Beer (of this week)

Been to a lot of beercentric restaurants and bars lately... and had so many wonderful brews that I felt the need to start writing down the ones I get and love. That's the upside and the downside of the rotating taps in San Diego, so much variety that I can remember I've seen the beer before but too much variety for me to actually remember whether or not I've ordered it before or like it. So I'm getting serious... now you may find that I'm schizophrenic, and heaven knows I change my mind a lot, so I probably am. I generally like Belgian-style, I generally don't like hoppy beers, but can handle hoppiness if there is belgian yeast, reasonable sweetness and/or if it's in the really flavorful high alcohol content beers (see the last few entries below). If I order a beer on it's own I tend to like it, however when you line them up for a tasting next to each other I'll turn my nose up on some . Completely illogical, but since my drinking pattern is 95% one beer at a time I end up liking most which is a good thing!

• Bruery: 4 calling birds (belgian spiced strong dark ale) 11% seasonal winter beer (on tap at Counterpoint - but seasonal so it's going to be hard to find) link
• Unibroue: La fin du monde (triple golden ale) 9% (brewed in Quebec, I've only seen it by the bottle) link
• Alesmith: Grand Cru (belgian strong dark ale) 10.5% link
• Het Anker: Lucifer (blonde special beer) 8% (actually brewed in Belgium, most of the rest on this list are brewed in CA, on tap at Tiger! Tiger!) link
• Avery: White rascal (belgian wheat ale) 5.6% (brewed in Colorado) link
• Lost Abbey: Devotion (belgian pale ale) 6.25% link
• Russian River: Damnation (belgian strong golden ale) 7.0 (on tap at Counterpoint) link
• Stone: Cali-belgique (belgian IPA) 6.9% (the least hoppy of Stone beers, but still a bit hoppy - in fact everything below this is fairly hoppy) link
• Green flash: Trippel 9.7% (fairly easy to find) link
• Stone: 15th anniversary Imperial black IPA 10.8% (this is only made for 1 yearish so try it while you can - on tap at the Stone store in Northpark) link
• Stone: Old guardian barleywine 12% (do NOT order if you're driving) link
• Alesmith: Wee heavy (scotch ale 10.0%), Old numbskull (barleywine 11.0%), Decadence (varies year-to-year) link

And if you run down the list and try these, don't be alarmed if a lot of them come in a smaller glass than a pint. They do this for high alcohol beers so you don't get dangerous too fast. Sometimes I disagree on the pour size, but only if I am used to getting 0.5L at one bar for $6 and go to another bar and get 0.25L at a different bar for the same beer. (Which happened to me last week with Cali-belgique and I can tell you I'm not going to the 0.25L place again! They should know San Diego customers better than that!)
Now check out this funny beer review/weather report about Lucifer on youtube.