For those 160 people in the extended family, the Casey membership punishes their wallets with incredible releases on the reg. Oddly, most people are electing to actually DRINK these beers instead of trading them for flour enriched trub slurrIPAs. Weird, I know.

So let’s look at two recent releases, since I was a negligent dipshit and totally forgot to order my April bottles. Typical.

  
Inb4 grout comments. Grape fruited awa/Saisons are dicey territory. You can hit an odd retention that kills the carb, you can fall into an overly vinous character, or you can be left with some tepid Welch’s shit. The pitfalls are innumerable. 

  
When you go this apeshit on fruit and barrel treatment, the capacity for failure rises faster than Greek EU debt. However, this beer drops low, engages the core, and does a clean jerk in every respect. The merlot goes in an almost blackberry meets plum skin direction instead of the typical ho-hum partial maceration some beers reach for. It is intensely dry but, in classic Casey form offers up some sweet preserves character like boysenberry spread on a wheaty English muffin. A mild cheesiness hovers in the realm of kombucha/Gruyere melange. 

I killed the entire bottle Zfg in between dying over and over in Bloodborne and them tannic merlot skins kept my self esteem intact. You should absolutely seek this out, it is easily amongst the best in the stellar Cut/laceration lineup. THE CUTS MAKE ME FEEL LIKE I HAVE CONTROL.

Too far. Let’s keep things moving.

  
I don’t know how I got put in advanced oak theory, I barely passed regular oak theory. This is advanced in every sense of the word. I love that this beer rests for like half the time that expensive ass stranahan spirit itself occupies the casks. The result is a careful tempering of acidity by spicy oak, a pepperjack cheese meets jazz apple canapés profile. You can drink these exceedingly fast and the subtle carb never slows you down.

  
The silky mouthfeel coupled with a tangerine/apricot aspect makes for a great combo, accessible to entry level grocery store Hennepin ballers and CDxx vets alike. Casey is getting into an issue where ALL of the bottles are increasing in quality across the board and throwing my full weight into this over say, regular ass East Bank or hell, even the exceptional base saison is hard. It is a great problem for a brewery to have and there are no losers in this arms race.

Wait I take that back, purveyors of forgettable, over the plate Saisons will definitely suffer. People doing stainless Westmalle strain or some uninspired DuPont standard will inevitably turn to some kettle souring to remain relevant. But you can’t really feel bad for those guys. 

They trying.