While it’s tough to call this a hot deal at $90, it is a delicious, age stated, cask strength rye that is incredibly well integrated, tons of menthol and evergreen, it feels both more mature and more refined than the label would indicate. On par with that Willet 7 yr rye.

 So well done, Anjou pear and melon, dry Brett imparts a hay and lavender sort of melange.

I could drink gallons of this.

  
While these are both good, it’s tough to justify the cost of entry on the family preserves when the fruit stand is damn near equal.

Both exhibit that ultra clean juicy must of fresh pressed grapes, wet carpet and squeezeits on the nose. It is like purple Gatorade meets this light salinity that makes it wildly drinkable.

Avery Brewing has been a solid pillar in the craft beer scene for ages.  They boast a solid historical portfolio of classic mainstays, some solid wild ales, and largely accessible massive beers that convert pre-Cicerones (precerones) to hard fermented strains.  But historical relevance aside, what have they done for DDB lately? Usually they are the brewery that saves my ass when I have to go to a restaurant and they are my lifesaver in a list of predictable macro/boring craft options. They haven’t been acquired, they don’t have some apeshit aims to flood the world with mass produced wild ales, they haven’t tried to get their fans to finance a new brewery in Cologne: SO WHAT IS THEIR DEAL?

First and foremost they made a widely distributed BA Vanilla stout that costs like fucking eleven dollars. I added the nucleation. However, if you are expecting like madagascar flavored TWEAK or something, slow your roll.  This is pretty solid and low hanging fruit for the type of casual beer guy to get hooked: typical Avery shit. This is thin relative to the style, has a slick mouthfeel more akin to a big porter, little cling and sheeting and finishes with a minerality that boosts crushability but makes it less nuanced.

This reminds me more of like A&W cream soda than those mallow and brownie bombs you read about in last month’s Barrel aged vanilla stout shootout.

It is relatively svelte and presents some Dr. Pepper meets waffle cone type of notes. It isn’t a paradigm shift, nor does it have any discernible issues either. Then again this doesn’t go for like $800 on the secondary market.  Cost, availability and overall execution makes this a solid buy without clear analogue until Stone catches up in 2019 with the BRAND NEW VANILLA STONE IRS OMG SUCH INNOVATE.

You probably have had this a billion times or seen it for like $30 in some $$$ restaurant as their CROWN JEWEL in the reserve list next to like, Velvet Merkin or some marked up shit.  It is a massive boozy blast of rum and caramel with this tiny Cinderella pumpkin sidecar tacked on to reduce the power/weight ratio.  This is massively fusel when cold and had a thin body not unlike TWEAK that makes things unbalanced at first.  This is like if Bruery and Southern Tier had a forbidden love child, it would be this oddball that is hard not to appreciate. It is a fun adventure, like once or twice, but I don’t know who this beer is for.  Halloween fetishists with srs drinking problems. I can get behind that. Dat price point tho, yeesh.

This beer is a liquid nightmare crafted in the deepest recesses of your REM stage 4 insecurities. What is this?
“Barrel-aged Mexican-style barleywine that will use Agave syrup, chile peppers and malted smoked wheat.”

If you “NOPE” siren isn’t blaring, then strap in for the ride. The body is “Christian Bale in the machinist” thin, so the adjunct elements get to run rampant and fuck your mouth up without restriction.  The chili throws a flashbang and deadens all the bittering zones that could appreciate things, then agave syrup rolls in firing an SKS of sticky oddly syrupy turbinado sugars/rock candy/maple at all bystandards.  A touch of smoke lingers while you are trying to figure out what just happened, the gaunt “barleywine” aspect saunters through in a khaki jacket cleaning his fingernails, totally detached.

It was almost like someone thought Huna, except using Leon as a base would be a good idea, and also put his two weeks notice in while writing the recipe as a final swan song to the beer world before drowning himself in a britetank. It is unquestionably “original” but like that 1979 Japanese film HOUSE, it’s like WHAT IN THE FUCK IS GOING ON WHY IS THIS HAPPENING.

Ah this fucking classic gem. I loved this guy back in 2012 when I had it at the Blue Palms anniversary, suffice it to say the cans are still legit, but not as good as the draft version from the past.  The biggest difference is this KOOLs menthol/Vick’s Vapor Rub thing accompanying the wheaty gristy fruity fun.  It’s like everyone is having fun at a Jamba Juice co-op and your chain smoking uncle shows up talking about how “jet fuel cant melt steel beams” and dampens the mood.  This is a no brainer for the price point, mobile format, accessibility, and a welcome shredding on the White Rascal prototype.  This is such a logical extensive of what Avery does that I could see so many of these being crushed on Eliminator boats, in movie theaters, at High School football games.

This is beer made for patently irresponsible behavior.  The sweetness of the fruit and creamy whip of the wheat makes these so drillable without ever giving you pause: THE IDEAS JUST COME TO YOU. If someone bigleagues this and suggests something ridiculously different like OH WELL CASEY PEACH FRUIT STAND IS BETTER, that dude has a thumb dick and you dont need to listen to people like that.

I braced myself for this one thinking it would be the habanero mother of all agave noted above but this was SHOCKINGLY FUCKING TASTY.  This is essentially an old ale, aged in bourbon barrels, with ginger added.  But get this: THE GINGER DOESNT COMPLETELY FUCK EVERYTHING UP.  This is like if you made a Moscow mule with cane rum instead of boring vodka.  There’s all the booziness attendant to the old ale base with oak, leather, sugar daddies, but then OH SHIT CANADA DRY ROLLS UP.  The wasabi ginger opens up the nostrils like Blenheim’s ginger ale.  I can’t think of anything exactly like this in recent memory and this shines in any tasting as this beautiful chimera of palate stretching.

It feels more cocktail than beer in many aspects and if you ever wanted to drink an old fashioned on a sick day, here’s your hot toddy.

There you go.  That’s what Avery is up to.  Their anniversary beers are consistently a complete fucking trainwreck of dizzying proportions, but they constantly chamber the cartridge and pop china lake rounds on people below. They serve an unwavering function in the beer world that, unlike Rogue, hasn’t gone to total shit over the years.

brb fielding all these DDB IS A FUKN SELL OUT accusations for this falsely glowing review. typical shit.

Well, the time has come to finally wrangle this wayward brewery and take it to task under full halogen examination.  For those of you who aren’t apprized of the background of this brewery, it has a dicey history of sorts completely unrelated to the actual quality of the beer itself.  They had a bottle share fiasco that was met with much derision, Yelp reviews to accompany it, a general circumspect cloud of speculation concerning the clear Macro-esque/Golden Roady sort of goals of this brewery, the oddly huge brewing system with no brewer for a notable period, competition with the Full Pint 8th anniversary event, and a coin purse allegedly financed by marijuana dispensary cash.

All of that shit is before the doors even opened. No one had tasted a drop until last weekend.  So let’s set all of that speculative bullshit aside and let’s look at the place and the beer itself. IF YOU CANNOT FORGIVE YOUR PREJUDICES THEN I ASK THAT YOU DO NOT SIT ON MY BEER JURY.

The space is in this leaky industrial area of LA that could lovingly be termed “Gotham District” or “I AM LEGEND zone” or “Triad meeting place.”  The space is undeniably beautiful and one of the most polished tasting rooms that SoCal has to offer in terms of rich history, attention to detail, and a massive brewing system placed front and center.

Another item of note is that the fanbase is wildly diverse and there was little in the way of cargo shorts, beer work shirts, crocs, and fedoras.  This is not a beer nerd’s haven, this is a spot for normal angelenos with no Fedex accounts and perhaps no Untappd badges. That is refreshing as shit and the energy of the place was great.  The event was run smoothly albeit NO TASTERS and every serving was a 16oz plastic cup. I get it, lines are shitty and that would be a crazy amount of glassware, but man many of these beers I simply didnt need a straight up pint, but that’s really an issue with my own self control I suppose.

There’s all kinds of wacky dick tracy shit going on and people at the event seemed interested in having a fun time instead of actively contemplating the middle of the road fermented offerings.

From a beer perspective, there simply isn’t a lot of meat on the bone for DDB purposes.  All of the beers are pretty good.  I mean if you enjoy every sleepy iteration of a 001 CA Ale strain then, sure, you will like this place.  The beers are dialed in without discernible flaw, but while sipping their american barleywine I felt it was unremarkable in medical parlance: I have no remark.  In some circles merely avoiding DDB ire would be enough to celebrate, but the wares probably don’t seek to cotton favor with the soulless husks that DDB services.  The brewer from Maui Brewing unquestionably knows how to brew simple/soporific beers of this scope and does it well, they hit every benchmark for the type of Golden Road demographic that they undoubtedly are catering towards.

My favorite beer was, fittingly, the least assuming, the most simple/straightforward Iron Triangle ale.  a sub-5% abv melange of predictable yeast and two row. Maybe like chinook, but it is was appropriate that a brewery playing to such a wide crowd would make an inoffensive beer that I loved because I could forget about it like my copy of Nintendogs 3DS.

One eerie aspect was this feeling like the whole place was erected merely as a vehicle to be sold faster than a DotCom startup.  There was this detached inauthentic execution, like I was being present a procedurally generated bill of goods that was crafted for some corporate purpose.  It is a difficult zeigeist to explain.  I think this is the best way to explain it:

No sooner did Iron Triangle open their doors than they signed with InBev subsidiary distribution. The public barely had a moment to utter the words “Craft br-” and they were already posturing themselves for an expedited Golden Road cash grab. This is to say nothing of the panache and aplomb of the PR moves.

In sum, sure go have a pint here, or don’t.  I don’t really give a shit either way.  Chances are if you read DDB this isn’t an issue you were actively contemplating anyway.

It is not secret how much I love Sante Adairius’s wild and saison game.  While their hoppy and maltier offerings leave something to be desired, no one can approach the awesome things that they are doing with clean, complex, crushable farmhouse beers.

So what is this shit?
“A brilliant and calming sunset; the eternal ebb and flow of waves crashing on the beach; a dog’s smile-all of these the simple complexities of a life lived well. We constructed Lucybelle, a straightforward saison with Brettanomyces, to complement life’s little pleasures. Crisp, dry, and doggone refreshing, we hope Lucybelle reminds you to slow down, relax, and take in the mystery and beauty of being.”

Tl;dr basically a more substantial brett table beer.

This beer specifically is hilarious because it is one of their “worst” reviewed beers and it evidences the specific bias when rating a brewery’s own catalog against their own body of work.  If a brewery in Indiana released this, we would never hear the fucking end of it. This stands on its own as a phenomenal clean driller not unlike the also phenomenal Lady in Grey:

Lucybelle has this thin, agile character to it that does a roundoff back handspring while throwing lemony musky shuriken with deft accuracy.  It is both a touch too thin but also compelling in how satisfying it is to take those big swallows like bukake B-roll footage.

If you want to dip your toe in the SARA tide but have shaky knees with the Cellar Only offerings, this would be a great start.  It is basically a thinner, muskier, lightly acidic version of Avril, if you aren’t at half chub at that sentence, check your pulse.

We are doing John Mayer jokes now to appeal to the US! Weekly demographic, TMZ banner ads to follow.

  
Monkish has taken this silent approach to infiltrating the sour/saison game: enter lackluster and stealthily ramp up quality with every release. Olivia would be the greatest embodiment of this strategy, integrating mixed ferm seamlessly with a wine barrel aged saison, and foeders with Hyundai mileage on them. 

This beer is a single index finger pressed to a lover in the rain on a train platform, no words, just crisp Anjou pear dreams now. It never offends or steers your focus to the glass, a classic brew that dances in the margins of experience. Some would say this is a delicate tangerine and oaky table beer not unlike Side Project Saison de ble. These beers get panned at 11 person tastermonger fests for being WATERY OR BORING when quantity of consumption is paramount to reflection on experience. I am fine with that, 32 laughable Untappd entries in an afternoon should award users a Hester Prynn badge of shame.

Badge unlocked.

SHIT I FORGOT TO TRADE FOR ALL THOSE DRAGONTRAXXXXX VARIANTS. Credibility loss forthcoming.

  
The most slept on recent release from these Casey boys has got to be these wine grape deviants. I can only assume people saw the reviews from the meh GRAPE fruit stand and lumped in these new offerings accordingly. That’s about as dangerous as lumping in bottle works XI with bottle works X.

The biggest takeaway from these gems is the soft, compliant, lightly acidic, down comforter tannic execution. Sure it’s the fruit stand in heart but it isn’t the simple AWA fruit territory that, at this point, is as well tread as refined alabaster. This is like temptation placed in a rock polisher and all the intensity has been rounded off for a lacquer smooth “post Brazilian wax” finish. The grape never is cloying nor does it come across like a group of buttery chard loving ex-sorority girls validating the shit out of one another: it feels authentic and intentional.

  
The mouthfeel might be the best aspect and, in a realm of samey, heavy handed American wilds, this deft and deliberate posturing makes Casey lovingly shoulder with Sante Adairius and Hill Farmstead as the poised purveyors of 750mls you simply do not want to share.

  
Mfw dudes tryna cop new Casey bottles w bourbon county

  
Also an interesting lil whiskey upstart up in the mix as well.

  
But in all seriousness he crushes the fuck out of shredder in a garbage truck at the end of the 1990 TMNT film, that’s just straight up murder.

  
Also, how does super shredder survive that but when a dock falls on him as super shredder he dies and we have to suffer through the worst sequel ever made as a result?

Troy Casey makes some excellent beers, I hope someone shows up to his next release dressed like this, in that high elevation ice ready to kick FOOT