Behold, the shittiest beer that Crooked Stave has ever released. Look upon it in solemn contemplation and reflect upon cherry mixed with stale coffee grounds.

If you are already on the fence regarding dark sours, bail now. This is like the optional dungeon hunt that will tear you limb from limb. I am talking Demon Souls difficulty curve. 

It is bone dry, nimble and opens with intensely sour cherry skins that tingle along the gumline like those acetic caged and corked la folies from the 2000s. That dryness paved the way for this acrimonious coffee ground flavor running in tossing Semtex and leveling what is left. Finally when the tastebud residents are crawling out of the tart bitter rubble, cocoa nib bombers firebomb the back palate with a bitter chocolate sweetness. Palate war never changes.

I don’t understand what this was going for, it starts off like consecration and closes like Chocolate Rain, ne’er should the two be wed. It isn’t a poorly made beer in the way that Jackie Brown isn’t a poorly made movie: there is evidence of genius and mastery that bungles all the details. The end result is a low point in an otherwise stellar lineup of offerings. 

To be fair two other “normal” people  (ie no man tits, not obsessed with sugar water) loved this beer. Like a mimosa sipping Lululemon undergrad, I JUST CANT EVEN

Don’t Act like you aren’t buy curious. 

Such a fantastic beer and gosh darn it if it isn’t the same pedigree as the regular HF lineup. 

Oh sorry it is a golden sour. Not like it would matter, it’s your basic well done exceptional borderline awa, and then with a certain grassiness on the finish.

Thinkin out loud, I must have a hundred new ticks in the cellar right now.

Crooked stave suffering from consistency and predictably tasty beers albeit cloistered within the confines of that porsche single stunning genre. If you drive a four door porsche you are probably an asshole, if you want a crooked stave stout, you are probably an asshole.

17.5 same color t shirt, sippin stouts in that black and orange charger call that a trick or treat

It strikes that impeccable balance of drinkability, complexity, light cheesiness, and faint acidity that only the likes of Ann, Art, older tomes and top tier Saisons hit.

This may be the best saison made on the west coast at this time.

After years and years of waiting, hunting down all the older birds, finally slaying the crow, and making my own janky home barrel version: East End finally released barrel aged Gratitude. This review presents a great Pennsylvania juxtaposition to yesterday’s Bourmuda triangle, for every malty point there is a hoppy counterpoint. Lets ruffle some feathers in today’s review.

Now all these beta noobs have a crow. It just doesn’t feel the same. 

East End Brewing, somewhere in PA

11.4% abv, bourbon barrel aged american barleywine

This beer lacks the panache and ARTISANAL grist of the original packaging and this is one of few instances where I actually give a shit. The new bottle is serviceable and nice, but for an entire decade the paper wrapped birds were an iconic keystone of barleywine heritage. Enough superficial commentary, the beer itself looks identical to the regular non-BA vintages from the past if not a touch less carb. There are deep mahogany and burnt sienna hues with lingering crackling carb. 

The nose is a horseshoe in a boxing glove, and just wallops you with intense pine, oak, pencil shavings, conifers, creme brûlée and drizzled caramel. It is like Bourmuda or BA Behemoth rubbed some rails of blow on those woody gums and cranked the Dubstep. It is impressive and immersive, which was to be expected given the pedigree of the base birds. THEY ARE NOT FLOCKING AROUND.

The taste is far more manageable and shows a degree of restraint like in Kung fu films when there’s the one tiny badass who holds back and then beats everyone’s ass. You get cut lumber, Christmas noble fir, sticky hop oils grinding on the sweet vanilla and coconut from the barrel like a slow jam. I always wondered how these two would play out but like two sparring siblings, the conflict integrates them further. On paper the base should stand alone but this promotes its merits to a bold new level and I can scarcely think of many other BA american barleywines on this platform.

Dank ass BA barleywines? That’s what brings me to malty completion.

Most baby palates love the sticky sweetness of English barleywines coupled with caramel barrels. The BA American barleywines are for the bolder, those who do ring pull ups and smoke robustos. I can see dipshits complaining about how they wanted more sweetness and the King Henry contingency will bemoan the lack of brown sugar. This isn’t for them. 

If you have a Kuhnhenn bbbw pin up in your brewery locker and you rub chinook hops on your chest before intercourse, your bird has arrived and it is ready for flight.

Go ask jamammy since most tickers didn’t even know barleywines existed back in 05.

It would be an understatement to say that the newest run of Voodoo barrel aged releases have been contentious. The average person who covets fermented grain enjoys Vince Vaughn films and predictable pleasures. If you tell a group of husky ex-bandos that you aged a triple IPA in bourbon barrels they won’t greet you with piqued optimism. The vast majority of them repeated a tired line about hop freshness or reiterated something they read in Draft magazine and then ripped into a bag of Combos.

Close minded baby palates aren’t open to new things, and in this instance it is their downfall.

Voodoo Brewing, Pennsylvania

11% abv bourbon barrel aged TIPA

A: at the outset the “enjoy fresh” monicre is anomalous as this already was aged months in a barrel but I can only assume it was then dry hopped in the final stages or something to merge the wood and cone. That, incidentally enough, is the name of my forthcoming Botanist romance novel. The carb is on point and it looks like triple ipas you are already familiar with: knuckle sandwich, Hopslam, those malty sticky dark offerings that never appear refreshing. We all know that deep burnt orange, a monarch butterfly spotting warning of poisonous abv inside.

TFW a voodoo box lands.

The nose enters tropical and provides a pronounced hoppy blast of warrior/tomahawk, then subsides into a faded c-hop citrus. Luckily as the Grayson is falling from the trapeze it is caught by the blast of oak and toasted caramel. It is a weird hand off, but the two make a motley pair, like Johnny five and that INDIAN/not INDIAN scientist.

The taste pushes the barrel more prominently and delivers sugar daddies, toasted marshmallow, and a lightly herbal note of faded hops. If you have had fresh beers like Barrel aged Old Numbskull or BA Behemoth then you know what you are in for. It is herbaceous and woody with drizzling of caramel on the pine cones that somehow works.

Taking them voodoo pricks on the reg.

They did with this beer what they did with CAUTION!!! They took a préexisting style and tweaked it for their own amusement with delicious results. While caution was a thin barleywine with an baked pumpkin riff, this is essentially a crushable barrel aged american barleywine. For everyone fingering their prostates over barrel aged grat, this hits the same abdominal wall in much the same way. 

I went into this thinking it would be as shitty as bourbon ruination, but laying trust in those Voodoo boys and their exceptional barrel program served me well. It doesn’t always need to be ba stouts and barleywines AND NOTHING ELSE. So long as the experimentation yields delicious results, Brewers can do whatever they want.

Except Brewdog, Rogue, and Dogfish Head: their experimentation cards are temporarily revoked for crimes against fermentation.

Seek this out, you will not regret it. Plus, those PA traders are the new CA dipshits of the trade game, giving up 500 bottle count releases 2:1 for Propreeshitors hand over hamfist before they even try them. Flawless.

The Sante Adairius hype machine has been chugging along lovingly, doing its best to pick up onlookers under the immense power of its own intertia. A year ago people nodded knowingly and made contrasts to Tired Hands and then Hill Farmstead and now the two seem to seldom be mentioned outside the same ISO exhalation.

Today’s offering is another riff on the “fruit + Cask 200” paradigm we have visited in the past. Cask Strawberry was tasty, cask cherry a touch of a letdown but how does this Fruit Punch enter the mix?

Creamy frosty fruit.

It pours a ruddy pale Easter pink like Sprite mixed expertly with liquid codeine. The carb lingers on and crackles like Pentecostal alkaseltzer firing bubbles upward with pious fruity solemnity.

The nose is an impressive blend of raspberry chobani, maraschino cherry, jamba juice strawberry must, and a hint of acidity like when Sizzler places a laughable piece of cantaloupe into the plate full of far more expressive delights. 

The taste is quite literally the halfway house between the majesty of cask strawberry and the acidity of cask cherry. It is sweet at the outset like a Shirley Temple or a creamy Mountain Dew code red. The acidity licks the bicuspids with a sting like Guy Montag applying kiwi rind with a precise flamethrower. 

When I hear the bottle counts I be like

The swallow is long and dry but with a sort of torrified wheat grist you would find in a fruited Anna, should such a thing exist. It’s greatest fault is that it doesn’t grip your shoulders and shake you, demanding your reflection. The contemplation is inorganic and, that perhaps might be its greatest virtue. Were this not exceedingly rare, this would be of the most exceptional sessionable, vibrant beers on the market. It is a beautiful barista obfuscated by a fruity hat or jaunty glasses. You can carry on with an unknowing repose in its presence, but careful contemplation yields far greater rewards.

To approximate this at home you can try to muddle berries into Anna, or you can press on with the knowledge that being a covetous completionist is amongst your least praiseworthy attributes, then act accordingly.

We put birds on things, put a bird on it.

Disappointing that all the beta casuals now have crow bottles though and the 2005 birdwhale is no longer manny fresh tier balling.

I am not shitting you.  Sodastream bots are dangerously close to sentience and c02 forced dominance:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/3/24/8283933/sodastream-mix-can-carbonate-anything

The mind reels at all the WACKY pranks possible with this old chestnut.  You want that Sede Vacante to have frothy inappropriate foam billowing over the glass? This machine is here to save the day.

Maybe you are a Portland dipshit who bought all of last year’s Adam from the Wood only to find it was flatter than a Taiwanese gymnast.  WHIP IT UP, lookatthatflickofthewrist

Now all those hilarious innovators who discovered french presses and BCBS last year, we can expect similar nonsense in the coming months. It has bluetooth connectivity, so if you don’t want to unhook your CPAP machine and turn the Tigers game off, you can just carbonate your Kuhnhenn BBBW remotely.  Science has finally arrived at the paradigm tickers dreamed of so long ago.

Next step: Skynet goes global, neural net glycol chillers, fully automated mash tuns create liquid armies enslaving the neckbeard population with low attenuated sugarwater. HAS SCIENCE GONE TOO FAR.

Science hasn’t gone far enough.