One day I will finally land Falling Rock. Hopefully before GI Rare b2 drops.
Author Archives: dontdrinkbeer
DOUBLE FERMENTATION @sapporobeer Reserve, Ultra Whaley Japanese Lagers
Odds are, if you have ever gotten shithoused while sake bombing in undergrad, there’s a one in three chance that you have encountered one of the three Japanese brewing Megazords: Kirin Ichiban, Asahi, or Sapporo. If I had my choice between the three, Sapporo is usually my go to, despite the gentle and almost diaphanous nature of the three competing styles.
But what do you want, some syrupy old ale or intensely juniper ipa masking that expensive ass Uni you just paid for, you gentrified asshole? But today we have the walezbro Sapporo Reserve, Kotaku culture on full swole.
sometimes I get fully turnt and cant control those fstop values, why do I even bother with nice things
Sapporo Reserve, Japan
Euro Pale Lager meets Japanese Lager, 5.2% abv
Commercial tug job:
“Sapporo Reserve is a super premium lager brewed almost twice as long as other competing brands. Reserve is brewed with only finest European barley, and the most select European hops.”
A: this pours looking more honey hued and amber than the pale yellow of regular Sapporo, it also has a slight degree of more cling and lacing, well above the call of duty for something a stupid investment banker will spill all over while saying some microaggressions at a sushi bar. As a corollary, their steel can branding is iconic and I love drilling those from the can, the heft like some nimble cutlass in my drunken shuffle boarding Palm. I have no idea what “brewed twice as long” means. It spends a needlessly long time in the primary? They don’t dry hop this so it sits in the secondary uselessly? Who the fuck knows, my external hard drive full of Hentai/tentacle porn offers no answers.
OH SHIT GUIZE: Shiraseru Am: a smartphone-integrated wearable pet behavior and health monitoring device
The smell is tame and gives a “blast” of Saaz and maybe Sterling Golden. The rice and cloying saltine aspects from normal Japanese lagers is absent here and this comes across more Germanic in execution, like a pale marzen in a way. It won’t change your life but it gives a degree of actual complexity beyond “I am a beer, order extra yellowtail Travis always takes it all.”
The taste is again very European and has a lightly grassy aspect and fades into a bisquik biscuit with a touch of honey sweetness. It is dismissive in its presence, like a neglected girlfriend it allows you to attend other affairs and, as a result, it endlessly pairable. The silent grace has a clean mouthfeel, without lingering dryness or hoppy residuals. “No no palate, you go out with your friends, I’ll stay home and catch up on STITCHERS on ABC Family.”
NO WAY GUIEZ: Chogokin Miracle Henkei Hatsune Miku Rody: the most unusual, awesome tie-up toy of the year!
The chief virtue behind a beer that goes with the flow is placing it in dynamic situations. Pair this shit with Thai or Barbeque, tapas or duck confit. It won’t protest or really compliment the flavor profiles, but it is so malleable that you can shape it and bend it like Floam. I’ll give you a second to go and Google “floam.”
The funniest part about the dipshits who review this beer on BA or dumbass badge hunters who lambast this is the fact that many “craft” offerings are far shittier. Like the adolescent palate defining itself by rebelling against large companies, many entry level tickers rip on the Sapporo lineup unjustly to validate their own weak ass collection of Rogue beers.
Japanese women who are hella into katana swords get me harder than adamantium
It is summer, bring a few of these big ass steel cans to a cookout and see if your normal/non-basement dwelling friends don’t 1) drink the shit out of them and 2) not think you are a Megan’s Law weirdo for once.
It is 85 degrees out, don’t be the foreskin baller who shows up to a bbq with Adam from the Wood: no one gives a fuck except you. Keep that nerdy shit to yourself and drill some Japanese lager like a real God damn american.
The muckiest bottle of Pissenlit I have ever had. Tastes like menthol and clove cigarettes. That’s just the Tome game.
You win some you lose some. Ghost gengar game
PLUM WATCH 2015: @hillfarmstead Flora Plum, Cleaning Up Harmful Free Radicals with Beer
Been getting that Vermont trim on the reg lately, keeping the farmhouse flows going. I recently dropped that Flora B/B review and I think people were needlessly harsh on what was a pretty legit, if not earth shattering, offering in the pristine Flora lineup. Then, Flora cherry dropped this week and the things VT traders are demanding has me posted in the LOLNOPE cut with unflinching repose. But what about this rarity, Flora with them juicy plums? Let’s prune the fuck out in today’s review
Get Ticks or Dyin Tryin
Hill Farmstead, ArizonaLOLPSYCHE Vermont
Barrel aged saison with plum, 6.5% abv
If you went into this shit with expectations of seeing some frothy violet extravaganza, I urge you to actually look at what color a plum is after you bite into it. I get this same stupid fucking complaint from those cicerone assholes who judge how much fruit was used based on the srm. “You can tell kiwi herman was barely fruited BC it wasn’t even green like at all.” This looks almost identical to regular Flora with a slightly darker orange hue to the center and a more refined carbonation. They used a weird Duchessic style flange on the underside of the cap that felt like a .38 special round popping that bad bitch open in the club.
Picture me writing lines knowing Draft Magazine will quote it, when I die they gone read DDB an say a genius wrote it
The nose is far more acidic and tart than I was expecting and the pendulum swings away from gentle approachable Flora and more into the Fou/Emptiness series from Tired Hands. You get lemon, lime, wheatgrass, cut nectarines, pluot and kumquat. Oddly it finishes with this pithy Glade smell that reminds me of the persimmon beers we have all had. It is very pleasant and feels like a liquid sun-drenched hammock in intensity.
The taste delivers on the acidic threats to the point that is almost unnatural for those HF boys, but somehow pulls it off. In the mutton busting world of wrangling lacto strains, it is easy for shit to get out of pocket but this is more creamy and tart like lemon meringue and pineapple juice. It has a wheat grist to the mouthfeel that allows the acidity room to breath and contributed a frothy aspect that embraces the plum tannins lovingly. If you have ever ate a shitload of Rainier cherries you will know that sweet dryness that the skins will impart. It is intensely crushable but jockeys for your reflection, you’re getting mixed messages because Flora is wearing a low cut shirt and telling you not to focus on them plums but they are like right there come on now.
You go to the bottleshop but you never cop nothing, all your untappd reviews are shared ticks and you need to stop frontin
The Emptiness series from Tired Hands comes to mind when approaching this beer in the distinctively AWA character, fruity juicy interplay and all around intensely drinkable character. While I enjoyed Satsuma Flora more due to its stripped down simplicity and fresh squeezed pith, I can see most people who love ramped up acidity to say that this is the best fruited beer that Shaun has produced to date. At a certain point it becomes a Mountain Dew Baja Blast versus Code Red preference debate. Both are exceptional at 6th grade slumber parties.
such beer knowledge, wow, comparisons, many tastes
All available analogues will be equally hellish to acquire, 500-800 bottle count 1-2 per person nightmare trades so, have fun on those boards and do your anal kegel exercises. Be prepared for the Vicster to officiously show up and tell you that you need to add a Zomer or some shit.
“I was saying Boos-urns.”
Dedicated to Kevin Crushedvol,
Rip 1985-2018
It never gets old.
Hitler Needs Heady. DIPAs and Godwin’s Law.
rekt.
DARK MEAT ALERT: @hillfarmstead Civil Disobedience 12, CHARLIE MURPHY SAISON EXPLOITS
Clipping right along in the realm of being disobedient and uncivil, we get the notorious “dark saison 4th release” entry in the canon: Civil Disobedience 12. Every fourth bottle in this series is an iteration of a dark saison/wild ale and usually leads to polarizing reviews as the average bourbon county coveter two years fresh out of undergrad has no business fucking with black Saisons. Maybe no one does.
Let’s get a taste of that black tar in today’s review.
DDB is down with brown town
Hill Farmstead, Vermont (oh no way)
Black blended barrel aged saison aka that BBBaS, 8.1%abv, I made all this up. No one reads this.
Hold on to your uncircumsized cocks for the spoiler alert of the year: this saison is dark. It pours with perfect carb, bubbling upward with silky mocha frap crema, looking more like a bottle of Everett at first glance. It has minimal cling and sheets in a slick watery way, running that dark dress upwards indicating the acidic experience contained therein.
Post full size because Trady complained about small pics/penis
The nose is the collision of two odd worlds destroying themselves in a fruit meets chocolate singularity. The blackest of holes. You get a sort of tangerine and clementine with red wine oak at the outset but wait for the beat to drop, 160bpm waves of cocoa and nestle quik Rush in quickly behind with this discordant cacophony of conflicting olfactory zones. Some people love this type of shit: the Pipeworks Orange abduction, HF daybreak and to a lesser extent BCBS bramble fall in this mixed bag of dark malty hatred. I can’t get on board with it and my prejudices against these types of beers are well documented so take my impressions with a chocolate fondue slice of navel orange.
The taste carries more of a vinous character and pushes chocolate milk meets Bordeaux, creamy acidity itself feeling like an inherent contradiction throughout. Again, some people open up incognito tabs and grind that coffee bean to these types of beers and I don’t understand that deviant behavior. I don’t like tart of darkness and the vast majority of dark wilds or black saisons. If you like this space docking of malty chocolate foreskin rolling over acidic fruit, then by all means.
I just hope this big dark girth is enough to Trady standards
If you loved Edith, you will think this is dope as fuck. It is well attenuated and for a highly-attenuated audience. Oh shit peep that parallel structuring. While I loved Cd4, and was fairly jazzed about cd8, this falls closer to the realm of Jim/Jimmy in HF offerings I wouldn’t actively seek out.
Like all things, HF had the misfortune of inherently being compared to their own body of work so it feels like being the Pitchfork Media asshole who criticizes Mars Volta for doing something polarizing and experimental. It is unquestionably well made but feels like those spacey malty tracks that go on forever and it loses me.
Drink dark saisons, acquire new powers
What should you drink instead of this? If you are dead set on this style, you could go with Edith, the Nightmare on Brett series, Guillermo Prunus/etc, one of the oddball Sara dark saison offerings like farmhouse noire, or something in that same realm.
Like Phish, the people who love this ridiculous shit will love it so hard that no one else will need to deal with it. And that is fine, have your chocolate covered grapes and 9 minute guitar solos, leave me out of it.
boosting on them dark malts, dropped E tanks
OH SHIT FORTUNE MAGAZINE FIGURED OUT HOW TO LAND MASSIVE WHALES. Trigger Warning
Welp, we had a good run here at DDB, posting 300 bottle count runs, shit from the 90s, and random oddball extinct bottles: FORTUNE MAGAZINE FIGURED OUT HOW TO LAND MASSIVE WHALES and exposed the game to the masses.
https://fortune.com/2015/05/30/how-i-tracked-down-those-elusive-trophy-craft-beer-whales/
Wait, full disclosure, Fortune magazine is using the word “whales” to mean “nationally distributed 12,000+ bottle releases available by the case.” But that’s basically the same shit as Bullfrog Beekeeper right? I’ll allow the newmoney dipshits to Google “Beekeeper” before I continue. At any rate, the jig is up. All the whales now belong to beta casual finance assholes who wear mid thigh pastel shorts and boat shoes and Pengiun polos. Sorry, beer nerds.
BRO DID YOU GET THE NEW RELEASE OF DAVE? ME TOO SEE YOU AT THE ORACLE BOAT RACE
So if you want to know the secret to landing sick whales, the author shockingly shares this gem of information with the unclean masses “I happened to notice a small sign at my local Total Wine store, acknowledging they had a small amount in stock.” You will need to go to a bigbox retailer with massive distributing contracts, and look for a sign in the window. I trust you will all head down to Binny’s clamouring for bottles of Malvassia Rosso, looking for these elusive signs like obese dudes fawning over Cosplay models at Comicon.
Anomalously, Chris Morris notes “The intense drive of some beer lovers to land a whale can take some of the fun out of the process,” but wait, you just told us we just need to walk up to a Bevmo and ask for Loerik, I am getting serious mixed signals here. Then further muddying the waters he mentions a series of brewery only WOMGWHALES from Jester King, which never see the interior of a Total Wine. SO WHAT AM I SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE.
BRB getting my craft beer news from a Time-owned publication that ranks the top 500 most profitable companies in the world
Hang on here Chris Morris, are you telling me in your infinte wisdom that my retail whale chasing is gonna lead me to bottles that are somehow ONLY AVAILABLE AT THE BREWERY? I don’t believe you Mr. Morris. Your bullshit clickbait headline seemed so trustworthy. I thought I would be pouring Ann down my mantits by the end of the workday. Next you are gonna tell me that I need to open up a Fedex account and ship beer to other repugnant covetous dipshits spurned by your yellowale journalism to land other beers.
“even if you have no interest in beer and drink shitty Scotch because WSJ tells you to, you can buy rare beers and resell them as a commodity for huge profits,” THANKS FORTUNE MAGAZINE GOOD LOOKING OUT
I dont know what to believe anymore. Fortune Magainze was always my goto resource for beer news/why it isnt a good time to buy gold/explanations why minority workers make less money, but in light of all this, I might just have to switch back to Esquire Magazine for the irreproachable journalistic integrity/advice on calfskin messenger bags.
The Ultimate Farmhouse Voltron @Hillfarmstead Civil Disobedience 11, The Saison Megazord
Alright, keeping things on track with arguably the whaliest beer that HF has ever made outside of Ann, is this staggering amalgamate of the best the saison world has to offer. At ~300 bottles, 1 per person, this caused a massive rift in the trading community and the butthurt was palpable, salty alligator tears rolling down Dorito dusted beards. So what is the deal with this FINAL BOSS GOD TIER FARMHOUSE LOOT? This is like post-game optional quest level shit here:
“Composed of Anna aged in barrels that previously held Mimosa, E., and Juicy, blended with Anna that was aged in barrels that previously held Civil Disobedience 3 and 5. Delicate, elegant, complex, and effervescent.”
Does it seriously get any better than that? Those are like nocturnal emissions mixed with microflora. Let’s get down to this rustic ratchet in today’s review.
Got musky emo tears, beer looking like a bowl of oranges
Hill Farmstead, Vermont (you know this already)
Blended BA saison, abv? Let’s call it 7.69%
This beer also gushed like an obese kid who lost a full dress size at fat camp. It spilled all over my tiny hovel making my shoddy granite work redolent of Vermontean esters. The carb notwithstanding, this pours intensely orange and the whole pour feels like a PS1 cut scene where for a moment things are far less shitty, and you know it simply wont last. It has fantastic cling and sheets rings the entire way down as though it had a modicum of spelt boosting those unfermentable solids. Svelte, radiant, oddly beautiful like Emma Stone in BIrdman.
Look at me. Look at me. I am the saison captain now. I am the farmhouse captain.
The nose continues the pageantry in a way that is unparalleled by even Shaun Hill standards. In the struggle for their own dominance over their own product this grip the tail of Ann and the throat of Art and co-dominance is established like some acidic alleles contributing this master race phenotype. I hope you didn’t fail high school biology, otherwise Ctrl+T that shit. There is intense orange, grand marnier meets cut construction paper, wet Jansport backpacks, bikes in the rain covered in Donald Duck orange juice, crushes leaves, bittering conifer aspects on the closer and this sweetly acidic finish like a Jamba Juice peach dream. It is frustratingly enticing to a fault.
Hit that bottle spread eagle, label cocked open like that Jordan logo
The taste is creamy orange julius from the mall with brett C funk contributing an aged cheddar cheesiness to the gumline, the most refined acidity this side of BA Cellarman, crisp anjou pear dryness on the swallow that lingers with a clementine pithy bitterness. It is orange and cuties through and through with massive cascading waves of bitterness, acidity and funk like LED lights at a TRAP show contributing to full immersion. There is a touch of imperfect honey sweetness that is perceptible that has a sweet meets mineral character, but this is literally the only fault I can detect after assiduously prying apart this entire 750ml solo.
Liquefy this photo in its purest platonic form and imbibe it
In sum this is the pinnacle of the HF catalog and only Ann and Art can stand as coherent rivals to this crown. It easily stands in the top 10 best saisons I have ever had in my life and I can’t imagine someone walking the razors edge of funk, musk, acidity, and drinkability. It takes the best aspects of all prior saisons and unites them in defiance of a composition fallacy that I had ready to toss like critical shurikens. One guy wanted Fou + Hommage for this bottle 2:1 and, while this will rock the Belgian lambic-curator dipshits to their core, it is hands down worth it, It exists as a pinnacle of the most nuanced of genres and flat out runs at even clip with the best lambics I have ever had.
Past and present progressive rusticity
Writing favorable reviews is shitty, but I have to doff my coal dusted Dickensian cap when shit operates on this tier.
Brb taking the word “no” out of my vocabulary, #up4anything
As in, “hey did you end up winning that award from Saveur magazine?”
“[No,] I think someone else did, but DDB is still #up4anything.”
dontdrinkbeer 