We Ded Mon, the pulpy 11% beast Jack Lalanes its way onto the TIPa scene, with mixed results. It has massive grist and whipped lemon meringue, home run pie filling, a frothy expansive carbonation like steamed milk and just enough creamy orange sherbert body to offset the considerable wafty structure of this beast. 

It is one of the most complex iterations in this style and somehow remains drinkable which is almost problematic given the abv. You’ll be drunk dialing chicks from your Junior High yearbook, reeking of citra and raked pine needles 🌲, kids coming downstairs thinking juice Santa is here. 

The finish is long and resinous, bitter, imbalanced but still lovable like ur fashion student exGF. Grapefruit rind hits hard like Kimbo Slice, I can only see limited utility for this but the role that it hits can jump start or immediately end a casual evening.

A pretty solid offering from them Mountie boys, albeit not a barn-shifter in the hay baling realm. This is attenuated and Dialed harder than the economy soap aisle, Dove soft, all Levers pulled. It is oddly bitter like pear skin, with a middle body that’s like Lime Le Croix, insubstantially thin body that swallows like prickly Powerade. 

There’s a yeasty phenolic aspect to the swallow kinda akin to banana peel pith that reminds me of Blaugies. It’s very easy to drink but lacks the mouthfeel or complexity of the god tier offerings in this realm. If Jester King is La Coste, this is somewhere in the Gant spectrum. dominioncity continues to make beers that are super delicate however not the loudest attention seeking rabble rousers on the farm.

Rode a nice lil 20 mile jaunt in the Pasadena hills and now doing my best Blend Raymond  impression with some @highlandparkbrewery WHOOPS! With every single batch HPB gets closer and closer to snatching that Monkish 👑

Bonus oscars shout out to those Brussels sprouts with egg, mandatory:

Any time a ba honey saison drops the Ann comparisons are hot in the de miel realm, which is hardly ever fair. This lacks the grace and creamy poise of that Whaley giant but provides its own citrus honeycomb 🐝 run up the fretboard. 

Lacing, retention and carb all leave something to be desired and wisp away instantly like that classic Upland sucrose krausening that Irish goodbyes immediately. The nose however is phenomenal and offers a flower bomb bouquet of cut lime, zested lemon, mealy Sierra Mist, and a hint of agave nectar. Barrel presence is muted and drying and contributes a type of Riesling finish to the swallow making you feel like a Step mom driving a Chrysler Pacifica with three car seats.

 It is intensely drinkable almost to a fault, the 500ml was gone insanely fast and had the same trappings of a jester king 750: is it a fault if the beer is TOO crushable? Is it a sleight if it’s so pleasant it doesn’t command your attention and merely provides a gentle joi de vivre for the moment? Well the Chainsmokers went platinum so anything is possible. This is a fantastic beer and has nods to the inimitable oxbow ba pale ale, that perfect g spot of accessibility to quality compelling multiple farmhouse climaxes in the hay loft.

Around February every brewery with grist to mill sets out and drops their own “zomg PtY destroyer” and it becomes this anomalous season of endless triple ipas right around Valentine’s Day when ex-bando beer nerds are getting the most mileage out of their Real Dolls. 

Tipa is an inherently clunky socks and sandals kinda style, not quite comfortable and very easily falling in the oppressively tactless aesthetic. This beer is not quite Pliney the Hypedest, but it is unquestionably well crafted. There is an overriding lack of balance and aquanet ethanol waft that warms the whole squad like hood whippets. It has a massive pine and mandarin presence, there’s a honey like some GMO enhanced Hopslam. The middle swallow is artfully dialed in, arugula with blood orange fernet. It’s extremely complex but almost too massive for its own good, crushing like a Dark Souls boss but so fulfilling to complete.

That’s some sleek ass marketing. Reviews on BA are mixed which usually means that the brewery is actually awesome.

We shall see.

What an odd duck we have here. At first blush I thought I was in for some off brand bb4d goodness, then I saw the treatment and the abv and my expectations were more tapered than Bruno Mars’s jeans. Sherry. What are we gonna do with this deviant? It has the same burnt raisin, port wine, orchard decay type of smell you expect, toffee buried underneath gasping for air. 

I mean, it’s fine, but this beer is like having a son who scraps copper for living and your older barleywine son is a poetleaureate. Compelling argument for nurture over nature. There’s a pleasant Old ale underpinning with toasted pumpernickel and flan, but then here comes Sherry from accounting ruining everyone’s good times saying “you can’t have a katana sword in the break room.” 

The sherry reminds me of plum hookah, weird tobacco meets false fruit found in flavored dental products. You can do far worse but knowing what Kuhnhenn is capable of, this beer dropped out of Brown to pursue its dreams of being an old ale tattoo artist. I just expected more, come on, flash art?

[update: after a huge mix up, this beer was NOT brewed by Oddside] this beer has some insane story behind it, and the beer itself is just as incredible. So [redacted] made this 5 gallon batch of barrel aged (? Wtf 5g barrel? Chris Klein?) black currants black raspberries and blackberries. On paper it was like some degenerate VSB second cousin.

It was only given to employees but photos surfaced and people started calling Grimm asking about this awesome new Grimace beer with Run the Jewels on the label and Grimm was like what the shit are you guise talking about. Everyone had a good laugh except grimace whose image was appropriated and TTB gives zero fucks about him so all was well. 

The beer itself is god damn delicious and exhibits waves of grape fruit leather, Malbec dryness, a sort of Syrah tannic presence that commutes more acidity than berry but a lip smacking tartness to the finish evokes childhood cankersores resultant from sour ropes. No gurgle guts tho, and the Smuckers profile has been PRESERVED. Because, ah fuck it. 

The affair is complex and layered and I don’t even think this shit went into a barrel. Its like if you added citric acid to a delicate bottle of Rhone juice. You know on Sunny D commercials when the kids eschew the purple drink for the hazy orange juice Neipa, this is what those assholes passed over. I just hope ddb doesn’t get called in to work a shift at [redacted] since I got this employee bottle. Michigan is far AF and that’s where the filmed catfish, half the state is basically a Meadery and the top part is Canada’s Kentucky from what I understand. Notwithstanding, I would suck on Grimace’s swollen violet teets any day tho.

Sunsplit IPA is the Mountie rejoinder to the chowdery hoppy revelry taking place south of the 49th parallel. As you would expect from our brethren north of the wall this beer is gentle, amiable and less offensive than the American iterations: true to form. This drinks closer to American NE Pale Ale, if we are splitting hairs, and the likes of Edward and creaturecomfortsbeer Automatic jump to mind. That is an excellent electron energy level in which to orbit. The nose is greyhound zest, blood orange, conifer and split kindling. Carb is pillowy and bordering on excessive but butresses the cumulus structure that leaves magnificent sheeting in cirrus citrus coils.

Taste is a touch thin with more of a lemony spritzer emphasis that drives up drinkability at the expense of depth. The polar opposite of the likes of “pale ales” like Zombie Dust steeped in alpha acids and crystal malts. If Live Oak hef scissored with Monkish, this would be the lemony smegma on the Radisson sheets. Very tasty stuff.