The Taphouse - 2014-01-30

« first day (8 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3691 days later) »

1:25 AM

Blog - Stack Exchange: Stack Exchange for Android is here!

David Fullerton on January 27, 2014

This mobile thing will never last, right? We figured if we waited long enough, this whole “mobile application” thing would blow over and everything would go back to the way it used to be. You know, when phones were for calling people, and computers were for typing long, angry rants about how things aren’t the way they used to be.

In retrospect, we may have misread that one a bit. It turns out that even for Stack Exchange mobile is eating the world.

So today we’re excited to announce that Stack Exchange for Android is finally available for download on the Google Play store, for Android phones version 4.0 (ICS) and up: …

and

docs.google.com/forms/d/…

the second link is an iOS opt-in form

@Fishtoaster maybe german-beer, but tbh, none of them are particularly good tags.

german and germany are inappropriate here. german-beer is probably ok as a broad superset, but might not be useful

2:03 AM

Well, the original "What's the reinheitsgebot?" question is what prompted this question.

It seems like we might get other questions relating to specific countries with strong beer traditions (eg, Belgium, Germany, Ireland, etc)

The german beer purity law one could arguably go under german-beer, I suppose.

Although if someone asks a question on modern german law concerning beer, "germany" seems most appropriate.

10 hours later…

11:55 AM

So now this site is no more private.

3 hours later…

3:06 PM

@AnkitSharma Indeed. Public betas! Yay! \o/

4:05 PM

anyone else kind of depressed about site quality so far?

I'm not entirely sure what I expected, to be honest

I enjoy beer, but I don't necessarily have specific answerable questions about it.

In its current state, I'm not sure it's sustainable.

I mean, if the goal is to become the best source of beer knowledge on the internet (which, I think, it probably is), it's not a bad start.

it seems like expert questions are rather few and far between. Long tail questions are basically non existant

Define "long tail questions"?

4:29 PM

@RyanKinal questions that sit unanswered for a while and take an actual expert to answer

Ah

I have to wonder if that's because the site is currently full of experts/die-hard enthusiasts.

@RyanKinal I've seen a healthy number of enthusiasts, I'm not sure how many actual experts we have yet

That's my main concern.

4:49 PM

Based on StackOverflow, I'm not sure it's expert questions that keep sites going. I think it's the basic stuff that matters more.

If you look at SO, the number of questions that are easily answerable dwarfs the number of actual expert questions.

5:15 PM

My experience with SE launches has been that the first month or two are mostly easy questions. Those help build up the community, and the start slowly tapering towards harder questions. Homebrew.SE has like that: "How do you label your bottles"? "Are aluminum pots ok" at first, but now "Using Square Polypropylene container for no chill brewing" and "How much oak cubes should I use for 5 gallon batch?"

Once the questions you can answer with google run out, more expert questions start bubbling up.

6:03 PM

Fair enough

2 hours later…

7:44 PM

I could use a beer

8:11 PM

Ditto.

I think I have some homebrew in the fridge; I might go get one.

@RyanKinal same. I've got terrapin Rye Pale Ale right now, a bit light for me, but there aren't a ton of great dark options in the grocery stores right now and I'm not sure when I'll get to the beer shop again

There's a beer closet downstairs. But I probably shouldn't. I'll wait until after work.

@RyanKinal yeah, our owner is pretty serious about drinking on the clock :(

Ours isn't. This beer closet is stocked by the company. And 3:30 on Fridays is "Beer:30"

I work at a startup, so no one will mind in any official capacity, but the cultural norm seems to be to wait until late afternoon at least.

8:15 PM

@Fishtoaster makes sense

I kinda miss my last job where we had a keggerator and any time after lunch was fair game (or before lunch if the site had gone down recently)

drive.google.com/file/d/0B48y_dtAyOPybFluLXFBd19RV1U/…

Waitaminute... editing...

That a southern tier in there?

Yep!

I'm about 30 minutes from the brewery :-)

just had their creme brulee, was quite good, was sad I let it go flat.

8:17 PM

Damn. I miss those from when I was in upstate NY.

Can't get ST in California (that I've found)

@Fishtoaster Rochester, I think I saw from your profile?

I'm in Georgia and we get it down here :)

Yep

Grew up there and went to college at RIT

I'm going up that direction this weekend. I went to college at Geneseo.

wow, lots of RIT folks in the stacks

8:18 PM

Odd; wonder why that is.

Nerds ;-)

Yup. :)

2 SE mods that I know of are or have been students/profs there

That does seem like a high-ish number.

That reminds me, how do mods work these days? I was one for Programmers.SE when it started, but that was years ago. I guess there's official voting now?

8:20 PM

@Fishtoaster not for betas

SE will appoint some about a week, maybe 2 from now

There is for SO... I'd assume it's the same for SE sites.

Ah, okay

there will be elections if/when we graduate

Right right

Ah, so no mods until then?

Iirc, we had "moderators pro tem" during public beta for P.SE

I can't recall if we did for homebrew.se

@Fishtoaster we'll have pro-tems during beta. (the hombrew mods are still pro-tems).

8:22 PM

So, beer.

@RyanKinal Happy?

again, they'll be appointed in a week or two

@Zirak: Can't stand the stuff

@Zirak Yep!

Ah, good to know

Also, this is the other part of the beer closet

My coworkers make fun of me because I generally take my beer from shelves rather than the fridge.

I don't like it overly chilled (depending, of course, on the beer)

8:24 PM

Ah yuengling; I miss that too. My favorite cheap beer. :)

Always a decent choice

@Fishtoaster The bay area is pretty good for micros/crafts, right?

Yeah, it's pretty solid.

I'm still discovering new breweries all the time.

Nice. Anything I should try to find?

Lots of good beer bars, although not that many great bottle shops.

Russian River is always a favorite. A bit overrated, but still very good.

:writes it down:

8:27 PM

21st Amendment makes some surprisingly good canned beers. I'm a fan of their Brew Free or Die IPA

When I first started drinking beer (a while ago now), I remember a friend buying a pitcher of IPA. Couldn't stand it.

I love the stuff now, though

Hello

Welcome!

Thanks :)

@Ryan: appellationbeer.com/images/20110821-lupulinshift.jpg

2

Most beer enthusiasts I know started out not liking hoppy beers, and eventually grew to love (or at least tolerate) them. :)

8:35 PM

Hah, nice

hahaha

Yeah, now I need to get an IIPA to get that "kick."

I still recognize extremely hoppy beer... but I no longer dislike it.

So, there's this local brewery. Here in my town. And their beer is not very drinkable. In fact, it's quite bad.

None of their beers are so bad as the "Fish Tail Ale", though. It lives up to its name.

@RyanKinal sad :(. my experience with the local guys is that they usually have pretty good beer

Quite sad. I was excited when I first tried their stuff. And then I was immediately disappointed.

But hey... I have Southern Tier very close. So I ain't complaining :-)

Heh

8:55 PM

Hey everyone :)

Good afternoon!

Looking forward to this site taking off

Me too.

There's some doubt that it will, but that's been the case with every other SE I've been part of (homebrew and programmers).

I am constantly in the C# chatroom on SO. Our topic is actually about you all :P

Heh

I suppose that makes sense; you have to be drunk to want to code C#.

:P

8:58 PM

Psssshhh this isn't Objective-C we are talking about here

lol

I poked at objective-c once; it seemed alright. It had the weird smalltalk-style message-passing syntax, and everything was name NSomething, is about all I remember (although the latter is presumably more the mac libraries than the language itself).

(I'm a JavaScript room regular)

I'm doing mostly ruby and coffeescript right now (with plain js and haskell on the side).

I think there is a fairly large beer loving community though. We get on the subject at least once a day. It would be cool to get a beer of the day memo going.. chat room for just asking what you should try next. I am always looking for suggestions.

Interesting idea

9:01 PM

@Fishtoaster Haskell? Dang...

@JLott It's crazy, but really neat. Makes your mind work a little differently than your standard imperative languages.

I have had to mess with it in my course work. It was...err..ok haha

Heh

Regarding the beer community, it's definitely big enough. The question is: are the enough questions regarding it to support this site?

I think so, but a few people have argues otherwise.

The only problem I can think of so far is that most of your questions would be fairly Googleable

People would need to come to a place like this to get more personal experiences though

Yeah, whereas technology keeps evolving, I wonder if beer is sort of a static topic about which questions might be exhaustable.

Unless we permit questions about specific beers / brews.

9:04 PM

True, but A) we're supposed to become the google answer and B) I expect more complicated questions will pop up over time.

@acheong87 I think questions about specific beer and brews are going to be our lifeblood

On homebrew.se, things stared out pretty simple and googleable, but become more technical as the site grew.

@Fishtoaster that's sort of the reverse of the SE model's intent though

How so?

@Fishtoaster you start off with the high level stuff, attract some experts, they ask more high level stuff, low level stuff comes up, and there are experts there to help those folks and turn them into experts

9:06 PM

I remember wanting to ask where I can find Pliny the Elder in San Diego (because it's really hard to find—I found a secret spot by asking a BevMo employee who happened to know a small wine shop that got shipments every Wednesday—and ran out of them the same day), but someone asked a similar question and it got closed as too regional / dated.

@waxeagle Which is neat. It would be nice to have people describe the beer.. OP then tries the beer and picks an answer that was the closest.

@JLott not sure how that works with the SE model though

@waxeagle Well then set up a chat room for it haha

@JLott yeah that's a great chat topic :)

@acheong87 I think regional questions should be allowed IMO.

9:08 PM

Call it "The Tasting Room", perhaps? :-P

@RyanKinal - I like that.

Regional stuff can be tricky. Most SEs ban them, but they seem particularly relevant to us here.

Not a bad idea

@RyanKinal YES!

@Fishtoaster It is relevant.. I feel region is just as relevant to beer as it is food.

So, best/favorite beer y'all have had?

Can we narrow that to a favorite of a specific kind? haha

9:12 PM

I agree with @JLott... narrower requirements pls

I am a fan of Stouts.. Left Hand has always been a favorite of mine.

fave stout :)

Ooh, Left Hand is good... but I might have to go with Founder's Breakfast Stout

^ Also delicious

I've certainly heard good things about that.

9:13 PM

almost grabbed some of that when I was up in Chicago at Christmas. might have to see if they have a bottle in stock here next time

I've got a set of Dogfish WorldWide Stouts I've been aging that have turned out pretty great.

Kentucky Bourbon Barrel Stout is also very good

@JLott Ooh! Yes!

I think my favorite so far is Great Divide's Yeti Espresso barrel aged

@Fishtoaster I haven't had that one... I'll give it a shot, though.

9:15 PM

@waxeagle That sounds like something I need to try

@waxeagle I just had that on tap, at the brewery a few weeks ago. SO GOOD.

@RyanKinal it's amazing. Hoping they get a keg of it again this year. else I'll have to break down a buy a bomber

On the subject of region, where is everyone from?

@JLott North West Georgia

Northwest Pennsylvania/Western New York

9:17 PM

Western Kentucky here

You all have Yuengling.. jealous..

Originally NYC, now San Diego (:D).

Nice :)

From Western NY, now in San Francisco

I debated as to whether I should ask this question. Too regional? Too broad?

@RyanKinal might be too broad. But there are probably market studies that might make it answerable

9:21 PM

Also considering asking about the effects of aging. It's something I've heard about, but never tried.

Pssh... Muddy's Vanilla Porter better not disappear

I think we have a few aging-related questions; that's a pretty good topic for b.se

@Fishtoaster I saw the one about IPAs.

I'm with wax eagle on the porter question: Might be a bit broad, but might be answerable too.

I <3 porters, for the most part

9:23 PM

Also, I went to the Denver/Boulder area last year explicitly to tour the breweries with some friends. It was awesome.

Flying Dog has an awesome little tasting room in Denver that's only open for about 6 hours a week. Loved it there.

Great Divide, of course, was delicious.

Aww, sad I missed that one

I hit up Breckenridge, Denver Brewing, and Great Divide

Breckenridge's Nitro Vanilla Porter was awesome. Probably my favorite of the trip.

I think I had that at the beerfest I went to in denver; I recall a crazy nitro vanilla porter there, but I was quite a few 'tastes' in, so my memory is a bit fuzzy.

Hehe

Has anybody else here had Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout?

Not I. Haven't had anything by Brooklyn since I left the east coast.

@RyanKinal - When were you in Denver? I was there two weekends ago.

9:28 PM

I was there the 9th through the 12th

I like Great Divide's Denver Pale Ale. Also there Fresh Hop.

@RyanKinal not yet. On my list though

Ah a week before me.

their*

@acheong87 The Denver Pale Ale is good stuff too

@waxeagle I can't say I recommend it, actually. I've heard it gets better with age, though.

Q: What is the worst beer you have ever had?

9:30 PM

I don't know about the worst but I really don't like reds.

They taste like iron to me.

Bah, I <3 a good red. :)

You know what... that was 4 years ago. I'll give it another try. Recommendations?

Moo Thunder would definitely be my favorite.

*least favorite

...your favorite or your least favorite—this is very important.

I don't know if I got a bad batch or what, but Grolsch beer just was awful

9:32 PM

Hmmm... trying to remember a good one; haven't had one in a while. Rohrbach's in Rochester NY had a great one that I would get in growler whenever it was in season, but they don't really distribute.

^ Re reds

Ah, I guess I'll have to experiment.

I was in Rochester once. Almost went to RIT.

I did go there. It was alright. :)

Where did you end up?

Nice. RPI. Which everyone thinks is in Rochester anyway.

Heh, yeah

It starts with an R and has 'tech' in it; must be RIT.

haha exactly

about 2 years in i stopped correcting people

yes, rit

9:36 PM

lol

oh you're in nob hill now? i was there over christmas, stayed at serrano hotel.

@JLott lol, yeah, I'm not a Grolsch fan.

@RyanKinal It was so bad that I thought it might have been stored wrong

Worst beer I've had: Kinzua Brewing Fish Tail Ale.

@JLott That's what I thought too

Agreed on Grolsch. I was enticed by its bottling when I was a noob.

9:39 PM

Well, they are pretty cool bottles :-)

@acheong87 I picked it up in a build your own 6 pack.. didn't even have the neat cap haha

lol @JLott you got ripped off then!

@acheong87 You're telling me...

@acheong87 Oh cool; I'm ~8 blocks from there. :)

The bottle is the best part of Grolsch, lol

9:40 PM

Oh yeah; Grolsch swing tops are great for brewing. :)

haha that's pretty funny to imagine people buying grolsch, dumping out the beer, putting their own beer in.

if y'all have aldi, around thanksgiving they sell pumpkin cider in swing tops :)

Anyway, crappy beers: Pork Slap, Moo Thunder, and really anything I've had by farmhouse ales.

Heh

Leinenkugel's Orange Shandy was also disappointing

@waxeagle Ooh. I'll keep that in mind.

9:44 PM

@RyanKinal but they go fast. It's really good stuff

we saw it twice this season, bought half a dozen bottles.

I rarely go into Aldi. I have other grocery options within walking distance.

the cheap wine is drinkable...none of their beers interest me.

I generally steer clear of pilsners

Ah. Yeah. That's the thing about PA... no beer/wine in the grocery stores.

same in TN :(

well, with wine.

That sucks :(

9:49 PM

beer is Ok in the grocery stores

Georgia they can sell wine and beer, but no hard liquor

TN is weird too, you have to have your beer and liquor in separate stores

The first time I tried to buy beer in PA, I went to a distributor, and tried to buy a 12 pack of Magic Hat. Got to the counter, and they told me I needed to buy at least another 12 beers.

@JLott yeah, but high grav is considered liqour

Dear PA: This is not the way to solve alcohol abuse problems.

@RyanKinal Wow...

New Q! What beer is in your fridge right now?

9:52 PM

Not much. Some homebrew and some firestone walker Velvet Merlin.

@JLott flat southern Tier Creme brulee (much mourning), Killian's Irish Stout, Terrapin Rye Pale Ale, and New Belgium Trippel

Need to go shopping.

@wa

@waxeagle You win. :)

Left Hand Nitro, Left Hand Milk Stout, Kentucky Kolsh, Anchor Steam, Great Lakes Sample Pack (4 different ones), Shock Top Chocolate Wheat and Belgium White is in mine

I just went to the store :)

@JLott Nothing. Need to go shopping.

@Fishtoaster I have a porch that's cold in the winter :)

9:53 PM

@RyanKinal So sad!

@JLott need to get some of the shock top Chocolate, if it's anything like worlds end it's going to be fantastic

(Also, I usually store my beer in the closet. Cool, dark place. Results in a decent drinking temperature for my tastes)

@waxeagle Better hurry! There was only one left and it was cold when I got it. I prefer to have it on the shelf, but they were all out.

And it is pretty good :)

@JLott I've only seen it in big cases so far, hunting a 6-pack

(with a bunch of other stuff in the case)

Mine was a mix. 3 CW and 3 BW

Got to try Wells Banana Bread Beer the other day as well. I definitely suggest it.

9:55 PM

@JLott sounds intriguing

@JLott I've heard mixed opinions

It is lighter.. and if you expect it to be a banana explosion then you will be disappointed, but I thought it tasted great

Maybe I'll give it a try. I know a bar that has (had?) it.

It smells nice as well :)

Do you guys mostly drink at home? or out?

9:58 PM

I drink at home mostly

Both. But recently, more out than at home.

It is cheaper to drink at home haha

Truth

But I love going to beer bars when I get the chance

These days mostly out, since SF has a lot of great beer bars and few good bottle stores.

Mostly in when I was in college and was broke all the time. :)

10:00 PM

There's a new beer bar that opened fairly close to here. I've been meaning to try it.

I have to drive 2 hours to get to the closest beer bar...

Ouch

Yep :(

Oof

@JLott wowsers

I've got a brewery about 25 minutes from my house that I drink at if I'm going out to drink.

10:07 PM

Well, I'm out for the night. Beer with coworkers (most likely Southern Tier Old Man Winter Ale)

Later folks.

@RyanKinal Byee!

@waxeagle closest brewery is about 45 min

everything else is another 10 minutes up the road, downtown

That is what I get for living in the middle of no where haha. We just became wet this past year

@JLott blech. Not sure I could live in a dry county :)

@waxeagle It was ridiculous.. The town holds a large university.. they had been letting money walk out the door for years.

10:14 PM

@JLott that's the thing that gets me. People all freak out when folks want to legalize alcohol sales, completely forgetting that people will drink no matter the law, and are currently drinking in their county. They just go to the next county over to buy, costing your county much needed revenue

@waxeagle Luckily we passed it, but unfortunately for the next county over, they did not.

10:41 PM

I don't think anyone would ever accuse this country's alcohol laws (especially on the east coast) of being sane. :/

« first day (8 days earlier) ← previous day next day → last day (3691 days later) »

Transcript for

Jan '1430

The Taphouse

General discussion for alcohol.stackexchange.com

join this room
about this room

00:00

06:00

12:00

18:00

all times are UTC

site design / logo © 2024 Stack Exchange Inc; legal

mobile