PLIGHNEY SEASON IS UPON US. Once groundhog day hits, every bottleshop employee winces in pain as the Men’s Health and Esquire magazine shitdetorials come sliding down the ten-cents-per-word chute.

“No I’m sorry, we don’t have it. Yes it is on draft. No probably not here in Omaha. No we wont be getting bottles. Yes you did see a bottle. Oh Forbes told you it would be sold online, no we do not carry it. Have you ever shopped at this store before?” CLICK

A tale as old as time. Inaccessibility breeds eroticism. Your crush has a filthy apartment and nudes of their ex backed up to the cloud. Sometimes though, the hype shines through those sad clouds of hype and warms your heart like a Midwest mom with a Karen cut when she gets deep into extreme couponing. Pliny the Younger continues to impress.

My rose tinted goggles of the past remember more resin, more crystal, a pang of malty sweetness. The problem with false nostalgia is that it devalues the TIPAs of the present. Nipples were once erect for Avery Maharaja, now it is mandatory for a brewery to have a slushee machine. Reconciling the two is rough.

TIPAs are flawed from the inception. The increased fusel note has to be offset by ::checks notes:: increasingly resinous C-hop additions /turns page OR quad dry hopping. Ah the perfect springtime sipper. Pliny the Younger does this masterfully. Instead of amplifying Pliny the Younger, which is better, it feels like Super Soldier Serum Blind Pig, which is better than both.

You get the clean crushability of double digit abv negligence. The company car is revoked. Paternity tests are ordered. It’s like a evergreen scavenger hunt to make your life more difficult. But in the mid palate alcohol burn is this magical zested clementine, Polo Sport clean pine, a lit grapefruit peel garnish and this raked foliage aspect to the closer like a crisp rocket and mandarin summer salad. The merger is bad for you emotionally, socially, but edifying as a ritual.

You sit and press cntrl+shift+N and suddenly the rest of the clean lager beer world slips away into a furtive incognito mode of massive west coast desires. No one needs to know how the firewood is split. PTO is made to be used.