Review follow up: shoes, jacket, beer

DZR GMT-8 SPD-compatible sneakers
Original review here.
OTM review here.
Did I buy it? Yep

The upshot: good shoes. I'd buy them again. We're a solid 6 months into this shoe and it's holding up great. I'm pretty surprised actually. As noted in the OTM review, there is a bit of a steamy funk factor with these. But that's not really the fault of the shoe... you know what you're getting when you buy a canvas shoe. So if you bite on this one, pull the inserts out every couple days and air them out for best results.

Ibex Breakaway Hybrid 2
Initial review here.
Did I buy it? Nope. It was provided by Ibex for review.

The upshot: this is the best one yet. I really had to wait until it got nice and cold to make sure the jacket was suited for sub-freezing weather. It is.

It's lighter in feel than the older Hybrids, but the front of this jacket does a great job of blocking the cold wind. My commute in the morning is straight down hill for 4 miles. It was 17 F this morning on the way to work and as my face and fingers froze, my core was happy.

That's the shoulder-section of the jacket that I landed on. I washed the jacket and there's no trace of the wreck.

And just like the other Ibex stuff, this jacket is tough. I was wearing this jacket when I was Eberlized, which tore open my knee and scraped up my back to draw a bit of blood. There's zero impact to the jacket -- no rips or pilling or even a unstiched little thread. Crazy good stuff here.

This pricey-ass jacket is totally worth the money.

Sour beer #2
No prior reviews.
Did I buy it? Nope. Dylan gave it to me.

Dylan brought me a pile of super awesome sour beers a few weeks ago. Noted here.

The Russian River Supplication was the first one I tried, and it totally lived up to the hype. That's one of my all time favorites now. I have one bottle left and I'm not sure when I'm going to drink it.

The second beer from the Dylan stash that I tried is called "Monk Cafe Flemish Sour Ale."

The upshot: great beer. The sour is there, but it is a tad too fruity for me. These Flemish sour beers appear to be made in the same way: by mixing an older cask-aged beer with a younger fruitier beer. In this one the fruit is too aggressive for me, but it's still a great beer that I'd happily drink any day. It's just not the pure bliss that The Supplication and La Folie are for me.