Quote from: JesterRaiin;881001I think you're a nice person.

Funny though - I avoid *PA beers for the very same reason and rarely recognize what I'm drinking if it's below 6%. ;]

I`m like that when I buy beer but it`s really possible to make great weak beer. My most recent one is a pale mild which is about the least hardcore beer imaginable but it has a lot of malt/toasty biscuit flavor despite only 3.5% alcohol.

Going to have to brew a lot more mild, wife loves it and it`s great for gaming since you can`t drink a lot without everyone getting stupid, better than my old go-to gaming beer (Kozel Dark, Czech dunkel)and even weaker

My homebrew bottles are also technically tiny casks so I can even please CAMRA wankers.

Quote from: Opaopajr;881018OMG, Itaewon! Brings back delightfully hazy memories. Oh, the Wolfhound, how I love your burgers and beer.

But for real 2000ml+ madness I'd practically swim through Hongdae and Yongdae/Ehdae districts. Did opa (more like ong) "Gangnam style" a year before it blew up across the bigger pond. Hongdae's better for the madness, but my oh my was it fun regardless.

Gawd, now I'm jonesing for a double order of sundae and a personal 1000ml of beer in a tall, bubbly glass, to spill over me in golden deliciousness. A few of those bolted down and you're ready to go! And then I go dance and spin to the local indie scene trying not to vomit. Public drunkenness for the win...
 

Damn when were you here? Went to Wolfhound`s all the time in 2007 or so for the cheap double Jamesons. Still a good bar but past its prime these days.

I`ll see your sundae and saeng maekju and raise you oshipsaeju in a kettle in a tent bar and some maegkeolli and pajeon on a mountain.

For Gangnam Style it blew up in the states FIRST and then became popular here because of that.

For the other person who mentioned Captain Q there`s a whole shelf of that in the local store, never tried it though. Can`t be any worse than Commander vodka can it?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;881070Oh, I like an IPA quite well, if it's decent.  Sierra Nevada does one with "hop oil" that frankly tastes like the aftertaste of puking.

Bell's I like VERY much.  There's a brewery in the Black Hills here in SD that does a local IPA that is quite lovely, especially on tap.  And Sam Adams "Latitude 48" is one of my favorites when I can find it.

I really, really can't stand sweet beer at all, so I usually order an IPA.  But not a "double IPA" or "triple IPA" or "what the fuck is this IPA."

Like a moderate amount of sweetness, wheat beers and that abomination Sam Adams calls an Octoberfest are too damn sweet but a lot of moden American IPAs are so  dry so you can`t even taste that it`s a beer. Prefer a lot of the stronger IPAs that you don`t like (Ballast Point Big Eye!) because of that since with that much grain you can taste that it`s a beer no matter how much hops you put in. But I really prefer stuff like Arrogant Bastard if I`m buying. Or Maine Brewing Company`s Red Wheelbarrow, soooooo damn good, hoppy and malty without being actively sweet.

For the hop oil ones tasting like vomits I don`t know the Sierra Nevada one, here they cost $5 a bottle on up and fuck that but in the time between this post and the last one I got my mash going for one of those. Two oz of hops a gallon should do it. Going to up my old grain steeping bag as a huge ass hop teabah just so the damn things don`t clog up my spiggot again.

Edit: 80% efficiency! Yay! Pretty damn good for my incredibly cheap and crappy set up and I`m using Vienna for my base malt too and it`s harder to get as many gravity points out of that as pilsner etc. Go me. Time to measure out a shit ton of hops

Is maegkeolli man still strolling the Hongdae streets, selling his drink in a pullcart? He was a fixture when I was there in 2008-2009 and apparently for over a decade before.

Itaewon, like every district, had plenty of nice secrets tucked away. There was that killer American chili dog place, that nice country bar with the jell-o shots across from 2-liter soda+shoju bar. That killer pub that held regular quiz bowl night, that amateur comedy club night place. This nice, kitsch temple bar just up from the Japanese restaurants....

oh dear, I sound like I had a stroke and blacked out from all that partying.... So this is what living through the 1970s is like.

I went to Yonsei and lived by Digital Media City as it just opened. There was a sweet rave along the Han river by there (Mapogu, great grill restaurants there). That and the 3 day rock/rave festival in Incheon were some good times, good times.

(I should bust out my old maps, mags, and show ticket stubs to actually put names to all this shit...)

Quote from: Opaopajr;881183Itaewon, like every district, had plenty of nice secrets tucked away. There was that killer American chili dog place, that nice country bar with the jell-o shots across from 2-liter soda+shoju bar. That killer pub that held regular quiz bowl night, that amateur comedy club night place. This nice, kitsch temple bar just up from the Japanese restaurants....

That is amazing! Are you by chance talking about Grand Ole Oprey? Is it still there? Is Mama Kim still there? One of her entertainers ended up marrying an Army buddy of mine. Last I heard they were still doing well out in CA...

I used to sit in Grand Old Oprey on Saturdays and sometimes up on the on the second floor at the open windows, listen to Alabama, Merle Haggard, Kenny Rodgers, The Oak Ridge Boys, Hank Williams Jr., Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, and Dolly Parton drinking that nasty Captain Q rum, and watch the foot traffic coming up the hill from the fish markets at the bottom of the hill. Used to be a lot more street vendors with pushcarts selling deep fried fish & chips and calamari at the bottom of the hill there. Do also recall being able to get heated shots of souju in the winter from the street vendors at the bottom of the hill.

There were a few other clubs I used to frequent. Don't know if any of them are still there. Just above Grand Ole Oprey was KISS which was of course, a Rock & Roll bar. Ask Momma Kim what happened to that for me if you get a chance.

Down at the intersection across from what is now Pearl, This just beneath Manhattan, was Molly Hatchett another Rock & Roll bar, with custom painted Frazetta done up in neon colors with UV lights to Illuminate, and of course Club MTV was located in a back alley right somewhere close to behind where Candy is now. I remember the Blue Mosque up at the top of the hill too. The Gurkhas had a couple bars up there they really liked up there, and they loved to pick fights with everyone pretty much, except Americans. There was another bar up at the top of the hill we stopped in at frequently, Shamrock. Was supposed to be an Irish bar, It was a favorite, of course, because of the ladies.

Tiger Den is also still there I see...

Quote from: Daztur;881117I`m like that when I buy beer but it`s really possible to make great weak beer. My most recent one is a pale mild which is about the least hardcore beer imaginable but it has a lot of malt/toasty biscuit flavor despite only 3.5% alcohol.

Playing D&D in pubs, it's important to be able to drink something that won't get me smashed...

Fullers, who seem to have most of the chain pubs in London, do a lot of great beers in the ca 3.2-4.2% range. Their most famous is London Pride (4.1%) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Pride_(beer) which is very good, but for drinking while playing I often prefer something slightly lighter. Recently I've been enjoying Seafarers, which is 3.6% - http://www.fullers.co.uk/beer/explore-our-beers/seafarers
Previously drank Chiswick, 3.5% - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiswick_Bitter - a bit too hoppy maybe.

I find taste quality doesn't generally suffer until they go below 3.2%. ABV below 3% always seems to taste weak/watery.

When I was in England some years back the Guinness they served on tap was about 4.5%.  I really don't worry about alcohol content, I just go by taste.  A lot of milds are quite low in alcohol but very nice for a lunchtime drink.

Fullers ESB on tap was also wonderful.

This was 1987.  Things may have changed.

Quote from: JesterRaiin;880759Jesus, friggin' Christ, this is brilliant! :worship:

#3, an observation: Contrary to popular belief, neither Role Playing Gaming, nor beer (!) are the most popular things ever. As weird as it might sound, plenty of people have only limited knowledge and understanding, or even worse: false assumptions regarding either, even without 1st hand experience.

I got quite interesting results when I manipulated total newbies - otherwise dismissive towards the hobby (because: reasons) - into trying some very specific stuff without actually telling what it is.

how and what i wana here what you did to the newbs

Quote from: Spike;880970Eh. For what its worth I'm on my fifth batch of mead. In five years.

What makes it really sad is that batches two through four were all failures.

cool i love mead my self iv been thinking of looking in to how to make it

Quote from: Daztur;881117I`m like that when I buy beer but it`s really possible to make great weak beer. My most recent one is a pale mild which is about the least hardcore beer imaginable but it has a lot of malt/toasty biscuit flavor despite only 3.5% alcohol.

Going to have to brew a lot more mild, wife loves it and it`s great for gaming since you can`t drink a lot without everyone getting stupid, better than my old go-to gaming beer (Kozel Dark, Czech dunkel)and even weaker

My homebrew bottles are also technically tiny casks so I can even please CAMRA wankers.

wont work for me if its beer i get stupid fast if you want me to stay smart feed me hard liqueur ill drink more of it and stay smarter

For the Itaewon stuff:

I lived in Itaewon all 2008 and went there fairly regularly for years before that. I remember Polly Kettle House up on the hill and think Oprey is still around, but don't think I ever went there.

Then my wife got pregnant and haven't been back so much since.

Hongdae is a lot of fun as well but a lot of the clubs were so packed that you have to find the out of the way places like Skunk Hell, low prices, BYOB, fun Korean punks and some bands that don't suck and the magkeolli guy showing up with a cart of booze between sets. Great guy, don't know if he's still there.

Way way back in the day my main haunt was a bar the next station over from Hongdae that had a long-ass Korean name that nobody ever remembered that use under a bar called "the bar" so everyone called it "the bar under the bar." Great place, people would talk to each other, no cover, loud half-decent music and the middle of the bar cleared out for dancing when it got late and the bartender having enough of a crush on my fiance's best friend that he kept on giving us free pitchers of beer. Good times.

Except the fucking bathroom, it was a bit of roofed-over alley and deeply frightening.

That and Tin Pan and the Ho bars when you really wanted to get smashed. Tin Pan was great back when it was really grubby had gone down hill a bit by the time you got here.

These days with the impending base closure hanging over the heads of local businessmen Itaewon has really really really gentrified with most of the restaurants on the strip catering a lot to Koreans coming in looking for foreign food. A lot of places have a real touristy reverse-Chinatown kind of feel these days while the main expat scum scene has moved off to Haebongchon. Even hooker hill seems to be mostly closed down these days except for the gay bars.

Quote from: S'mon;881261Playing D&D in pubs, it's important to be able to drink something that won't get me smashed...

Fullers, who seem to have most of the chain pubs in London, do a lot of great beers in the ca 3.2-4.2% range. Their most famous is London Pride (4.1%) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Pride_(beer) which is very good, but for drinking while playing I often prefer something slightly lighter. Recently I've been enjoying Seafarers, which is 3.6% - http://www.fullers.co.uk/beer/explore-our-beers/seafarers
Previously drank Chiswick, 3.5% - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chiswick_Bitter - a bit too hoppy maybe.

I find taste quality doesn't generally suffer until they go below 3.2%. ABV below 3% always seems to taste weak/watery.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;881310When I was in England some years back the Guinness they served on tap was about 4.5%.  I really don't worry about alcohol content, I just go by taste.  A lot of milds are quite low in alcohol but very nice for a lunchtime drink.

Fullers ESB on tap was also wonderful.

This was 1987.  Things may have changed.

Here Guiness is 4.2%, pretty weak sauce for a stout but like the nitro creaminess so, yeah, that's a good gaming beer as well.

Of the English beers S'Mon mentions I've only had London Pride but just not enough flavor there for me, kind of like the Bass "ale" that comes in the black cans here, not bad just pretty bland.

I like my own 3.5% ABV mild because:
-Lots of East Kent Golding hops, really mild old school hops so it doesn't end up even remotely close to bitter but I put in enough of them late in the boil and in the dry hop to get some nice English flavor and balances some of the sweetness of the malt.
-US-04 yeast, despite the name an English-derived yeast and wimpier than the American-style yeast I usually use so produces less alcohol and leaves some sweetness (but not too much since there wasn't much sweetness in the original wort to begin with).
-Using only Munich base malt, the same stuff that's use to make the richer German lagers, in a lot of German beers it's mixed with pilsner or something so using only it leaves a pretty rich beer even with the low alcohol. A lot more flavorful than regular US 2-row and while English Maris Otter is wonderful stuff German Munich malt is toasted a bit more which leaves more flavor and less fermentable sugars so more flavor and less alcohol.
-Throwing in a pound of American "carabrown" malt which is like a cross between English biscuit malt and English brown malt. Wonderful stuff, gives the beer a deep gold color and a toasty richness without any bitterness. I used the same stuff in a Belgian dubbel and the other ingredients completely overpowered the carabrown but in a nice simple mild it really shines through wonderfully. Will be using this stuff over and over and over again thinking of throwing a crapton of it into a stout with just enough black malt on top to get the color right.
-No caramel/crystal malt, not a bad thing but a lot of brewers overuse it so I'm always careful with it. The Munich base malt gives me enough sweetness and I didn't want to overdo that.

Wonderful stuff, if you stick your nose in an empty glass the malt smell just comes pouring out, which is great in a light easy drinking mild

Wife loves the stuff which is an added bonus, because she's not going to drink the crazy tooth-etching IPA I brewed up yesterday.

Quote from: kosmos1214;881389how and what i wana here what you did to the newbs

Well, brace yourself for a story involving BDSM equipment, dark cellar and a bunch of people... Ahem, sorry, wrong forum.

To tell the truth, it's nothing special. I have a few colleagues, with whom I share some hobbies, however they weren't interested in RPGing and were opposing the idea of playing them, because: reasons.

One day we were watching some slasher movie, one of these where protagonists run around and scream "omigod, what do they want from us, are they terrorists?" or similar stuff. I'm not sure how we started to argue about what WE would do in similar situation, but I kind of manipulated whole discussion, steered it towards "ok, guys, there's a way to check how it could've work for us".

So. Rather than suggest some RPG I introduced, step by step, some simplified rules (involving a bit of skill, a bit of luck), rudimentary character generation and I ran short, "besieged" type of adventure for them.

I recall that the majority of players ended dead, and they blamed poor "ruleset", "unlucky dice" and such. One led to another and the result was that next weekend we were playing (IIRC) All Flesh Must Be Eaten and later moved to other games.

As for drinks: there were two chicks I knew, who disliked beer and thought it a bitter beverage suited for beggars. They changed their opinion once I made them taste mead-based beer without telling them what it is first.

...just like I said: nothing special.

Quote from: Daztur;881403Of the English beers S'Mon mentions I've only had London Pride but just not enough flavor there for me, kind of like the Bass "ale" that comes in the black cans here, not bad just pretty bland.

Well they're intended to be drunk in large quantities during conversation, not focused on for their own sake.

Quote from: S'mon;881627Well they're intended to be drunk in large quantities during conversation, not focused on for their own sake.

Yup. Just when gaming I want to skip the "large quantities" so something with more flavor and low alcohol works best for me. Kozel Dark works OK at 3.8% alcohol but is too sweet...

Who wants to pair games and beers?

American läger for D&D, English porter for WFRP, IPA (eww) for Traveller, barley wine for Runequest, dunkel läger for Vampire? What RPG goes with a nice Witbier?

Quote from: The Butcher;881688Who wants to pair games and beers?

American läger for D&D, English porter for WFRP, IPA (eww) for Traveller, barley wine for Runequest, dunkel läger for Vampire? What RPG goes with a nice Witbier?

Proper D&D is a good strong and bitter pro-prohibition pilsner from back when American mass market beer was good

American lager goes with nothing, if you're talking mass-market crap.

"Bear Whiz Beer.  It's in the water, that's why it's yellow!"