Coconuts are in the drupe family, from the Portugese word coco meaning “skull.” They are indigenous to Lake Zurich, Joliet, and the tropical neighborhood of Woodland in south Chicago. The coconut ripes and forms a surrounding husk to prevent wildlife from foraging its sweet interior juices.

Hype breweries have to endure a similar teleology. Ravenous shitlords can pound on the husk of the brewery, complain about Applepay not securing their cart, engaging in simple rituals to curse breweries for not paying fealty to the altar of the Locals. I feel for them. Shaun Berns was not stranger to these batter smeared savages. Helicopters were attendant at his first releases. He has single handedly provided much of the nutrition for growing west Chicago millennials in liquid sugar form. This time, it has coconut and cinnamon.

Phase Three and the prior lineage has always been solid, but like TOOL and climbing gyms, it’s the fanbase that sours the experience. Thankfully, this beer is so good that you merely tolerate the voracious locals hammering at the fleshy sweetwater inside.
The beer pours on the Derivationy/Wakefieldian viscosity with substantial sheeting. The legs wipe away the dark ecru tones from the glass with hateful clear legs. It’s a big boy in boy and literal fatness. There are residual lipids dancing on the surface like drunken Sea moneys, frothing up the chocolate. I imagine this beer was extremely expensive to make because there’s no slugs, no clumping, no artificiality, and more importantly, it doesn’t lean on lactose like some Coffeemate creamer extravaganza to achieve its goals.

The barrel is present and imparts a touch of dryness and complexity like a ribbon of caramel through the center of a dipper macaroon. Cinnamon can go chalky or metallic really quickly, or your end up with a dry Big Red performance. The cinnamon here pulls things into a Samoa cookie space and is more like an uncaring chaperone who lets the kids drink Goldschlager under the bleachers. They don’t pay him enough to care. His hair smells of Polo Sport and hawaiian tropic from water polo practice.

It is exceptionally well done and if anything they hit the mark so fully that it is like seeing a hypertechnical guitar performance where you want it to be a little messier in a way. It’s massive, but controlled, unapologetically pastry, but it pays for the duvet it threw up on. Take Goose Island prop14, let it wrestle an HGH regiment and it will give heartfelt hugs after the dripping lavacake pin is achieved. If you ever knew a kid who had rich parents who miraculously didnt end up reading Atlas Shrugged, you respect them more. This beer is really really good, climb way up there, and get inside that sweet fleshy interior.