My relationship with Florida at large is exceedingly complicated. It’s like how I feel about literature from Philip Roth: there are so many aspects I find offputting or culturally backward, but then there are so many pockets of pure brilliance. The two aspects are difficult to reconcile. That dystopian waterphallus penetrates the lapis lazuli folds of the Carribean and in the everglades, the teeming shaft contains the cultural DNA of the absolute worst and some of the finest. Scale downward to Miami, enhance, punch in on Odd Breed, enhance terroir. I know some will spit their Swamphead or Saint Somewhere on their Compaq keyboards, but this brewery has the best wild ales that Florida has to offer at present. This is so far from kettle that it is a patient inverted pot, which none may call black, a collander of brett complexity. Let’s look at two beers from Odd Breed:

We just looked at Funk Factory’s trashfruit blackberry recycling program saison, so let’s look at Odd Breed’s Goodwill Salvation Army saison of reanimated produce: Moritas. My hardpour notwithstanding, this beer is intensely carbed with frothy Logsdon sustain. The color is almost a relief because it connotes a tempered fruit quality and delivers with a firm farmhouse handshake first a light tingling of sour ropes along the mandible. This is far more refreshing than the Funk Factory doppleganger and I suspect it is due to the retrained fruit profile, lower acidity, the unfermentable spelt contributing to the whip and heft of the body preventing things getting to that “Sarah Hyland” thin body that draws concern and ire. This is crushable without pausing for pH turbulence, but lacks the complexity and showmanship of the FF offering. The swallow is neat and tidy, punches the landing with a smattering of tropical skittles and Blaugies.

Let’s look at the even stranger side of Odd Breed ales with this anomalous iteration of wild Life: Upper Case Poems Marsala barrel. Strap in for some apeshit conceptual strong wilds. This is a double barrel barleywine, tight let’s ge- THAT WAS INNOCULATED WITH BACTERIA, wait hang on what are yo- THEN AGED IN HEAVY CHAR no pls wait AND THEN IN ITALIAN MARSALA that is the side of barleywine mountain, pls pull up we are GOING TO CRAS- Breathe a sigh of relief because this beer, somehow, against all odds…is strangely delicious. I don’t know how they did it. First and foremost, this is a barleywine through and through, the base is malty and thiccc and ribbons caramel through merlot, toffee and black cherries, an oud bruin and lightly acetic waft that finishes like burnt toast and strawberry preserves. This shit makes no sense. Let it open up to 60+ degrees and the clipping is turned off. It is a merger of two things I never knew I wanted, but it somehow works. It’s not a classic barleywine, more akin to the likes of Be Still from Ale Apothecary or Nightmare on Brett/Sentience. Hell, even a touch of OG Cuvee du Tomme is in there right down to the almost completely languid carb and ineffectual mouthfeel. The sum is better than these components that work together to create something fascinating that on paper looks like a total fucking BRUERY FIRE SALE type of conceptual Terrieux merger of odd casks. It’s very well done and I continue to follow this weird brewery if only to see where they are going because they are very much ahead of the audience’s palates, but hopefully not their wallets in these cascading punchlines of sublime wild ales.

Also there’s 3 days left to buy this ddb floccboi shirt:

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