Something Special

This beer represents how much skill and patience that Against the Grain can exhibit when they stop fucking around and use a lead blocker and just push that ryehole for some malty yards. The barrel, the clean body, the sweet meets cask profile: all of it moves my chains. Boulevard Rye on Rye is not only ubiqioutous now thanks to Duvelbuxxx but it is also small format. This takes that model and makes it more approachable, less spicy, the Basil Haydens to the Blvd Bakers if you will. It has a nice pumpernickel and toasted sourdough aspect to it that gives a great stage upon which the mild heat and herbal aspects of the rye can dance a little casky jig. I anticipate that this is kindaaaa expensive and undercut by the Blvd Big Boiz when we talk about cost to pleasure on returns. This is no fault of AtG, but some will make this consideration. I say eschew the grocery store beer for a moment and try something new. For a brewery that can do absurd attention-seeking shit, attempt double gainers and break their malt collarbones, this is just pure skill, tight lines, rye and a dialed in body that is accessible even to that angry merlot drinking fuck of an uncle you hate talking to at Easter. Ironically the namesake is an invesion and a sort of post modernist nod to what @atgbrewery is usually up to, in making something standard and exceptional, in itself it is Something Special. It’s like how on r/gonewild the posts with face are ironically more coveted because the lurid anonymity is deafening and impersonal in execution. Against the Grain is showing its eyes and there is no attendant objectification just mutual respect.

One Brazillion Dollars, god damn it @atgbrewery

Fucking smoked malts. Where to start with this one. First and foremost, this is ambitious as fuck, inventive and fun. I am sure Sam Calagione has “fun” but the license for such japery extends as far as SKUs can move. I like what AtG has been doing to further the dance of life adjacent beers and show that there can be other intense tones massaged from the canvas of barley/wheat/oat/rye wine styles. What I am doing here is what prosecutors call “TAKING THE STING” in setting you up for a bitching closing argument that indicts the fuck out of what actually occurred.

This beer is not enjoyable to actually drink. The cask cant save it, you’ve got questionable ass Angel’s Envy casks which they themselves already are beat to hell with secondary casking, coupled with a good old fashioned “8 week North Carolinian saturation.” So we are left with the underlying smoked malt wheat wine to pull this sled. The nugget hops seem far more intense as a result of the equally bipolar scotch/peat/terroir/nightmare bog. Tap for two black mana. The resin scraped from the inside of the ROOR doesn’t integrate with the black and milds and in the midst of this rueful custody battle is a pillowy gentle lil wheat profile who is secretly questioning its fermentology. Smoke and clove and then warrior type of 15% alpha acid hops, it is oral flagellation.