February 13, 2005
Beers of the World!
I had the pleasure of traveling to Rochester with my daughter yesterday for a visit to the amazing Strong Museum. If you have kids in grade school or younger, this is an amazing place to go. They WILL like it (as long as you can get past the idea of all those germs in one place!).
I figured I would take advantage of the opportunity to visit Beers of the World, a beverage center in a strip mall south of Rochester. This store doesn't have everything beer-related, but it's close. They have the national brands in bottles and cans, cases and kegs. But they also have a huge selection of microbrews and international selections - including many in kegs. The store is the size of a large neighborhood market and is arranged like one too, with aisle upon aisle of beers from around the world. The beers are grouped by their region and country of origin.
My nephew Don, who lives in Syracuse and is extremely beer-knowledgeable, asked me to check whether there were bottles of JW Lee's Harvest Ale from the eighties (i.e., the 1980's). It turns out Beers of the World stocks rare specialty bottles as well as the beers you might be able to get elsewhere. While I didn't find a 20-year-old bottle of Lee's (they did have Thomas Hardy's beer at that age - for $96 for a ten-ounce bottle), I did get a 1998 bottling.
I also was able to pick up a very wide selection of beers, including:
- A 1999 Belgian Geuze
- Two bottles of Russian beer - a porter and a lager
- A German Dopplebock (double-bock) with a cool label showing two buck deer locking antlers
- Rogue Honey Cream Ale (for my wife)
- Rogue Dead Guy
- Rogue Mocha Porter
- Delirium Tremens (again, for my wife)
- Stone Double Bastard
- Stone Vertical Epic
- Monty Python's Holy (Gr)ail Ale ("Tempered over burning witches"!)
- Cantillon Rose de Gambrinus (a Belgian lambic brewed with raspberries)
- St. Bernardus Prior 8, a Belgian abbey ale that I read about in Don's Beer-A-Day calendar
So I got quite a variety of stuff (and spent a couple of bucks) - most of these beers are simply unavailable in Syracuse, much less Cazenovia.
Besides beer, the store had a wide selection of homebrewing supplies and ingredients, beer paraphrenalia (openers, trays, glasses, tap handles, taps, and so on) plus novelty items like Simpsons barware, clocks, and brewers' marketing goodies.
I heartily recommend a stop at Beers of the World for anyone who loves beer - or for the beer-lover on your gift list.
Posted by jimj at February 13, 2005 10:12 AM | TrackBack