If you were in the beer trade game in 2010/2011, Silva Stout used to run the yard and remained one of the original SD stouts that performed with grace and panache.  It sat on BA”s top 100 forever, was coveted when released in four packs, and represented an awesome riff on the already exception Double Stout.  For reasons unexplained to date, there was radio silence on the Silva Stout front and we didn’t see a Silva Stout release for three years.  In the intervening time, Green Flash expanded, obtained a massive new facility and unveiled plans to open a 58,000 square foot Virgina Beach location.

Ok tight, but where the fuck is the Silva Stout at, it is the highest rated beer that you brew, make with the Silva, Mr. Silva.  Firestone Walker didn’t release Parabola b1 and b2 and then be like “THAT WAS TIGHT NOW ENJOY THIS VELVET MERLIN FOR THE NEXT THREE YEARS WHILE WE MAKE MORE BUILDINGS”

In the intervening years since its last release craft beer has exploded even further since the prior apeshit 2012 levels.  All those babypalates who were drinking Rogue in undergrad have now graduated and THEY NEED TO CATCH UP ON OLD WALEZ BECAUSE COMPLETIONIST GAMERPOINTS IN THE BEER GAME.

So imagine their hypothetical elation when these new tickers heard SILVA STOUT IS BACK, and there’s a shit ton of it from a Poway facility, and Total Wine is gonna have it, and the Beer Wench is gonna host events where you can just DRINK IT, and it is in classy caged 750mls and it is $19 a bottle and- wait what the fuck-

I didn’t pour it like an asshole, I swear

So the kids who are still Googling what Kate the Great is, they now figured out that Silva Stout is something they should want, a relic from a simpler past.  A stout sold at reasonable prices in 4 packs, WHAT IN THE HELL WERE THEY THINKING.  Then the photos are released of this MMA meets 4Loko label, and I was like “alright, there’s plenty of beers with dumb labels, Silva stout used to be awesome, I will tolerate this Affliction/Tapout looking marketing.”

Back in 2012 when I reviewed this, I was CORE as fuqqqq and I drank a bottle in front of Bruery Provisions (this was a store where you- nevermind) because I was on parole back then:

Green Flash Silva Stout, Double Stout Got Thinner and Got All Into Red Wine, Like a Recent Divorcee

It was a thin, albeit complex stout that commanded your attention.  In the intervening years stouts have gotten thicker in the attenuation waistline, adjuncts run rampant, and a delicate flower like Silva seemed like the panacea to bring balance to the dark forces.

Thems was the days

So enough nostalgic bullshit, what is different about the current batch?

For starters, the carbonation is excessive to the point of being a straight up punchline.  Even with the gentle poise of a Starcraft player, my hands could not pour this lightly enough to not detonate in the glass.  The beer looks nice enough and Silva stout was never some hefty sugarmaster, but this is downright zero cal, skinny jeans and the malts dont fit.

This “batch one ,cellar 3, 50n-4e” release takes the thin aspect to abysmal depths.  It is thin to the point of feeling like a robust porter, somehow thinner than its base beer.  The mouthfeel has a watery aspect that leaves little in the complexity department and coats languidly, the entire operation is phoned in like when you would get a substitute teacher who clearly had zero fucks to spare, showing up in cargo shorts and putting a movie on.

Chuck Silva said two months ago:
“Blending should be considered with producing barrel-aged beer, where different barrels are blended together as well as fresh beer blended with aged. The ultimate result should have some finesse.”

What blending should not be: a dilution technique to drive up profit margins/release an inferior product.  He later noted:

“The past year we consciously decided to grow the barrel-aged program in a bigger way increasing the number of barrels to over 500 and adding four Foudres that had been previously used for red wine aging. Approximately half are bourbon barrels for producing Silva Stout .”

The precedent that GF is establishing is that expansion comes with serious costs, and the Silva Stout is a glaring example.  I am not the type to be all preachy Pitchfork media decrying a larger fanbase/selling out, but when the beer clearly suffers, it is tough to affirm blindly.

Newmoney wont understand. The feels are feely.

The taste is the worst part of this entire affair.  I want to believe that maybe in the past 3 years my facehole has raised its standards and perhaps the rebrew of Silva Stout is like seeing an ex in the club like “man I cant believe I usta fuxxx w dat” but that’s not the case here.  The beer itself is markedly shittier.  The prior silva stout had fresh beer blended in, but it wasn’t almost HALF “fresh beer.”  Like if you weren’t paying a 500% markup for marginally different Double Stout, it wouldn’t be so bad. As a result of all the “FRESH BLENDING BRAH” this lacks any barrel character and its virtues hail largely from the pedigree of Double Stout itself, the little barrel present almost seems to detract and make it worse with the component blending.  The pricing is just another kick to the perineum and in stark contrast to the days when Green Flash had super reasonable 6 packs….then kinda reasonable 4 packs….now totally unreasonable 750s.

WHAT HAVE THEY DONE TO YOUR PROUD HERITAGE?

It wouldn’t be so shitty if this were 2012, this would probably still seem kinda remarkable, but the intervening years have produced just way too many exceptional breweries and to make a worse version of a previous legend feels like when Jordan came out of retirement. We good, take a seat.

This couldnt have come at a worse time for Green Flash since rumors are already rampant in the neckbeard community that they are kegging inferior versions of Alpine’s classic hoppy beers and sending them all over creation, but that is a speculative tale for another day..

Oh well, throw in a rack of Totino’s pizza rolls and treat yourself to this stout that destroys a prior legacy in favor of the new Cellar 3 regime.

Ok it should come as no surprise that the world of beer “reviewing” has taken some regressive steps lately.  These millenials what with their RAZR scooters and Tmobile Sidekicks, they don’t have the attention span to drop 900 words and an obscure narrative fleshing out the nuances of a beer. When the beer blog boom of the late 2000’s went beer blog bust, DDB did its best to make sure to degrade things further by presenting incoherent, prosaic reviews with almost no substance.

BUT NOW BEER REVIEWS ARE TAKING THINGS A STEP FURTHER: TWITTER BEER REVIEWS.

TL;DR

If you can’t be bothered to enter a single digit review in BA’s page traffic app, and Untappd seems too daunting, just toss 140 terse characters onto Twitter.  Abbreviate adjectives, smash words together, you dont even really need to spell the whole name of the beer out, that wastes precious characters.  This is the future of beer commentary brb rvwn Pppy V W, G I Rre b2,:

brbon, chclate, nose, oak, brl, dry, ccoa, nilla, cNut, mFeel long, swt, gd br, wld drnk agn.

Gotta save space for them hashtags to drive up engagement. BAWSing on the beer scene so hard in 2015.

If you weren’t following along because you have a life or are attractive or don’t care about sugars extracted from malt via hot water: CYCLE BREWING RELEASED A NEW LOW COUNT FLORIDAWALEZBRO STOUT EVERY DAY FOR AN ENTIRE WEEK. Ok well maybe just the weekdays, but after Huna day it isn’t like anyone wanted more stouts any way.

So this is cycle Friday, why friday? Because it sounded pretty legit and blended two of the prior days so I can be a prick like I could detect both, and no way I am trading for and drinking all them shits. Ain’t nobody got the liver or cellar for that. 

Peg’s Cycle Brewing, low count stoutsberg, FL

13%(?) abv, mixed media stout

This pours jet black and has a certain oiliness to the look with a mirror sheen like the way Prop just sits there uncaring of your life goals and dreams. The nose is waves of bakers chocolate, black cherry, roasty toasty rye bread, brownie batter and a sharp whiskey aspect on the finish.

The taste reminds me a lot of 2012 Parabola, aka the ROASTY OMG NOT SWEET vintage that everyone was bemoaning back then. That is to say, it is really tasty, it is replete with Hershey’s and butterscotch, a lingering roast hints at coffee aspects but never actually flicks the bean. The brownie batter has a fantastic sweetness to it and mama lets you lick the spoon. I am not going pull both sides of my nutsack and tell you it is a batwing: I can’t pick out the discrete barrels and that’s fine. It’s not a bat wing, then.

The creamy mouthfeel actually reminds me more of an imperial oatmeal stout but invariably some shitwaffle will chime in and tell me that there is no coffee or oat in this, the fucks Given are subplural and cannot be expressed in rational numbers.

I have a hard time saying a ton about this beer because it works well but fails to do anything really exceptional, or even better, fails to do anything completely shitty. The latter point is almost disappointing sometimes because then my lazy reviews are made even easier.

Should you trade for this? Sure if you want, your life will be fine. You won’t get hep c, but your kids won’t look upon you with detached revulsion if you miss it either. Parabola dropped almost the same week so it’s tough to really throw myself behind this, but invariably some weak draft line rider will decry trading as a practice and point to the absurdity of exploring new options and low bottle count stouts like this. That’s fine, but you can do far worse with your life than drinking a world class stout that resembles anther world class stout. You could start doing parkour or watching soccer nonironically. That is way worse than drinking limited stouts from Florida. If you own a pair of Soaps go throw them in a dumpster then get back to the ISO:Ft boards to lock down sickkkkkk multi component blended stouts.

WELP in case you missed it, Council silently released the other set of the fruited beatitudes yesterday and the 300 bottles sold out in 2 hours. So how do these stack up against the prior iteration? Same crush ability? Yup. More fruit profile? Yup. More complexity? Ehh not really, it’s the same beer, chill Homie.

Let’s get juiced, solid triple berry gear, mad seedy styrations.

Council brewing, airplane base town, Sd, ca

3.8% blueberry, raspberry, blackberry saison. Call an uber.

This is clearly a very beautiful beer and exhibits the entire range of colors found in the room of a preteen Jonas brothers fan. The three prominent items on the label tell me that those “suggestions” may be a nod to the fact that these bottles are going to develop into squirters, just a hunch based on the three imperatives that they chose.

The nose is a touch brackish, muddled berries, blackberry preserves, light salinity, cut plums, and light cornmeal. It is far from those sticky icky New Glarus fruit beers but never veers into the De Garde fruited bu realm either.

This beer is refreshing as hell. Spoiler alert.

The taste is akin to the blueberry batch but much better in the interplay of tart crushable Powerade and legitimate fruit residuals paying fat dividends. You get this crisp bone dry finish like pulling your mouth away from the sweet caress of an Anjou pear, except a touch more grape skin: MY FRUIT DETECTOR NEEDS AN EXTENDED WARRANTY.

If you liked the prior offerings this is better than all but the pineapple, will the raspberry beat them all out? WE SHALL SEE. I am only one person I can finish these massive 3.8% beers back to back AND keep up a reputable K/D ratio on Hardline and the ISO:ft boards.

Go get this tho, drink it alone, let it open up. Don’t be a fucccboi who brings the set to some shitty quicinera of a tasting so everyone gets an ounce. If you get a tiny pour of a beer this delicate, you might just shrug and ask for more Sr71 or whateverthefuxk. Maybe subtle Saisons aren’t compatible with the short attention span of your sloppy goateed face.

When people got they cups but they ain’t ticked in

We heckle Clown Shoes quite a bit around here at ddb for their sexist labels, questionably fast distro curve, inconsistent product and rampant adjunctism; they are too big to care and everyone wins. Today, however, we have what can arguably be considered not only the best beer that them Clownie boys have produced, but an unequivocally delicious ba old ale.

Ba old ale, 11.5% Abv

Shoeland, New England 

This is a component blend of old ale aged in port and whiskey barrels, distributed only to Michigan.

The beer pours a ruddy deep maroon and mahogany with carb that would make them Kuhnhenn beers gunshy. The beige foam cascades upward beautifully with frothy lacing. I need to put a mouthguard in for the entirety of this review to prevent my jaw grinding while doling out heaps of praise for Clpwn Shoes. The taste of crow along the gumline before I raise the beer to my lips.

The nose is a wonderful bouquet of plums, figs, Carmelized raisins, red grape and a cinnamon closer. Again, imagine how much my lower abdomen hurts admitting that this beer is on par with Alesmith BA old ale. It smells delcious and unique and no amount of prevarication can deny that. It feels like the girl you snubbed at the Debutante ball grew up to be an ultra hot Suicide Girl med student. Such ragrets.

Commence to Jigglin 

The taste follows more of the park fruit with prunes, whiskey akin to bernheim, oakiness a hefty stickiness like turbinado sugar, bruised peach, and a lingering fantastic brown sugar closer high and inside just enough for you to get a piece of it and give the old ale fans In The stands a lil souvenir. This beer crushes. 

Admittedly this isn’t God tier old ale in the realm of bb4d, Adam from the wood, or Melange 3, but it takes its build and puts on as much aesthete as those malty bones can handle. I can’t fathom how the boys who made Muffin Top can in clear conscience not make this a regular release. The fact that it was only sent to a single state already replete with fantastic barleywines and old ales shows the great irony and business acumen attendant to the whole release. If they dropped this in Florida the lines to dry cleaners would be a mile long with NECKBEARDS trying to get residual cream out of their anchor blue jeans.

Here’s where I traditionally use some qualifying language to cover my ass in the rare instance that someone’s palate disagrees with old ddb. It may be a touch too fruity or winey for some people, but if you enjoy the way Bell’s old ale is executed, add layers of complexity and you have this beer. 

Don’t think the rest of those payaso offerings are getting a pass from here on out, but this is like having an ultra specific firebrand that tears shit up in an ice dungeon. On this one instance, they pushed their hot blade deep inside of my dungeon.

Wait what.

Imagine being drunk on old ale and being told your street is now closed due to Fast and the Furious 7. Heaven, I know.

Hangar 24 Brewery, middle of the desert, CA

7% abv, sour ba blonde with blueberries

Alright so if you signed up for the Hangar 24 barrel roll club then you received a single 12oz bottle of this single barrel banger with your $300 membership. None were sold to the public SO IT MUST BE SUPER DANK THEN. 

If you have been paying attention, puga Royale has been killing the trade boards creeping up like a silent specter, the NECKBEARDS are ever wary of California stouts but it appears to have breached the firmament: but can H24 do the same thing with their wild ale program?

I’m finna twist UR berries bruh.

The beer pours on point with deep hues of violet, fuschia, magenta, and off pink foam that crackles yet subsides. It is an admittedly pretty beer and my nuva ring is pounding inside of my Lululemon pants.

I flexed my traps and waited for the acetic aspect that blueberry beers can generate (see: upland blueberry) but it never comes. There is a tannic blueberry skin like chiraz meets Yankee candle. There’s a lemony acidity present and the blonde ale base has not been wrangled and peeks out with tangerine and Chardonnay oak much in the way every lost Abbey sour blonde exhibits that samey albeit exceptional tart nose.

The taste opens dry with a farmers market berry skin quality that lacks the jamminess of say VSB but never falls into an intense tartness like Cascade Blueberry/Beauregarde. The fruit is more tasty as it warms and the 50 degree intended serving temp has got to be a punchline caveat against attenuation as this beer is far more exceptional as it warms.

The Smuckers preserves never fully emerge, but it doesn’t seem to be aiming to lean heavily on the fruit and instead delivers an oaky tartness like fundip and 0% stainless Riesling. Sure it is sour but, I drank an entire pint with ease, ZFG 0/0 on the ragret index.

If I had to find something in the same vein I would say this is executed akin to Allagash Lil Sal but since, that too, was like 300 bottles, analogues aren’t much help and you’ll need to blaze your own trading trail of you really want to toss your hat in the “exceptional blueberry awa” realm. It could use a touch more Greek yogurt body and I would have liked a more pronounced Brett C character to balance out fruity skins but that’s me being a demanding prick over and above any real flaws in the beer itself. It’s like a more complex version of Brett d or blueberry, I AM TRYING MY BEST HERE. I can find analogues if you haven’t tried shit. Get your voltron up.

This is absolutely worthy of your attention as well done blueberry beers are the exception not the rule with many lactose fisted Brewers these days. If you enjoyed chandelle, consider this the ‘merica Blabaer to that SHASTA foune. The 12oz bottle is as frustrating as Silver Surfer for the NES because you won’t want to share it but the cost of entry almost precipitates it.

If you are skeptic, wait for those airtight single digit BA reviews to pour in, I find those exceptionally helpful in calibrating my palate. A FOOLPROOF PREDICTOR OF VALUE.

About to peel out like Wedgehead on his cross country drunk driving Shocktop tour.

I be in the kitchen cookin pies with my baby

There are rare beer releases LITERALLY every single weekend (sometimes even during the weekdays, if you are talking uber whales!). People will line up INSOUCIANTLY just to obtain bottles of the sweet nectar, sometimes even to be trading them later for other beers that also can be rare or more rare but not in every case being less forthright(!)

Here are 21 pics that ONLY someone who went to a BEER RELEASE will understand, THESE ARE WAY TOO REAL!

#21

THE FOLDING CHAIR: it becomes ur best friend LOL

#20

That time there were NO folding chairs and you had to stand in front of the liquor store OMG

#19

That time you were behind someone’s GIRLFRIEND when she got the last massive whale offshelf/distributed to countless states

#18

Lining up in front of a huge retailer and neglecting friends and family for a bottle you intend to trade away at a premium AMIRITE?

#17

Making friends4lyfe after passive aggressively complaining about line cutting for 4 hours.

#16

Getting inside the bottle release only to realize that you are accidentally hanging out in an abandoned industrial park for no reason

#15

Laying on the freezing concrete to drive up bottle values with tales of misfortune

#14

Doing depression era bank runs on breweries to obtain bottles that will see distribution a few days later (FOR THE EXTRAS 2 TRADE!!!)

#13

Having 2 many tasters in line then needing to sell bottles on MBC to make bail, LOL WHOOPS!

#12

LITTERING: because fuck these places for making you wait in line in the first place AMIRITE

#11

Giving yourself chondromalacia standing in line for a style of beer you don’t even enjoy or buy off the shelf. OUCH!

#10

Forcibly listening to a 58 year old man in a Tommy Bahama shirt tell you about real ale and all the ESBs that he has logged into untappd. AWKWARDDD!!!

#9

Standing in line for HOURS only to realize you are actually at a human rights protest LOL WHOOPS!

#8

Taking pics of BARRELS while waiting in line, who cares what’s in them, THIS ONE IS GOING ON INSTAGRAM!

#7

When the FUZZ shows up to hassle you for being redfaced, stumbling, with an open growler of barrel-aged barleywine at 10am. WHAT GIVES?!

#6

When you show up and the line isn’t even that long and u kno u can DOUBLE DIP (aka that DUBBEL DIP!)

#5

When they drop the bottle limits and you know your pre-trades are gonna fall through, so you start screaming out of entitlement, WE HAVE ALL BEEN THERE

#4

Buying several disguises to get around the 1 per person limits. LOL THESE BREWERS ARE DUMB!

#3

Trying to wash the X off your hand but it wont come off so you only get one allocation 😦

#2

Getting ur SICK WHALES back home and then hand waxing them because you have no intention of drinking them for years, despite the fact that they are released every year. SCORE!

#1

Logging all those 1oz pours into Untappd before losing consciousness on the pavement in the parking lot. CLASSIC

DONT FORGET TO VOTE FOR DDB: number one source of beer news, on Saveur HERE:

http://www.saveur.com/content/blog-awards-2015-vote

(I AM NUMBER SIX, vote please if you want more award winning content like this. otherwise we will probably just shut down k thnx)

There is something inherently hard wired into baby palates that creates an aversion to tequila barrels. The initial prospect always generates this close minded revulsion amongst a cadre who were drinking Rogue offerings just two years prior. This is yet another release from Voodoo that seeks to challenge these prejudices. The entirety of their recent releases were novel riffs that are iconoclastic and exceptional in execution. Notwithstanding, sometimes being an excellent brewer is not enough to overcome the challenges attendant to the flavor profile itself. Voodoo unquestionably has a magnificent barrel  program, but can they turn the tides on this controversial style?

The answer is a resounding “ehhhh kinda?” The beer looks pleasant enough, has billowing carb that clings lovingly. The nose has wafts of agave nectar, a sort of honey sweetness, and intense waves of pencil shavings, shop class, sawdust and lingering oak. Sometimes you read “super aged” bourbon reviews like elijah Craig 23, old blowhard, etc and bloggers will get all achy and sad complaining of the wood profile. Them entry level tastebuds want the sweet, the predictable, easily apprehendable caramel and vanilla. 

This is very much not that.

Low counts won’t convert stubborn NECKBEARDS with preconceived notions of taste.

The taste is challenging and the sweet elements clang noisily against the resounding wood aspects. It is far from the less that was Roble Blanco and is even far from offensive. Brewers walk a fine line with attempting to push beer into those tequila pokeballs. It isn’t a harsh or firey scratchiness, and it even has elements of balance between the honey sweetness and dry toasted wood.

That being said, most of those dinero nuevo ballers will operate on their preconceptions make a pussy face with a 1 ounce pour. It is well executed but takes a swing at huge opposition.

A girl can date the most interesting pen tester ever, but in the end that off putting antisocial undercurrent shows through and no one can take a counter programmer is sessionable doses.

lines in the water, predatory clickbait engage

DDB is in the running for the best beer blog in the entire world of gourmands.  If you know what MOLECULAR GASTRONOMY IS, then you probably have such a fat throbber right now.

I would ask you to vote for old subbydoo, but since you have to log into Saveur, and I know my readerbase doesn’t even buy conditioner, so there’s no way that is happening.

http://www.saveur.com/content/blog-awards-2015-vote?dom=beer&src=2015blogbadge

DDB as a site is nothing but a pile of self-aggrandizing stinkbait