Whenever I see a “cocktail inspired beer” a few bullshit alarms go off. It’s either a passion project where a brewer is trying to round peg/cask hole a beer into some flavor profile that’s wildly disparate. Like your tipa base will not taste like a boulevardier. It just won’t.

The other option is they have a cask that’s way too boozy and ethanol driven so they look at one another and see just how many orange peels and luxardo cherries they can pack into that disaster until it feels intentional.

I was skeptical of Smog as my Firestone ptsd went off from so many sbagliato inspired strong ales of the past. Then I remembered something. Smog used to make old fashioned out of baoe and they were incredible. Faith restored in this dubbel. It was like watching tv at your parents house with motion blur and no subtitles, a pang of old times.

Ask dad to find the piece of paper with the crumpled 32 character wifi password, we are going old fashioned. The dubble is distinctively beer and amazingly Belgian in execution. The head has incredible sustain and bone of the additives undermine the sheeting.

The natural esters from the yeast pop with a spice and gingerbread that makes it questionable where this blast of orange bitters came from. Its less grand marnier and more maraschino in the swallow.

In parasite Eve the third birthday there’s this insane kill bill style ending where your character both dies and turns into a 12 year old girl. That’s how I feel about this old fashioned beer. It doesn’t align so closely with the cocktail that it feels derivative. However it’s such a meaningful and novel riff on a dubbel (!) base that it’s legitimately impressive.

It’s like learning a Pagani is powered by some old Mercedes 6 liter. It’s quite the transformation. The swallow is tight and bereft of sugars. This make it seem even more like a cocktail but the result might just make you want the actual cocktail.

Start crushing these and wishing everyone Happy Honda days, if they reek of bourbon and reply “we celebrate toyotathon in our house” you shake that neighbors hand and compare parole stories. An old fashioned December to remember.