For the longest time I couldn’t get a read on @shmaltzbrewing. Everything hinged on self-awareness and I couldn’t reconcile the fact that this brewery was fairly ubiquitous, but still able to not have a relatively clinical Sam Adams meets Sierra Nevada approach. Then around the early 2010s more and more apeshit beers started coming out, and they seemed increasingly referential, but with ambition somewhere ensconced between New Glarus charm and Bruery linestepping. I’ve always enjoyed them but the letter they sent me that deconstructed their business philosophy and merging wry levity with a religious perspective was pretty damn funny. Most breweries are anything but and drop LOL APRIL FOOLS WE CANNED THIS STOUT as top tier yukyuks. Spirit and pretty damn good beers that flood the streets with styles that might otherwise be inaccessible to Nextel phone home brewer stepdads. I am totallly on board with this, now understanding their perspective. Inb4 “shill” or whateverthefuck. I buy my jeans at the grocery store.

Don’t let shmaltz brewing distract you from the fact that in 1998, The Undertaker threw Mankind off Hell In A Cell, and plummeted 16 ft through an announcer’s table.