My latest BOM shipment

Yeah, pretty typical, I'd say. I assume that the brewers don't date certain shipments at the request of the distributors, which is like saying "We know your beer's gonna sit around and get old, so don't date it so the consumers don't hassle the retailers and they just buy the old stock." Nice.

I see it with a lot of brewers, as well as the old style codes that can't easily be figured out, dates that you don't know if they're "brewed on" or "best by", or months notched but you don't know WHAT YEAR and, the latest I've experience, ink on the bottle that wipes off (found some dusty bottles on the "warm shelf", saw a date code, wiped off the dust and the date came with it ). Can't recall all the brewers and all the examples but I know I'd buy more Brooklyn, Anderson Valley, Dogfish Head and Stoudt's if their codes were as easy to read as Victory's (and their beers were as fresh).

I've never heard of a Pale Bock before, it sounds somehow oxymoronic. Isn't a Bock dark by definition?

George

That's why I've developed the habit of holding the bottle up to the light to see if I can see any "floaties".

My hat's off to Victory, for sure and in more ways than one.

Best regards, Bill

PS: Wow. The only Victory I've got left is a single bottle of Grand Cru.

I went to the Rate Beer dot com site and there are a few Pale Bocks listed there. Sam Adams and Sierra Nevada put out samples of it.

Best regards, Bill

No. A Bock beer is strong-ish by definition (well, by German definition; Bocks fall into the Starkbier, or 'strong beer' category), and among Bocks, you get a range of styles: Hellerbock (pale bock), Doppelbock ('double' bock, usually dark), Weizenbock (wheat bock, high-strength Hefeweizen), and maybe a few other specialties and oddities, like Heller's Schlenkerla Rauchbier Bock. Bocks can be pale golden, as most Hellerbocks are, or deep-copper in color, like Paulaner Salvator, which was reformulated a few years ago into a paler beer, but still at an alcohol content typical for a Doppelbock, or quite dark, as is the case with most Doppelbocks. There are also interesting Bock beers from Austria; Stiegl Bock, for instance, is well-regarded, and there's at least one Austrian Doppelbock that, in its contrarian nature, is a pale beer, but still packs a strong alcohol punch.

But apropos Celis Pale Bock, that's neither here nor there. When the beer was originally formulated, the folks at Celis (back when it was still in Austin, TX) wanted to call it Celis Pale Ale. Unfortunately, they forgot for just a moment that they were brewing beer on Planet Texas, where laws of reality can be and often are suspended. By Texas law, you can't call a beer an "ale" unless it passes a certain alcohol-content threshold. Thus, the good folks at Celis improvised by calling their pale ale "Celis Pale Bock," taking a page from both Spoetzl and Anheuser-Busch, who make darkish beers of ordinary and call them bocks: Shiner Bock and A-B's Ziegenbock, an A-B product sold only in Texas, which is a real shame, as it's one of their more interesting beers. The Shiner and A-B products also happen to be lagers, but they work within the framework of Texas law, where you can call just about anything a "bock," but typically it should be darkish or at least copper or amber colored. Thus, Celis Pale Bock, which is really more of a pale or amber ale.

Wow. I tried the Ziegenbock and thought it was a gut wrencher.

Best regards, Bill

At least the Ziegenbock tastes like something. I had my first Bud in years last weekend. It was like drinking water. Water with 5% ABV, sure, but water nonetheless. It's amazing how consistently flavorless that stuff can be.

Maybe "interesting" in the Chinese curse sense: "May you drink interesting beers".

George

Nope. Not a requirement at all. There are several light-colored bocks throughout Germany, usually brewed as a sprintime beer. There's a substyle called Maibock (May bock, in English) that is typically gold to copper in color. There are also versions not necessarily tied to spring called Hellerbock ("hell" in German means "light").

-Steve

Sierra Nevada's Pale Bock is beautiful. Sprecher also has a good pale bock. Gordon Bierch puts out a mediocre one.

Sierra Nevada Pale Bock????

---------->Denny

Absolutely, though they stopped bottling it several years ago.

Must be why it doesn't show up on their website..thanks.

--------->Denny