Author Archives: dontdrinkbeer

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Frite Gaulois: at $10/4oz this is both Cascade’s most expensive and most disappointing offering to date. 

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A blend of weizens, blondes, and Saisons aged in white wine barrels, with lackluster results. There’s a tart green apple almost leaning toward diacetyl, but don’t worry some barefoot tier cloying Riesling grape is here to muddy the waters. Even regular ass Apricot is much much better than this. The nose actually very pleasant with sparking wine, pressed cider and champagne brut. It still can’t redeem this recessive gene version of Confession.

The finish is long and dry with a weird greasiness meets Pinot Grigio, the pricing is a hilarious twist of the testicles to polish off the experience.

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J. Wakefield lemon sage, jalapeño lime,tangelo, and pineapple Berliners.

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All of these are clean, mad croosh, not overly acidic riffs on the Gatorade world. The sameyness of the fruited versions had a tendency to run together but I enjoyed lemon sage the most, the light herbal adding a slight layer of complexity to what are face value, drillable spritzers.

Tasty stuff.

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Westbrook Ba old ale. Get a plastic bag, clean up all this mash, you been sparging all night Brewer you deserve it.

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Pretty deece, a touch in the thin realm but it seems to angle more toward a UK execution were it not for the red berry and bitter aspects from the wine barrel aspects. This is a very pleasant and easy drinking old ale that might lack depth but not every beer needs to swing for the Adam from the Wood fences. The vinous aspect isn’t so dominate that it details or denatures the style and it still plays that Nikola Vucevic game with two feet in the paint.

At first the long oaky bitterness feels like heavy handed American oak but when it warms a bit the fruit and light sweetness balance things out. Again, the sheer clean mouthfeel and nimble European execution make this worthy of your time, but prly not something you get tatted on your lower back.

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2015 Pedestrian ass Bourbon Mexican Cake, You can’t get me in my safe space, bullet proof Windows, troll proof doors 

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After dealing with a day full of eating turds from Terrapin/Orpheus activists, time to settle into a classic gem that always delivers.

While &+/Thursday is probably my favorite riff in this [hispanic insensitive] stout realm, this one still engages the core for a deep burn. It isn’t quite as good as the bourbon/whiskey treatment of past years but it’s marginally deficient in that regard. There is a touch less caramel and toasted mallowfoam and instead the chili understudy scratches all the monologues with vocal fry.

It is nimble, but still significant. It has a nice menthol meets abuelita that is warming and comforting like lil Ceasars after you get friend zoned. I enjoy the barrel treatment but could use a touch more of the oaky dryness to offset some of Shinra adjuncts pumping mako in my gums. 

  
The best part is, like the recent Grrrz face plant, these consistently awesome beers have been abandoned for more dubious pastures by traders so you can land regular old bourbon cake for something closer to the realm of an Arby’s HJ instead of more premium/deviant acts.

Don’t ask about the pappy, the psyche conseling will be substantial.

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Creature Comforts Revisited: Storming through the South, Sherman’s March Redux

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If you follow DDB with that frothy regularity that most of my readers subject themselves to, you will remember recently when DDB reviewed Creature Comforts Tropicalia and Athena.  The TL;DR was that Tropicalia was a very good but not earth shattering IPA in the late 2000’s fashion and I got an off can of Athena that was like taking a baby diaper full of butyric acid to the Sadie Hawkins dance.  I got zero brewery retweets, and as usual, my readers bitched that I hadn’t reviewed See the Stars yet.

Typical day at the DDB offices.

Fast forward a week later, approximately 1.2 millenia in the beer world, and a gigantic fucking box shows up unceremoniously on my doorstep. A careful examination evidences that the box is sopping wet, smells rank, and it is ice cold.  I thought to myself, “is DDB about to make history by receiving a shipment of human organs/piss from a disgruntled brewery?  Quite the opposite.

gaze upon the hellish expanse of less than a day old IPAs, busted in transit, those who weathered the journey lived to deliver the hoppy message upon high.

gaze upon the hellish expanse of less than a day old IPAs, busted in transit, those who weathered the journey lived to deliver the hoppy message upon high.

The box is dated the DAY BEFORE from Creature Comforts and it was overnighted with cans of Tropicalia that were hours old.  The experience was surreal and mind blowing from a customer service point of view.

The ice packs were still frozen and the cans were ice cold and likely cost upwards of $150+ to ship. BUT WHY.  What is the rub?  Battered brewery syndrome? THERE HAS TO BE AN ANGLE.

My fears subsided when I found this

My fears subsided when I found this

The whole package was jawdropping and unprecedented in my experience and 2000+ beer reviews.  This brewery went out of their way to not only address my petty grumblings in the most respectful, high browed manner possible, but it was executed with an ethos that is oddly absent in the cold calculations of most brewery PR departments: Creature Comforts legitimately gives a fuck.

So a few of the cans busted but, the action drives home a larger point about the state of customer relations in the modern era of over brewery saturation, 5 tap handle California ale strain cash grabs.  A cynical mendicant might be like “yeah so what, they dropped $200 on the easiest marketing possible, no brainer.”  But I feel that this is something beyond the scope of dollar to exposure ratio.  It is the climate where integrity and product is becoming paramount over just being “local” or “craft.”

after their bath, shit reeked like Chinatown in a heatwave

after their bath, shit reeked like Chinatown in a heatwave

The prior model for shitty beer blogs in the late 2000s was to slap up some glad handing enterprise for your 50 readers, and hope for some wonky bottles of free Ruination to show up.  Then all those dipshits made podcasts that no one can stomach or 15 minute long Youtube videos with double digit view counts. Let’s be clear: DDB gets plenty of free shit and there’s many times a brewery specifically walks into the DDBayonet, inexplicably.  This isn’t about free IPAs and berliners, it is more about a changing of the guard attendant to press relations.  Yes, that sentence framed DDB as legitimate form of press: finger your cousin’s dickhole, the site gets thousands of views a day.

canned the day before? 2fukn old.

canned the day before? 2fukn old.

So Creature Comforts not only decided to amiably handle the situation, be the bigger party, but also go above and beyond, BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BEER HUH STOP CRADLING THEIR BRITE TANKS IN YOUR MOUTH.

Well, good news and mediocre news. Let’s address Tropicalia First:

SRM: still looks like throwback shit

SRM: still looks like throwback shit

So how does a 1 day old tropicalia compare to a 3 week old can? Put simply it is much better in terms of vibrance, lively oils, radiant fruit pith and pine.  But all of those things were ALREADY VERY GOOD.  Let’s be clear here, Tropicalia is a very good ipa, and is likely amongst the best in the GA market to be sure, if not the best. An ultra fresh can is like your friend who wont shut the fuck up about Radiohead KID A who is like “oh you heard the CD? no here, try the vinyl, you clearly didn’t get it the first time.” People never shut the fuck up about KID A.  I get it, it is a very very good album, timeless, sonically challenging, aesthetically awesome, and undoubtedly a top notch offering.  So is Tropicalia, it is a very very good IPA without any overt flaws.  It just isn’t my favorite of all time.  Shut the fuck up about Radiohead already.

If this is readily available in the GA market, then a new high water mark exists for surrounding breweries and they are in deep shit.  Buy it, trade for it. Pour it on your meaty sand dollar nips.

This Athena is a completely different affair

This Athena is a completely different affair

This Athena however, is a wild wild departure from the “bad” can I previously received and this bangs hard on 808 drums. All of the off diacetyl and DMS aspects are gone and this shines radiantly like that Westbrook Gose star in the sky.  There is a nice salinity and mineral character to it, brackish saltines and lemon water, oceanic spray of juicy refreshment. It is intensely crushable and the pinnacle of a session driller, BP certified. While the fruited version is still much better, I can’t think of anything on the old west coast channels akin to this and it doesn’t have the needlessly lacto/aggro kettle soured profile of some of the, let’s call them TILLAMOOKIAN DEVIANTS.

In sum, I gather that Creature Comforts is a year and a half old upstart who cares a shitload about how they are perceived and it will be interesting to see how they handle the mounting interest and pressures of bottle releases in the future.  This won’t be the last we hear from this incredible brewery or their infinitely shittier fan base.

WED MD: the old SideProjectitist, a disease wherein you cannot control who loves you, or the childish lengths they will go to in pursuit of completely subverting that relationship and ruining shit for everyone.

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Sante Adairius To the Choir. I got wax in my trippy I don’t need a lighter 

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Whenever you see that cellar members only igloo you know shit is about to get hot up in the six boy.

This is no exception and this is the baton passed from the creamy musty palms of Stenciled Pages to the sharper acidic callouses of the Choir. The same nimble and ultra clean profile of that progeny of blended barrel aged Saisons pushes the excellence envelope to lateral heights of greatness, walking the crested ridge of accomplishment.

Just look at it, it is in the flawless realm of radiant Zomer beauty meets cobweb haunted house lacing. Vermillion swaths cascading in autumn light to temper the dusty particles engaging In a slow dance, curtains of doilies spotting the glass with frothy obfuscation.

The nose is a 50 yard field goal of floral jasmine, cut melon, peeled tangerines, cut particle board, and aged Gruyere.

  
A bump set spike combo on the taste offers up a jazz apple and white grape, Riesling coupled with a tart dried apricot closer. Writing reviews for Sara and Hill Farmstead beers or really anything in that caliber is really a gonorrheic pain in my mid shaft. You already know, but then I have to take the tropes of confirming the quality and grace of inevitability.

These are a total bitch to trade for, a complete treat to savor, a delicate chysanthemum bobbing down a lazy stream, the forefront of the farmhouse world at present and there isn’t much I can add to the steam piles of Eros written about these beers. The strata laid in beds of unerring qualify, a foundation for imitation by others, the resounding clack of a mahogany gavel sentencing indulgence to perpetual want, Tantalus strung up, the wheel of Ixion ever spinning, each dropping seed of Persephone falling upon the Capitola soil ruining aesthetics with every passing harvest.

  
The shit is bomb.