CAFE standards are a mandate Congress puts on automakers to ensure their entire fleet has better fuel economy. This has had some unintended consequences.

Breweries used to be praised for efficiency, but rewarding additives and residual sugar has led to larger beers. The wheelbase continues to expand. In 2016 the CAFÉ standards were amended to make the MPG goals based on its size. The styles could be redefined to hit their goals.

The once refreshing west coast IPA saw its curb weight increase. A once special, yearly indulgent TIPA now became de rigeur, expected even. Across a brewery’s fleet, it was no longer the abv that was the focus because efficiency was predicated upon the size of the beers themselves.

If you walk onto a dealership floor or a bottleshop and wonder why everything seems bigger, the goalposts have shifted. The normal west coast IPA now must be loaded down with oats, or increasingly absurd levels of tetra dry hopping. The Ranger is now bigger than the hoppy F150 of years past.

Sequoia County is a big west coast IPA that is exceptional. It is also Australian so this would be a “Perth style” ipa in their language and Holden’s are larger than ever. It is made by the guy who left Oscar Blues and this hit my doorstep like a transcontinental alpha acid rocket just dripping in dingo runnings. It is resinous in that delicious, coniferous, zested tangelo way. The body is just enough crystal to not feels like a wiped out cold IPA, a pop of sweetness to structure the raked foliage and Haribo peach ring.

It does all of this without making “big” its intention. The dryness and bitterness is certainly large but it isn’t a function of catering to market inefficiencies.

Automakers now crave hitting 6000lbs because then it’s an industrial vehicle and you can write it off entirely under Section 179. It’s why your friends completely unsuccessful Ju Jitsu studio somehow needs a G Wagon, and Shaelynn’s candle business has a 4Runner. The modern palate is a writeoff that brewers seek out.

This is classic and an amazing IPA, no tax tricks or MPG games necessary. As big as it needs to be and nothing more.

You can watch the burn rate of hypestout factories as they go through the expected casking motions. A new brewery will have heavily adjuncted pie filling on draft until that first year clears. Then they can stammer and drop that first barrel aged offering.

The moves thereafter are as predictable as Capricorn malevolence. Next vanilla, and then some fruited version, then a litany of adjuncts that mirrors some dessert, finally the double and triple casking. Classic. Go take a Bourbon County core sample if you need to see how the stout sediment is layered.

Toppling Goliath just moved on from the paleolithic vanilla/bramble/tequila era and now the stouts walk on dry and and use tools in the form of double casked rye. This is Rye to Rye. It seems a bit Ryedundant. However, there is a change in the intensity and saturation unlike the bullshit bourbon world that does multiple casking to make up for the fact that their distillate is dogshit and age statements are pre-K at best.

This was the last beer that I drank in 2022 and it is easily one of the best. I don’t want to tip my hat to the shitlords who went to a NYE dinner just to pad their pockets with these resales. But it’s incredibly good. The 4.9 on Untappd might as well be carnival barker for the Duck Race Razzlers trying to pull six bills still. But it’s insanely tasty.

The bottle is raffle only and $100 so it has to be good. I don’t mean that like in a pleading way, it HAS to be. Assassin has one of the best consistencies and mouthfeel out of any barrel aged stout, it is focused, flawless roast and tollhouse chips. The rye imparts a gingerbread, caramel pecan sandie meets old fashioned heel strike.

The barrel is crushing like Donkey Kong. You have to love that saturated intensity of York peppermint patties, fondant, chocolate turtle cake, and See’s filling. You also have to love the holidays because you get mouth pounded with waves of cinnamon, nutmeg, a zucchini bread aspect and Panettone.

You can get kinda close with something like Firestone Walker Dreamwood but, this is exceptional, unique and immaculately executed. It’s grating that they keep delivering at this level.

Wisconsin gang rise up 🐄 🧀 @608brewing made some solid ba stouts, but like someone who just bought an ACR bushmaster, we always want to test that range.

The dunkel is better than the wheatwine and that pains me to say. It’s exactly what I have been craving on these drippy socal days. The carb is frothy and whips lovingly like a reluctant Fiver dominatrix. You get a smack of toasted pumpernickel, light bitterness, playful clove esters, and a biscuity Gardettos chip swallow. You can sit with pinnochio and watch him praise dunkels and that nose stays the same size.

The ba wheatwine isn’t as sweet or honey driven as the style often provides. There’s an ultra saturated cask profile that dominates like a sazerac meets pretzel croissant aspect.

The two compliment one another like how only one person in a relationship can be the online one. The other has to have like zero social media presence it’s the rules. The clean restrained dunkel keeps the excessive wheatwine in line. Crisp lager balances the sticky spirit soaked pathology of that wheat. Parents who send their toddler to day care can launder their feelings of guilt by calling it “school” or you can sit at home with that .08 BAC Wisconsin parenting. Your Milwaukee mileage may vary.

Parker’s Heritage Collection: the Shasta Heaven Hill BTAC that is a cask roulette every year. This year we have a “DOUBLE BARRELED” blend that is sitting at a tasteful $650 secondary. But how do them casks stack up?

PHC15 was my whiskey of the year last year and let me just get this out of the way: PHC16 is even better. It is a celebration of form and oak. If you know that stupid dipshit who consistently just gurgles “ERR JUST DRINK ELIJAH CRAIG BARREL PROOF, MY STEPKIDS DON’T TALK TO ME-” finally you can stuff this stave in their sour mash hole.

At the outset, a double barreled bourbon sounds like total marketing bullshit. Secondary casks exists almost exclusively to make up for age statements and a lack of complexity. Your friend who loves Angel’s Envy and all those tired Jefferson’s expressions can be safely ignored in all matters.

This is different. You get a 13 year old cask and a 15 year old cask mated, and one of the barrels basically has leather seats, literally. The level 3 char is almost a nod to PHC15 heavy char but you only get Level 3 char, which is barely enough to scorch my kindling.

Look at the dehydrated rehab house piss tones on this one. It is Death Valley sun tea. The nose is such a blast of gingerbread, top grain leather, lacquer, nutmeg and Pecan sandies. Taste is warm, bananas fosters, long dry cloves and lattice crust, with a tempered 130 proof exhale that makes you immediately lose credibility in domestic arguments.

Roko’s Basilisk is this idea that AI can get so advanced that it logs evidence of who didn’t support AI and punish them later. This is bourbon dipshits. You have to buy everything in the event that you speak ill of some cornwater that is coveted later. I covet this eggplant ok, don’t punish me cobdaddy.

I love how this shows its age, depth, a creamy warmth like fustian fabrics, but still stays in the pocket and doesn’t go all LS SWAP status like Bookers and Stagg variants. It’s the elegant power of a woman fencing with an oak epee.

This is the pinnacle of bourbon in 2022 you must try this one.

If you weren’t into craft beer in the early 2010s, it’s hard to explain what a massive whale these Funky Buddha bottles were. Now the idea of trading huge bottles for some fruited kettle sour seems quaint. It was the beginning of Floridaweiss and the progenitor of harrowing lactic consequences.

This has not only not aged well, it’s a dystopian acetic hellscape. Privileged people have dental insurance and this is how they self flagellate. The initial huff has a solvent and pool chemical acrid aspect that lets you know it’s been a long 11 years in that bottle.

Quinine protects against malaria but nothing protects against vengeful American wild ales left unchecked. The first taste is bracing like warheads left in seat cushions. All the fun of red wine vinegar with no summer salad. The fruit at this point is an absentee father and whatever sweetness remained left when the passionfruit went out for smokes.

This was one of like 50 bottles so at least we know this is a contained incident most people won’t endure. I paid $100 for this vial of pool chemicals to step on my cubes. The swallow is Southwest customer service and no vouchers are provided. You can feel the sides of your tongue contract and your tastebuds become ridged and embossed as it sucks the saliva out of every opening.

I’ve never had pure citric acid but this has to be approaching that meyer lemon event horizon.

We live in a privileged beer landscape now where even better beers can be overlooked. It’s important to reflect upon these lactic sleep paralysis demons from the past, to move beyond the florida snake oil, to seek absolution in drinkability.

My bicuspids may never recover.

Whenever I see a “cocktail inspired beer” a few bullshit alarms go off. It’s either a passion project where a brewer is trying to round peg/cask hole a beer into some flavor profile that’s wildly disparate. Like your tipa base will not taste like a boulevardier. It just won’t.

The other option is they have a cask that’s way too boozy and ethanol driven so they look at one another and see just how many orange peels and luxardo cherries they can pack into that disaster until it feels intentional.

I was skeptical of Smog as my Firestone ptsd went off from so many sbagliato inspired strong ales of the past. Then I remembered something. Smog used to make old fashioned out of baoe and they were incredible. Faith restored in this dubbel. It was like watching tv at your parents house with motion blur and no subtitles, a pang of old times.

Ask dad to find the piece of paper with the crumpled 32 character wifi password, we are going old fashioned. The dubble is distinctively beer and amazingly Belgian in execution. The head has incredible sustain and bone of the additives undermine the sheeting.

The natural esters from the yeast pop with a spice and gingerbread that makes it questionable where this blast of orange bitters came from. Its less grand marnier and more maraschino in the swallow.

In parasite Eve the third birthday there’s this insane kill bill style ending where your character both dies and turns into a 12 year old girl. That’s how I feel about this old fashioned beer. It doesn’t align so closely with the cocktail that it feels derivative. However it’s such a meaningful and novel riff on a dubbel (!) base that it’s legitimately impressive.

It’s like learning a Pagani is powered by some old Mercedes 6 liter. It’s quite the transformation. The swallow is tight and bereft of sugars. This make it seem even more like a cocktail but the result might just make you want the actual cocktail.

Start crushing these and wishing everyone Happy Honda days, if they reek of bourbon and reply “we celebrate toyotathon in our house” you shake that neighbors hand and compare parole stories. An old fashioned December to remember.

BALTIC PORTER HOLIDAY SHOWDOWN.

Two DDB favorites square off in the BalticTogon to battle for the favor of Katherine the Great. Stouts too sugary? Try Baltic Porters. Lagers not strong or complex enough? TBP. You want something that will be delicious and stay on drafy because no one will order it? TBP.

Barrique finds a way to make everything more complicated, usually with delicious yields. Foeders and barrels involved on styles that people already were afraid of, you know it. This is interesting because it says that it was lagered in barrels for 10 months, so I am wondering if it was held at cold ferm temps but like, ON THE OAK? Boats and Finland better been involved.

This one is dryer, leaner, more roasted almond meets Good and Plenty type of execution. Barrel is more muted and gentle but provides a praline warmth to the thin frame. The swallow goes from watery to warming in the strangest twist since Bionic Commando finding out that his cybernetic arm is actually his wife. Like why was her soul in your arm. That type of porter.

Fox Farm play things more traditional. Almost too traditional. They craft styles that people have outright forgotten about, or that get homebrew clubs all HORNT up. Their labels don’t even steal IP or perpetuate misogyny so what’s even the point. The Baltic porter is bigger and more non-standard.

Big Jack’s Abbey energy out front here, sticky caramel on the waft with bonded leather. The honey is metabolized out but leaves a trace sort of banana aspect lingering. It’s sweeter and hotter than I anticipated without being corny and predictable like someone who claps when the plane lands. This is a connecting flight to Fargo what are you even doing.

Ultimately, this depends on what you want more cleanliness or ambition. Both do it well but I found I could drink more of the Barrique but the Fox Farm was more engaging. It’s like a Baltic Hallmark movie in my mouth where we return home and black patent malt teaches my palate about the true meaning of lager Christmas. We always knew she would end up with him.

Oshkosh Wisconsin is a great place to peddle beers, but a strange place to offer up double barrel 20% abv barleywines. On the one hand you have a creaky old German town covered in saw dust with degenerate undergrads throwing up Truly in the streets. One point for beer. On the other hand, what orange vest dudes are crushing fusel fireballs after a long shift? Minus one point for barleywine.

Big Willy Style is too big for me. Babe, I like the small barrels the big ones hurt. At the outset canning a 20% abv barleywine and selling it to the biggest beer consuming state in the nation is patent negligence. Like what do you think is going to happen.

The craziest part to this massive ethanol waft is the press copy boldly asserts “a nearly non-existent alcohol burn on the finish.” It’s like they already knew. You get Teddy Grahams, some currant, and sticky Riesin candy. This is all under the shadow of absolutely crushing alcohol waft. Like when she tells you “oh my dad would show up and randomly give us gifts” you know booze was an underlying factor in that Disney TV upbringing.

I’ve had plenty of Bruery beers in this realm so I braced my obliques for the impact. I was not ready for the Twix and George T Stagg rounds that would rip through my chest. It’s vaporous. You can’t smoke around your teku. The exhale feels like Rolo teamed up with Vicks vapor rub.

There’s an economic concept called the Resource Curse where third world countries are absolutely destroyed when something valuable is discovered within their borders. This firey kick to the solar plexus is dangerous for Wisconsin residents. Sure you get the blessing of barrel complexity, whoppers and layered residual drag. You also get dudes in Carhartt falling into Lake Winnebago. Power and Maltsponsibility.

I enjoyed DBBWS but the spicy prune juice is not worth the squeeze. Your night is over. Someone just drove a Pontiac Sunfire into the baby overalls factory. It’s about to be negative 25 degrees and people will be left indoors with these cans.

There’s a reason New Glarus floods the state with Spotted Cow and lagers. The cheeseheads cannot be trusted with this much canned irresponsibility.

At the end of every year there’s always a deluge of cardinal lists. BEST BEER. WORST BEER. “Most Pithy London Ale III Beer” “Least Acetic Flanders Red” we all know the tropes.

Meads end up catching high praise for how sticky, viscous, jammy, expressive, barrel driven, or nut laden they are. End of the year lists never focus on that classic unsung virtue: disappearance.

How fast can you simply make something disappear? This seems to be what Live Oak’s entire business model is centered around. Sing is aptly named. I can drill this pleasant, uncomplicated outing in 3 to 4 minutes.

Sometimes I cannot even finish a mead at all on my own. This isn’t me having a baby fruit snacks and Gogurt palate. If you load up honey water with cashews, concentrated fruit and vanilla beans I will get the spirit of the beverage really fast.

Song is more of a soft grenadine run through the raspberry fields. It’s weird that this is no water added because the gentle cherry 7up and herbless aperol approach makes it feel less concentrated. The ABV is full ghost mode. You just get cracked in the midsection with berry stains and you’re on the ground before you know what in the Ulmo Blossom happened.

It’s not illegal to take someone to your room to watch Vine compilations, but it will be over quickly and no one will tell that story. Sing doesn’t need attention. It’s classier than people who try to trade away puppies on Facebook Marketplace, but it’s still salt of the earth.

Ulmo Blossom honey gives a ton of melon and pineapple. Here with low acidity raspberry it works to lighten things further. In Symphony of the Night, you can get these “SECRET BOOTS” that make Alucard like a single pixel taller. It makes no sense but it’s so fulfilling. It wont make any lists, but it shows a degree of whimsical care from a design perspective.

Sing is a fun, focused, one dimensional melomel that I drilled faster than most bottles of recent memory. There needs to be an end of the year list for those silent supporters that float us from life event to situationships quietly, without judgment or contemplation

Flyover states rejoice we have an Iowa Hypejuice DOUBLE HEADER.

Right out the gates, the hoppy bombers remain so fulfilling and well done in a way that I haven’t experienced with the ubiquitous cans distributed to like 30 states now.

A decade in, the spicy Assassin has seen everything from the nightmarish Tequila version to the eternally coveted double barrel bottle that still moves for $700.00 secondary. Just this week TG announced a RYE double barrel assassin that’s sure to murder some domestic partnerships when partners are dragged to Decorah for a New Years Eve dinner.

TG creates MFT job security.

Let’s take a look at two other Assassin variants: Vanilla and Bramble. Vanilla Assassin used to be a ghostwhale with like a 15 bottle Saboe special release and was resold for $3000. Sitting at a 4.8 on Untappd, this had big beans to scrape and I am proud to say that it completely filled my wafflecone. The body shows restraint but not that Central Waters “ribcage and hipbones” execution. Never excessive, the platform provides just enough residual sugar for your SSRIs to work but not enough that you can’t have sex. That perfect depression strike zone.

You get the base beer and enough space for the kitkat/whoppers to let the wafers grind. It never becomes some oppressive Dreyers orgy. You aren’t sticky. It’s genial like when your friend asks you to blow into this tube so he can start his car. Neighborly.

The bramble is not great. It takes produce and burns out the barrel clutch just grinding through chocolate vvrrr BLUEBERRY vrrr brownie vrrr BLACKBERRY HOTEL JAM. If you like how Goose Island just destroys any cask complexity with Smuckers cunnilingus, then prep your preserves. It isn’t one dimensional but it takes Assassin and makes it worse.

The novelty is fine, you can do worse. It like moving the Elf on a Shelf when you only have partial custody, I get the spirit of it, but it just makes me kinda sad. It’s an uncomfortable merger. Uncrustables with Nutella just feel like double sugar and maybe I guess Iowans don’t want universal health care for this berry reason.

“Pass the bean but spare the bush” Decoricus, 14:31