I get complaints that DDB is just a little mill of American exceptionALEism with no global focus. FINE. You want to go to Germany? Let’s go to FAUST, the #1 thing to do in Miltenberg.

Ah the old Eisbock, so misunderstood. Right away you see the 12% abv and they warn you of the EXTREME STRENGTH. This has been lying in wait since 2016, shipped across the world, and finally this oxidized lager can stretch its head. This brewery is over 250 years old but the German marketing rattle is similar to the American bourbon trend towards saddling some lore to an old building or edifice. However, this brewery has a storage cave dug deep into a mountain hundreds of years ago so you wont find that in an industrial park in Torrance. Wait maybe you can IDK.

With this marketing, coupled with this historical prestige, it’s like seeing someone who wears Brixton where you can’t make out if they are classy or trashy, it could go either way. This is designed for a beer drinker in that ABV obsessed phase, which usually followed the IBU phase that modern drinkers skip altogether and go straight to the binary choice of “ORANGE JUICE HAZY OR SOFT SERVE STOUT” and are instarones.

In this instance the abv works to be overbearing and unbalanced like dudes with a BMI over 30 with tactical informercial items always talking about “WHEN SHTF YOU KNOW IM READY” Who are you serving.

The abv isn’t masked terrible well and the construction paper meets figs and dates don’t scream synergy. You get a bit of astringency, a pop of liquid DME, some wafty grape fruit leather and a swallow that is like licking your fingers after going through old comic books. They should have served this at the World Cup in Qatar and really make people earn it.

At a certain point this becomes the schwarzchild radius of german beers. Germany has such a proud tradition that if you take an old heritage, and an old style, and then age it, the body will undergo irreversible raisin collapse in on itself. The final fate of malt holes.

It’s not good, but everything Andechs makes is god tier and costs like 3 euros so, maybe pick your battles ok.