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When I saw a stout reselling for $1000, it had all the shitlord hallmarks: never sold to the public, 70 bottles in existence, something made to commemorate something special hyped to interstellar proportion. My hype beast alert went off when I saw it had a 4.96 on untapped and not a single person had a negative thing to say about Pear Brandy Barrel Leto. Not one. Isn’t there like at least one dude with a NoTW sticker on his Tacoma that finds almond cookies sinful?

Then I tasted it and it crumbled my pretenses like Pecan Sandies in warm tea. It is almost annoying to validate the quality of something that has been denatured. On one hand, this will likely end up in the DDB top 10 for the year. it is a world class fermentation achievement, a stylistic bon mot. On the other hand, the shitlords hoover this up like eels on benthic silt. Praising it makes me part of the problem, while affirming a brewery’s good work. Moral Malty Paradoxes, so let’s talk about taste.

This shines in reconciling a lithe body dripping in macaroon, pistachio ice cream, spumoni, Almond Roca and currants. It does this while maintaining the framework somewhere between BCBS and Parabola. For the style, it is floor length Shein dress modesty in chocolate malt form.

The barrel has an overseeing warm sweetness like pralines and spooning. Ultimately it just drips almond cookies in a way that exaggerates the idea of them. Like an alien civilization elevated a single confectionary item, thinking it was humanity’s sole cookie deity.

The effect of a review like this is nothing but deleterious. It makes old ivory tower DDB unrelatable. People resent reading reviews of homebrew scale double digit never released bottles. It fuels demand for an already bad situation. It sleights the brewery’s masterpiece by clouding it in this toxic need from entitled dudes who want to get their cookies dipped. But to NOT highlight what a fantastic achievement is equally damning, because then the palate terrorists win.

So go bother Mama Lor’s Café in Webster New York. Show up asking for a growler of batter. Then at least we would see a line of stretchmarked dudes waiting for literal pastries.