brain fart. It's "Censored".

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I'm not sure that Lagunitas fans who post to that site are "most of the beer-drinking public." Also, there's a serious (and embarrassing) herd mentality on some of the beer-review sites; lots of "reviews" merely parrot the "review" that precedes it.

The Lagunitas beers I commented negatively on *were* terrible. I'll never forget what a mess the so-called imperial stout was. In fairness, my sample of them took place a few years ago and it's possible they've gotten better.

That's the problem, I think. It's not that Lagunitas is not good. I wouldn't bother commenting on mediocre beer or one that was just ok. But, Lagunitas is noticeably not good. It stands out for being off-putting in one way or another.

There's one other thing I forgot to mention. Censored is supposedly

7%abv. I strongly dispute that number. I regularly consume 7% IPA's. In fact, I will almost not buy an IPA if it does't meet that basic minimum, regulars being Hop Ottin, Drakes, and Stone. So, I know almost exactly what a sixer of 7% beer will do to me. Censored didn't even get close, despite serveral beers beforehand. I doubt it was even 5.5abv. There's something rotten in Petaluma.

Bottom line, I keep hearing what a great brewery Lagunita is. Like a sap, I keep buying their stuff trying to believe it. No more.

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That is especially true of big, unusual, etc., beers.

Years ago here there was a discussion about the stages of beer appreciation. It went something like taking the first steps up the slope when you realize there's more to beer than Budmilloors, then you get a passion for craft- brewed beer and dride those still drinking "that megabrewery swill," then you step up to searching out the biggest, baddest, most unusual beers ever made, valuing them above all else. That's where I think a lot of people stop, or at least spend quite a bit of time, especially those who have the passion to spend a lot of time on beer web/forum sites. It explains a lot of the big beer bias and herd mentality. (Eventually people who continue the climb start really appreciating the subtler styles of beer more and more, and even acknowledge that the megabrewers know what they're doing, and brew a product that has appeal at certain times and places. but I digress.)

I know I've had some Lagunitas beers. The fact that I can't really remember what they were, or how they tasted, means I thought they were neither terrible nor anything worth continuig to seek out.

I just tried their IPA and thought it was decent, but it is overpriced. I still think Three Floyds Alpha King is the best American Pale Ale/IPA. But my liquor store is out of stock!

There's popular among the general population, and then there's popular among rank-and-file beer geeks. Increasingly, I'm not much more fond of the former than I am of the latter. Any high-gravity, over-hopped, muddy slop that a second-rate homebrewer could easily master is going to get rave reviews at the beer geek ratings sites.

It really boils down to what you like........ I can't stand Hoppy beers....but a nice Abby will do me fine....

Nice distinction. A beer like Pliny, it has more going on than just big or extreme. It is, at the very least, an intriguing beer. (I happen the think it's an outstanding beer.) But there are way too many brewers who rely too much on just being big or extreme, with nothing else to offer. It was interesting for a while. I've outgrown that, and many beer drinkers do.

-Steve