After the Apple Brandy Circle of Wolves letdown, I was not entirely jazzed up to foray into the big barrel aged ales from the Veil and made all these unfounded assumptuons about hops and farmhouse being their MvC finisher, but an inability to tank. I was wrong again, and sometimes it feels good to be wrong. Like when you check the hotel safe and tell yourself “never meet anyone on Carigslist casual encounters, you swore this would be the last time” but then your Magic the Gathering black lotus is still in there and he didn’t even take it. Relatable shit. I have seen zero ISOs for Pallbearer, and the reviews on BA (LOL) and Untappd (concise LOL) seem mixed at best. This beer goes in hard, unquestionably.  This is one of the most viscous beers I have ever had this side of Apple Brandy Huna.  The sheeting on the chope was legendary and left rings and ecrue and taupe sheeting down the sides like some seismic portapotty incident. With that power comes responsibility: how did they handle the residual malts and sugars to buttress this mouthfeel? All things told, very well.  It is undeniably sweet in the vein that Cigar City and Angry Chair can be sweet, but it pulls this rogue maneuver and tempers this with an INSANE spirit driven profile.  I love when brewers can exorcise the spirits from the oak and actually impart a tannic thumbprint from their BALs. Voodoo is exceptional at this. Fremont does this very well. This beer is huge waves of muddled brownie bits, waffle cone, Bookers meets Elmer T Lee in cascading dryness and magic shell of caramel and candied walnuts. We can call take jabs at Game Genie’ing things and tossing sheet cake into the boil, but when you can massage these insane bakerytonez using natural aspiration no forced candyduction, it is a fucking feat. Usually I can’t justify finishing entire bottles of stouts on a caloric basis, they just aren’t often worth it.  This beer I ran out of tokens and still wanted to go private with that brownie bowl.  At least let me lick the spoon.

Also the DDB collab with Wren house is going down, flying out to Phoenix on Friday to brew a dortmunder