How Did I Do? Beer Run/Haul Review #5

About a month and a half ago I made a post about the beer runs I had made over the course of a couple months, see it here: https://steemit.com/beer/@bigskycustoms/beer-runs
I thought it would be fun to go back and see how i liked the beers I picked up in the reviews. I will just do one or two of the runs per post but will be rating them all on how well I did on picking good beers. As a criteria I am using the Untappd rating system since that is how I rate all my beers. So using that system, anything between 0.00 and 2.00 I would consider to be a bad to mediocre beer, those between 2.00 and 3.50 would be considered fair to midling beers, decent on most occasions, beers from 3.50 to 4.25 would be very good beers and those from 4.25 to 5.00 are to be considered the best, very good beers to my palate.

So this post will cover two more beer runs, both completed in early March from MIssoula, Montana. The first was from Pattee Creek Market a grocery store near my son's work that has an excellent beer selection. However, their singles selection is pretty limited but they do have a nice selection of 22 oz bottles. I found 3 big guys I wanted to try, all dark beers, two Imperial Stouts and an Irish Stout.

Here is the picture of the beers from this run.

Here are the ratings for this group of beers:

• Caldera Brewing Company - Old Growth Imperial Stout: 4.25
• Bridgeport Brewing - Sirens Sound Imperial Stout: 4.00
• Moylan's Brewing - Dragoons Dry Irish Stout: 4.25

Overall Average Rating: 4.17

As you might have expected knowing my love of the dark beers, this group was a winner winner chicken dinner all the way around, albeit a bit of a smaller sampling size but still a high group rating of 4.17/5 is a great run. I have generally had good luck with finding good beers at Pattee Creek Market, I do wish they would have more singles, as they actually have one of the better beer selections in the State. While I rated the three nearly all the same, I would say the Caldera Old Growth as the best of the group. It is a limited run beer and overall, Caldera, out of Oregon, brews up some delicious beers. But so does Bridgeport, another Oregon brewery, while Moylan's out of California does well with their beers also.

Run number two for this group was to Big Heads Bottle Shop, another great beer store in Missoula. They encourage single buys and for the most part, I try to stop there every time I am in town. They also get a lot of new beers in on a regular basis. This run was not my usual but my friend had just hit them up a couple weeks prior so I was able to find 6 good options to try.

Here is the picture of this run.

Here are the ratings for this group of beers:

• Moylan's Brewery - Ryan O'Sullivan's Imperial Stout: 4.00
• O'Dell Brewing - Bull Proof Bourbon Barrel Aged Stout: 5.00
• Petrus Brewery - Aged Red Belgian Sour Fruit Beer: 3.75
• New Belgium Brewing - Voodoo Ranger Juicy Hazy IPA: 3.50
• Founders Brewing - Solid Gold Lager: 3.50
• Ayinger - Celebration Double Bock: 3.25

Average Overall Rating: 3.83
Not a bad rating, this falls at the lower end of the very good beers in my rating criteria. There was a big star in this group, the O'Dell BBA Bull Proof which was maybe the best BBA beer I have had, and really one of the best beers I have ever had. I could not rave enough about that beer. O'Dell is a Colorado brewery and I did a review of this beer a week or two back. I just drank the Ryan O'Sullivan Imperial Stout and will be doing a review in the next day or so, it was a solid imperial stout with that 4.0 rating. Both the Founders Lager and the Voodoo Ranger IPA got 3.50 ratings, that is pretty high for me to rate an IPA but I do like the Voodoo Ranger series from New Belgium another Colorado brewery. Founders has yet to brew a beer I didn't like and Lagers, while not my favorite beer type, always have their place. The two imported beers were interesting, the Petrus Cherry Sour was very good, not overly sour and I like cherries so this one may have actually been a tad underrated. But on the other end, I may have over rated the Ayinger Celebration, I really didn't like it that well.

The two beer runs reviewed today were both in the upper echelon of runs, with the smaller group a clear winner. However, the Bull Proof was the star of both runs and maybe saved the second from being in the middling range of runs. If there was ever a beer I would recommend, it would be Bull Proof, highly recommended. Thought this was kind of fun and I will continue to do these beer run rating posts until I run out of the beer runs. Hope you enjoyed this and I can give details on any specific beers you might be interested in knowing more about. A lot of these I have already posted beer reviews on Steemit so I can find a link for you if interested. Cheers and good beer hunting!!