Yes, it's a great beer and even better when you can easily go to the brewery and get it for fresh/free like I can :)
It's amazing how widespread New Belgium's distribution is now.

-----------------------------

Also, just tried

Young's Chocolate Stout
http://www.youngs.co.uk/ProductPage....1&&productID=6
Horrible Horrible beer. I love Guinness and other stouts however I really don't like this beer.

New Belgium is a regional brewery, so it may be tough to find on the east coast, but they're all over the midwest. You can get a Fat Tire on tap or at least bottled at most chain restaurants I've visited in Missouri, and we aren't exactly a mecca for beer. I've heard they have other good brews, but the only one I've had is their Sunshine Wheat. It's a belgian style wit beer and it's quite good.

I dunno, maybe I just wasn't in the mood for it the other night. I have 3 more cans so i'll be drinking them eventually. It just seemed somewhat blah. I'll try another tonight and report back. I got this recommended from someone I know, so I was somewhat surprised that I didn't really care for it at all.

Cans? blarrgh!

I'm sure there's no difference, but I find stuff tastes better when your tounge is next to glass. That, and I associate crappy beer (VB and bud springs to mind) with aluminium cans.

Edit - Ok, Guinness comes in a can, but thats because it has that crazy nitrogen filled ball or whatever. But the only time I drink that is draught.

Young's comes in the same type of cans that Guinness does with the little ball thing in the bottom. Don't even think that I drink it straight from the can. Always pour into a glass.

Anyway, i'm about half way through it and this one is much better tonight. I must have been off the other night. Still I don't think it is as good as Murphy's or Guinness when I am looking for something really dark but it's respectable.

On the subject of Fat Tire, I just bought some today and am currently drinking one. And each time we go eat at Red Robin's, it's what I get on tap to drink with my meal. The other beer I'm treating myself to tonight is Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale. Mmmmmmm.

And to those unfortunate enough to not live in Texas, I'll tell you what I told Gilliam the other night. You're welcome to envy my ability to go down the street to our local Sam's Club and buy a case of Shiner Bock for $21.

The thing about Fat Tire that is really interesting is that it's got a very real, very distinct (to my palate, anyway) biscuit flavor. It goes well with meat.

Finally I can try to contribute to this thread, in spite of detesting beer. I recently had to do a short speech encouraging people to drink canned beers over bottled. All the science (or at least the subset of science accessible via google and a few days research) points to cans performing the act of beer containment better than bottles. Far better protection from UV light degradation than glass provides, and generally less air packed into each container as well. For the purpose of getting beer from the brewery to your lips with the minimum change of state, cans do it better than bottles.

Someone did some not terribly extensive but still logically sound testing on "beer experts", making them taste various bottled and canned beers from around the world, and the lower quality beers were usually perceived as having come from cans, even when this was not the case. So it does seem to be primarily a perception problem, with little to do with the actual packaging harming the taste of the product.

I can certainly sympathise with you though, I happen to love pepsi, and while nine times out of ten I'll find a canned pepsi seems colder and tastier than bottled, on a really hot day I'll end up craving a nice cold glass bottle of pepsi like they had where I grew up. Pepsi isn't affected in the same way as beer by light though, so I think that really is 100% perception.

It might not be solely a perception thing, it might also be that people prefer bottles as they prefer the taste of certain beers because of the changes of state that happens. You could perceive it as part of the maturing of the beer, something which would not happen if cans 'protect' the beer.

True, but that would imply those people probably wouldn't like beer on tap. And the testing I referred to did have people claiming canned beers as being bottled based on a taste - I'm assuming that they like many others seem to, associated good taste with bottling, and hence said "bottled" about the beers whose tastes they likedl; this is in line with the tester's statement that he included "high quality" canned beers and "mass produced" bottled beers. The not-very-detailed test is described here: http://www.beercannews.com/CANS_Vs_B...s_bottles.html

But anyway, is maturation a recognized process in beer development? I've never heard of beers being aged like wines and whiskies are.

It is quite likely that there are some unfiltered beers which require a maturation time of years. Belgium or Holland sounds like a probable place for those.

Filtered beer just spoils in about half a year, so I wouldn't store them for long.