It’s conflicting when good people release a completely shitty bourbon. The dichotomy is present in the aesthetics of the bourbon itself. There’s a gorgeous etched bottle, hefty espresso tamp cap, and then extremely thin, pale straw “I have a drug test coming up” piss hue looking like a malnourished Basil Hayden.

But it’s made by a cool staff.

The eye rolling begins with a heft spoonful of CIRCUMSTANCES: this is made at the original Old Taylor Distillery. Legend has it that this tater holy land still has wreaths and myrrh laid in front of the warehouse by flipper missionaries. Then on the day of release, the distillery let those corn chuds come in and buy 12 per person. Over 1000 people showed up and they dropped it to 1-2pp. It was gone instantly and this not good $55 bottle suddenly finds itself in the $200 secondary realm.

If you’ve ever gone mountain biking and fly down the trail above your ability level, things go sideways quickly.

The nose is cradle robbing to the point where the 4 year feels closer to a 2 year Willett. It has that sickly sweet Frosted Flakes white lightning with soft pithy apple and a kind of foil bag stale Corn Pops thing happening.

The palate is where things get more phoned in than Spirit Halloween memes. If this were meat it would be chicken tartare. It’s not ready yet, put it back, the kernels aren’t even popped. There’s iodine and Martinellis, lemon sharpie, melon and nautical hull solvent. It finishes with Haribo peach ring and turpentine. It burns like hazmat despite being 98 proof. Yes she is single, extremely hot, and wildly unbalanced so you will end up paying for it one way or another, as is tradition.

Castle and Key shined as a contract distillery where you could lovingly admire the dust on the Pinhook bottles and go about your day. The grounds are great, the people are nice but drinking this is the bourbon equivalent of transferring gasoline with your mouth using a garden hose. I do respect that they didn’t just sell MGP to stay afloat. Master distiller Marianne Eaves is a complete bad ass.

In the end though, I’m not trying to drink marmalade and carpenter’s epoxy.

Carton Brewing sent me one of the best beers this year, and one of the most horrible beers of 2022. In the same box. Let’s talk about them both.

XI is a masterclass in fig jam, port, massaging sweetness and coupling it with a fantastic sherry dryness, and leaving a swallow that is concise with notes of almond and Ferrero Rocher. At first glance I looked at the “brown sugar rum barrel” and it gave me pause. I thought this was going to be some wacky melanoidin extravagance. Perhaps that alone would have been Sugar Babies forward, but the wheatwine provides structure in lightening things. It’s like when William H. Macy shows up and you know things are gonna be ok.

It feels lighter than 12% due to the body, but also the depth of the cognac gives big Fox Farm Copestone energy despite not having the port. You can drill this entire bottle and still show up to couples counseling and work on communication. Everyone wins.

That being said.

Southside is a lemon pledge trainwreck. Me and Augie Carton often don’t see eye to eye on wacky flavor profiles. The NJ locals love “Regular Coffee” and I thought an imperial cream ale didn’t need granulated coffeemate dumped in it. Agree to disagree.

When I opened Southside I had no idea that a metastasizing meyer lemon tumor was pulsing inside undiagnosed. I tried it and had to text Augie, why, in the times of Murphy’s Floor wax and grapefruit Air Wick, were there only one set of foot prints on the mint beach. It was then that Augie carried me.

Look at this on paper: gin barrel, lemon zest, mint and juniper. Seems fun right? Some whimsical PNW type of riff you would see from Upright. Oh no. This is pure zested nocturnal emissions from lemon penitentiary. It goes ammonia rag, hanging car tree air freshener, chewed FIVE gum, and this meringue meets Aquadent closer that ensures no one is open mouth kissing. Imagine a lemon tart meets Underberg burp.

How can one brewery make these two wildly divergent beers? Sheer ambition. That is why I respect Carton, they do what they want and even if I don’t get it, their fanbase will. Also please support them, dunking on a NJ brewery with this draconic legislation is the last thing anyone needs.

This beer is an absolute nightmare. I know it’s hardly fair to open up some teenage geriatric juice, but good god. “What beer from 2009 is even holding up?” Probably Gratitude, a billion lambics, and not this.

New Hampshire beer has changed a lot in the past 13 years and this beer is old enough to have pubes. I suspect this tiny offering wasn’t great when it came out, but it has evolved in the Bane pit into some hateful back breaking liquid. I was molded by it.

It pours out with carb, which may even be a dangerous sign. Lacto laying a dead bird at your doorstep letting you know it’s been busy in here. The waft at first is somewhere between Jack Links beef jerky and the LAPD Morgue. It’s offensive a pervasive way, like Anthony Jeselnick punchlines without the dryness.

The meaty elements give this platform for boullion cubes and warm turtle tank. Upon taking a sip my mandible bouncer immediately fills up the salivary glands. It is the same energy when a Starbucks employee sees that one unhoused patron they are very well acquainted with. It has no business here in my mouth. Constant chaos preparing for ejection.

I swallow and there’s a little smack of gardettos rye chips, hamster cage, and wet garage boxes. My throat kegels like a tower defense game. DOTA except it’s vomiting. This White Birch is unwelcome. It exists outside of God’s grace and consequently beyond Her mercy.

Going in for a second sip feels like coach putting you back in knowing you just tore your palate ACL. The second run highlights this dusty couch cookie crumbs that interplays with that Cesars wet dog food on the nose. Like a Neil Breen film, the layers of shittiness compound. This isn’t funny though.

It’s important to drink beers this bad. Like your asshole rich friend who points at some old object in his sumptuous home and says “THIS. This is what keeps me humble.” And then brags in a slightly different way. It makes you appreciate literally every other beer that isn’t this.

Some ghosts are best left in the past. Maybe I could work on myself instead of dunking on some obscure NH brewery who never intended this beer to be enjoyed a lifetime after release.

I blame Levi Funk, he gave me this.

I sometimes feel like I cover Colorado beers too much on DDB so I will stfu unless there’s something compelling I need to discuss. Iced. Reduced. Roysenberry. Wild Ale. This needs to be addressed.

No one is drinking the modern American sours and thinking “this simply doesn’t have enough fruit.” Amalgam took an already jammy beer, added 350 lbs of boysenberries, pressed it again with a wine press, then freeze distilled that, and bottled the concentrate.

I thought this was mead or a liqueur when I saw it. It looks like a god damn ice wine. It pours out intensely syrupy and I got instant blueberry IHOP PTSD vibes. Wafflerotic syruphyxiation.

The most bizarre thing about this OEC/Ale Apothecary level apeshit beer is that at its core: it remains a wild ale. It’s got intense boysenberry and the “tiny room service preserve jars” energy. What you don’t expect is that lactic, acidic pop on the backend. You’re indulging on some fruit tart and catch sour purple skittle shrapnel.

I can’t say if this needs to exist but I am glad it does. This is genre bending at its finest. It pushes wild ales to a frozen refinement. Elsa all magenta-mouthed, fuchsia ice crystals vomited in the bushes. The degassed profile makes it just feel more refined and silky and gives that pop rocks crackle to the end an extra punch.

This wont replace your Super Smash Bros main. You aren’t gonna stumble into Denver seeking flat iced wild ales. It feels more like a Boyfriend Loophole where something irresponsible and dangerous is being conveyed upon you, and you are tucking this negligent fruit into your waistband and sharing it with your significant other. Neither of you know what is happening.

GenZ loves hypermaximalism in their clothes, insufferable prints and fake vintage mock ups, a tannic blast to Harijuku style. The sad workwear Millennials who like to play industrial dress up don’t get it. Moschino vs Carhartt. This berry pendulum swings. It smooshes the two, someone who works for a fun company but has a shitty role in it. Accounts receivable at Brazzers.

This is fun, but at what cost.

Second City Meadery made cherry mead and aged it in a VSOJ barrel. I will give you one guess whether this busted my pit wide open.

Zoot Suit Riots notwithstanding, a barrel isn’t everything. Even making a cherry mead takes a gentle touch. The most hack thing you always hear from the anti-combs is “tastes like cough syrup.” Sometimes, they aren’t wrong. Viscosity and weird sweetness go hand in hand with medicinal profiles, like protein powder and “Birthday Cake.”

After I saw that SCM won a bunch of awards at the Mazer cup, I figured why not, dip my tip in the hive. The strange thing about SCM is their tendency to default to softer execution so, yes there is a ton of cherry in this, but it isn’t pure Sucrets. It’s more like a Cherry 7up Cyser. The barrel provides structure but at a third use, that’s getting pretty run through and the bee goop is filling in them staves.

You get the rainier cherry type of flesh with a pop of acidity, medium bodied sheeting. It will still draw the Robitussin complaints from baby palates. That’s fine. There’s grown adults who wear Gallery Dept and act like it looks good.

Some things are the same whereever you go. Like if she wears scrubs, Birkenstock Boston Mules and drives a Nissan Altima: that’s about to be your most toxic relationship ever. Similarly this is a fancy cherry mead. It’s not the best example simply because cherry can provide a one dimensional panache but its about as good as you can execute what is now a candy staple in our tastezones. Red 5 is a feeling. It’s sleepover juice. Soccer practice swallows. Prolonged cherry exposure feels primal like using a foam roller on your T bands.

Lots of DDB readers doing rollouts. The real star here is control. Dudes with a Sig Sauer sticker on their Tundras cannot wait for you to ask them about it. This beer has a deep back story but it is ultimately simple and primal and enjoyable, without background checks. It’s for your Aunt or your little Cousin who looks like a rehab patient in foam runners.

Everyone is here to get popped and SCM will oblige.

Halfway Crooks are on a short list of absolute god tier lager producers and they are flooding the streets of the South with attenuated oyster crackers. What happens when a stickier palm is required?

I love seeing breweries play against type. Like Robin Williams in One Hour Photo, there’s something chilling seeing characters occupy a different space. Halfway Crooks are not stoutlords, they spend their days avoiding residual sugars, but when their daughter if abducted they get pulled back into a life that they tried to leave behind FOR ONE LAST MISSION.

It feels strange. You see dudes wearing Soccer jerseys and Adidas sambas doing this Blokecore cosplay and you know that’s not them. It is not what they want for themselves deep down. HCB almost seem to be doing this in a performative way.

I can see their forehead veins bulging at being required to kick that ABV up, to produce a viscous body. It’s like when the engineers at Dodge get the memo telling them that their new electric Hellcat has to make totally unnecessary loud revving noises for guys with VA loans. There’s no reason for this. It is pure vanity. It is unbridled power in the form of barrel aged negligence.

The body has residual sheeting and contradicts all the accomplishments they made with pilsners. This was built to stand bourbon confinement. The carb is minimal and provides enough to support the lofty ambitions for the glucophiles. It is perfunctory correct and hits all the right notes but it doesn’t feel like its heart is in it. If Kuhnhenn made a helles you’d be like, come on, we know what you really want to be doing.

The raw talent carries this through but it is lacking a degree of excess and messiness required for flabby stouts of the modern era. The cask profile is fantastic and leverages graham cracker, shortbread, and See’s scotch kisses. Something about the intent feels misaligned. When you see someone still wearing Carhartt double knee pants and dunks you want to grip their shoulders lovingly and tell them “this isn’t you.”

It’s good because they are good. Deep down, the heart wants what it wants, kellerbier and open mouth kisses listening to Toni Braxton.

Maibocks are one of the most overlooked, passed by and outright ignored styles in the lager game. Not as refreshing as the crispies, not as bready as the viennas, not as outright powerful as the Eis nor as cloudy as the weiss. Where do they fit in?

In modern brewing they fit in a draft line for way longer than owners would like. Is it the toasted challah? People crush helles all day. Maybe it’s these half measures of providing light phenolics and a touch of fusel with none of the high abv fun of a tripel. Martinellis and pear show up for a bit and respectfully bounce, using your palate to preparty for more pressing polyamory.

Beer nerds don’t buy this style anymore. It isn’t a gateway drug for stepdads and WWII history enthusiasts either. In a weird subversion, if you make the best version of this you are almost guaranteed to lose money.

Minnesota. This beer is being kept alive by people who want a dry dopplebock and people in St Paul. The weird latticed crust lacks the nutmeg spice of more exotic alternatives but still holds a loving place in taplist lineups. It is a weird badge of honor that a brewer dusts off in the brew schedule to show people “we are doing this for us, you can drink Skittle goses whenever.”

So in the end this style is A Bockwhistle to those who know. The true bottom fermenters whose crispy perversions aren’t even in the DSM-IV. Goat me up bock daddy.