He Said and the Search for AJ's Beer Warehouse

I was looking on 21st Amendment's website, here, the other day and saw this beauty of a beer, He Said. It is a collaboration with Elysian Brewing and each 4-pack contains two different beers, a Baltic style Porter and a Belgian Tripel. Interestingly enough, they are both brewed with pumpkin as well, plus some other added ingredients. So, using their "Find Some" search feature at the top of their page I looked up where they distribute. Lo and behold, AJ's Beer Warehouse (their website here), in Henrietta has He Said! I'd never heard of AJ's before but knew where about it is located.  It is actually almost right across from Sunset Hydroponics and Homebrewing, which is another great store and where I got ingredients for an IPA I homebrewed, which I'm sure I'll write about soon because it's almost done bottle conditioning. Anyway, AJ's has a stellar selection of beers, 80% of which are kept in walk in fridge units. The remaining 20 percent they are currently building a fridge unit for as well. They also have a dedicated section to NYS breweries and a whole bunch of draft lines with NYS beers as well. I was impressed.

Here's some notes about both beers in the order I drank them:
1) He Said (Belgian Tripel) - This is brewed with Galangal and Tarragon. Galangal is Thai ginger variety. I was really surprised by these ingredients in a Belgian beer, but they worked together beautifully. The tarragon I usually think is sour, but not in this. There was a subtle sweetness about this beer. It had a fantastic pumpkin aroma, especially in the olfactory, it was creamy, marshmellowy, the malty pumpkin hit your palate later, it's color was light golden amber and presented delicate legs. I really enjoyed this. 8.2% ABV, see more specifics here.
2) He Said (Baltic Porter) - This was brewed with Vietnamese cinnamon and caraway seeds. The Vietnamese cinnamon or Saigon cinnamon supposedly has more pronounced aromatic qualities, is used in making Pho and stuck out in my mind. This actually reminded me somewhat of a Doppelbock, with its smoky pork flavor, definite cinnamon, spice, slight sweetness (less than the Belgian Tripel), thick foamy head, roasty with some chocolate?, slightly warming and deep brown color. 8.2% ABV, see more specifics here.

Another beer I'll add to this list I tried yesterday was Three Head's Brewing Bromigo: Smoke Maple Amber Ale. This had serious pork notes, almost too intense in the sense that I had a hard time focusing on anything else. There was an underlying sweetness from the maple, it was a gorgeous clear dark Amber with reddish hue, off-white head, spicy, peppery with a hop end that brought balance to the smokiness. 7% ABV. More here.

My favorite of the night: He Said (Belgian Tripel). Very well done on this one.