Monthly Archives: June 2012

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Green Flash Double Stout, When a Single Stout Isn’t Enough, Double That Shit Down.

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Green Flash, ah, just the name feels like the deal of the century. They nestle shoulders with Lagunitas warmly and provide amazing beers are incredibly affordable prices. I love this brewery and they consistently roll out great gems for everyone to enjoy, not just elitist aleholes with boxes littering their homes. So let’s double down some stouts in today’s review.

This beer is stunning and this shit didn’t even go into a barrel. . .that one is coming soon. . .FORESHADOWING TO THE MAXIMUM.

Green Flash Double Stout
8.8% abv

A: This is a welcoming blackness with some deep brown hues. There is a fantastic huge carbonation and lingering forestry of lacing that webs over itself and sticks with aggression. The entire beer is incredibly well done and surprising, not in an elitist way, but come on for the price this beer delivers more than some of the overhyped brewery only releases. I am super serial.

I need MORE OF THIS STOUT. All the time.

S: This is incredible for a beer that is not barrel aged. It presents a huge drying coffee, burnt wood, and 85% cocoa chocolate profile. But with a smoothness like a Feist sustained note. Deep, dark, but entreating. There’s a dryness and a crispy brownie batter aspect to it.

T: The taste is very simple. It imparts a huge burnt dryness that tastes like the dregs of a great espresso that melts into a chocolate profile with that bitterness that is common to very dark chocolate and then a splash of water, and it is over. It is a chocolate splash mountain of flavor and Brier Rabbit barely has time to say anything, edgewise or otherwise.

With something this dark and powerful, shit gets dangerous real quickly.

M: This is swift with a medium coating but a solid coating for about 2 seconds and then it scurries off. It is almost like they want you to drink the entire 4 pack in a single sitting. WELL GREEN FLASH, I see your challenge and respectfully decline, I have other matters to attend to. The end taste of the coating has a sort of a burned black licorice that is interesting, but fleeting. This is a swift little stout but even the most capricious Clipper spies a Galeon on the horizon. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

D: This is incredibly drinkable if, and only if 1) you enjoy coffee, a lot or 2) you cannot wait for baked good to be done and you like baker’s chocolate, a lot. If you want a huge filling stout, this isn’t the one. This is a deep dark oaky coffee ninja that imparts and retreats. Toffee shurikens are likely involved.

Smootheness coupled with an integrated alcohol profile makes me not know what the hell is going on before I knew it.

Narrative: “Another one, this is a series, to be sure.” Detective Branning spit angrily upon the ground and clenched his jaw. “Another chocolate store robbed blind, in an instant, with the insides gutted and replaced with…shitty coffee.” “Yes sir, it just doesn’t add up.” his assistant, Detective Willoughby added. Willoughby’s glasses slide down the bridge of his nose as he chewed on the end of his pen contemplatively. “You know, if someone wants chocolate that bad, why go through the trouble of replacing it with all this shitty coffee? Just don’t add up boss.” Branning nodded and looked into the bag’s of Seattle’s Best, then into a barrel of Yuban. “Someone is fucking with us, it’s a calling card, he’s letting us know that he can get away with it.” Branning ejaculated and flipped his notebook shut. Meanwhile, in the alley adjacent to the knocked off candy store, a lone Peruvian man garbed in all black shook his head morosely. “No detective Branning, this is far from a game, and it has only just begun,” he chortled as his diminutive 5’2” frame chortled with menacing laughter. “IN THE LAND OF SURPLUS CROPS, THE MAN WITH THE CHOCOLATE IS KING.” Branning took one long look at the crime scene and said, “well Willougby, whoever did this is either really sick, or was raised in a place that doesn’t understand relative product value, OR BOTH.” He kicked a lone coffee bean and watched it slide into a pool of melted chocolate.

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Cigar City, Either/Or Black Ale, EITHER This Beer is Awesome, OR Kierkegaard is Wrong.

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Cigar City either blindsides me with a gem, or you open something like Vuja De and don’t know what the fuck to make of it. This beer falls in the former category and my only complaint is the old amorphous “black ale” title that initially put me off to this. Let’s call this what it is: an awesome imperial stout er…maybe a triple imperial porter…fuck. I don’t know it is EITHER a stout OR this is a shitty pun.

Oh, ok. Either and Or are the same beer. Ba dum tish. Dichotomies about.

Cigar City, Either/Or,
Black Ale, 11.5% Abv

A: What a novel gimmick, two beers, the same beer. Sounds like an expensive bottle labeling maneuver. I was expecting some earth shattering Soren Kierkegaard business, but this wasn’t particularly mind blowing…AT FIRST. This has a kinda watery look to it of freshly pressed ink from a baby squid. Murky but shiny. Mild lacing and medium carbonation. It’s like a halfway home for abused porters and baby stouts.

You can enjoy huge black ales and get super dreeze, heck, enjoy nature, just don’t be a dbag when you take it to the 11% abv dangerzone.

S: There is a Huge hop profile, wood, oak, nice black licorice, and a toasted maltiness. It is like a low-cal version of Hunaphu’s. Low is relative, I GUESS. Actually it is more like a more svelte blacker Huna with some smoothe cocoa swagger.

T: This has a great chocolate/anise taste to it that it sweet but with a nice bitterness to it, without being medicinal. It’s like when you were a kid and had too many delicious Flintstones vitamins, only chocolate and tobacco flavored, and no diarrhea. Not yet at least. WE SHALL SEE.

Discover an amazing black ale, realize it is sold 3000 miles away. Shed manly tears.

M: This has a nice coating and mild stickiness to it that washes away but leaves a little something behind, like a crafty clingy first date that wants you to think about her again. YOUR TRICKS WONT WORK ON ME. Ok well I sought it out again so maybe those tricks worked, who knows? I would gladly go after this again.

D: This has a cool hybrid drink ability to it and is very delicious. Overall the complexity isn’t overwhelming but it makes it all the more appealing. Plus in the 12oz format you can come and go as you please, no need to be a deatbeat dad about your black ales, leaving them all around town. You can gently nurse them and pick up another at your leisure.

I don’t know, what the fuck, is going on.

Narrative: “And that’s how you fit 22 slavs in a phone booth!” Yurgis exclaimed with his own eastern European sort of aplomb. “Yes, er uh, thank you for that Yurgis, Mr. Chalmers, Yurgis is our exchange student and he sure does have an INTERESTING SENSE of humor, pass the peas please sweetie.” Walter succinctly stated to his supervisor. This family dinner would decide the fate of his career for the next half decade, if only his disheveled ukranian house guest would keep quiet. Mr. Chalmbers was the new CFO of Texodyne, a chemical manufacting plant whose operations were largely based out of Uzbekistan, apparently a locale that Yurgis had plenty to say about. “And when the streets run red with the blood of the nonbeliev-” “ok ok ok, thank you Yurgis.” It wasn’t that he was particularly bad or dark, he was actually kinda sweet in his own third world sort of way. Most people just had a tough time looking past his penetrating darkness. “Good and bye Mr. Chalm-bers, I want for to make love to your daughter in soon time, we will be good friends!” The family hung their heads at the prospect of another 5 years without a raise.

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Lost Abbey Cable Car, Ring a Ding Ding, The San (Diego) Francisco Treat.

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What else can we way about this amazing sour that hasn’t been etched in the stalls of homosexual nightclubs already? This is an amazing beer. I have only had this beer three times and each time I nodded contemplatively at spending a pretty penny to try it, not even mad tho. This beer sweeps the leg and makes me want another, not unlike giving a mouse a cookie, he is going to want a vert.

This beer is only for sale at Torona- WAIT WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?

Lost Abbey, Cable Car, 7.0% wild ale

Oh wait, let’s not forget about the Cable Car Kriek, not even fucking around on this review:

Take an amazing sour and then take it to the kriekzone. Feeling like a cherry popping daddy.

A: Light pilsner color, mellow gold, a refined golden ambiance. The kriek technically deserves its own review but I will just ad lib this shit, the kriek has a bright radiant hue like cherry afterbirth. Amazing beers on both aspects.

GOD DAMNIT I need moar of this beer. You must understand my frustration.

S: Strong sour geuze smell, crushed sweettarts and a melted fruitloops wafting. There is a mild funk of wet hay and a deep crisp granny smith apple note going on that is super cutty.

T: This beer is intimidating at first, strong smells and notes, but ultimately this is a calf that you can wrangle without oppression. It is akin to mutton busting, something that seems difficult until you tackle the sheep, and pull its majestic fur to the ground. At its core, it is temptation with milder souring, lighter drying effects, less tanins in the grape aftertaste, and finally champagne crisp apple notes in the finish. Nothing you can’t handle but an exceptional balance. It is the lovechild of gueuze and champagnes of the mild brut variety. I love the dryness even if it slows me from enjoying the white grape and fuji apple notes.

This beer is unique, yet respectable, strange, yet friendly.

M: Fantastic, crisp and light, the entire experience has lemon zest and feels like a Hootie and the Blowfish Album. You can dispense this pellmell and no one will look askance. If not for the oppressive Toronado’s standards, this could be something everyone could enjoy, if not for proprietary despotism. This is well worth bootlegging, well worth epic trades. Just really good, but if you want to tread this road, there are more refined paths as smoothe as marble for your wanting cart, should you not have epic cellar gems to take down this beast.

D: Again, fantastic but competing in a league of legends. I would drink this all day, fixing my carburetor, prepartying for the charity gala, snuff film exposition, you know, guy stuff. I find myself in a love hate resolution with this beer because I love what it is but I hate the air surrounding it. It feels like seeing a person with a TOOL shirt on. you love the syncopated rhythms and complex melodies, but you dislike the fanbase in general. The faux highbrow ruins what would be a fantastic experience.

I need more of this sour gem, I cannot stop thrusting.

Narrative: Sir Fredrick Willingsly is repossessing your car. You can’t hate him for doing his job, but, without a 1998 civic DX, these pizzas arent going to deliver themselves. You hate him, with his cliche antagonistic handlebar moustache and fogged up monocle. However, his wry quips relating to Howards’ End and class struggle made it all the sweeter. “And thence upon from which one has had, none shall take without” he declares with a cloud of aplomb that almost makes you lighthearted in his usurpation of your chief economic asset. He is akin to the Mr. peanut of recurring vengeance. your pocket despises him, yet you respect him for his casuistic enforcement of the law. “God speed Willingsly, dont scratch my sick mugen exhaust on the dip. Godspeed.”