Category Archives: beer

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Midnight Sun Barfly, The Only Time That You Can Brag About Having Flies

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Alright, let’s get this shit out of the way: this beer is not worth seeking out. Let me clarify, it is an amazing stout and you will likely rock a half mast alerection after trying it but, what the market is asking for is simply not worth it. Sure, maybe you live in Alaska and got in on the ground floor, but this 1000ish bottle release is too rich for the blood of the rest of us non-Palins. We all know that I love Arctic Devil, Berserker was solid, so what now of this strange offspring? Let’s take it to the frigid north to investigate Seward’s Folly in today’s review.

More like tradefly. How many bottles of this actually left Alaska remains to be seen.

Midnight Sun Brewing Co.
Alaska, United States
American Double / Imperial Stout | 12.60% ABV

A: This has a bit of a lighter slicker sheen to it than the massive stouts you see on this site getting tick on the reg. It looks nice with a frothy blackness that imparts a gentle coating that smiles at you like an amiable concierge, despite your ignoble intentions. You get a bit of crackling bubbles but nothing to whip out a post card for. The mocha coloring seems on point for the style but largely predictable “did you want pink bubbles?” no STFU.

PROTIP: If you feed this to a chimpanzee, he will probably toss his guts on your wall.

S: This nose starts with a black and mild cigar waft like a vacant strip club and melds into a vacant chocolate factory which is equally disturbing. Next up I get some tire, eraser, and sticky Charles Shaw red wine that recent divorcees are so fond of. Again, this just doesn’t strike on all my favorite stoutzones, my stoutrogenous zones remain unfired.

T: This has a much better taste but again, nothing to sell your ’94 Neon Espresso to obtain. This starts with a huge merlot aspect that lets you know, ok, good job barfly you were in a barrel. Then it continues its Community College Drama major and seeks attention via the route of smoked chocolate and sticky tobacco. That’s not the way to win the love of an absentee father. I enjoyed the light stickiness but ultimately this wasn’t what I had spent 8 months busting ale sessions to. It’s like meeting Skrillex in real life and realizing that he is just that fat kid who played D.J. on Roseanne.

You want to like it. You really do. But ultimately, the whole endeavor feels forced and you end up cleaning up the results.

M: This is swift and flows like that river in Huckleberry Finn, I forget which one. The chocolate is drying and the port/red wine aspects come off and stumbling blocks rather than assets to this process. You know when Logan busts out of the weapon X tank dripping wet? That’s how I feel after busting my cock to get this thing and it is a smoky, thin, red wine tasting little monster. It was not bad by any means but, at this price, you expect superchargers or at least a NAV system.

D: This is exceptionally drinkable, hell, you might even be able to trick girls into drinking stouts if they hang out in Santa Monica and enjoy deep juicy red wines and Weeds or some nonsense. Red wine sticks out like a sore labia in this beer and I can’t get past the imposing nature of the adjunct elements. Berserker was all coffee, ok fine, now this beer goes apeshit with a BCBG female grape aspect. It is good, let’s get that clear. Rag and Bone makes great clothes, but both are complete ripoffs in the end.

Is it good? Yes. Is it worth real life? No.

Narrative: Devin Griggs was the most avid fan of YooHoo Chocolate drinks this side of the Prime Meridian. He had sampled the most rare varietals of the cacao potation and nodded in disapproval at the rarest gems. “Watery, chocolate afterthoughts, it is like The Unbearable Lightness of Being in chocolate drink format” he opined to the throngs of 45 people who were also into this shit. Madeline, his assistant surveyed his impressive YooHoo cellar with a calm fortitude as he presented the legendary YooHoo b54 from 1961 with the notorious discontinued “racist label.” In the calm of his den he surveyed the empty bottles and shook his head in disapproval. “Sir?” Madeline poked her head in from the rich teak doors. “Look at these vintages Maddy, each milky discharge a potent entry in the pages of history,” Devin stated as he took a deep pull of his milky chocolate treat, 1995 vintage. “Do you ever feel like it is all a fool’s errand? Just a shot into the dark, the stockpiling of inherently consumable chattel? Perhaps it is a fleeting grasp at immortality in a fading medium, like the lactose itself.” Madeline shook her head and leaned intently upon stacked cases of 2002 YooHoo, the alleged infected bottles. “Sir, ultimately, a hobby is a fleeting outlet and a fading grasp at value in a world of inherent scorn. . .or it is a way to get your D S’ed in a niche market.” Devin licked his milk moustache and nodded in agreement, at Milk Chocolate Drink conventions he had gotten his DS’ed more than Nintendo.

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Alpine Bad Boy Double Imperial Pale Ale, Bad Boys Go To Their Respective Hop Rooms.

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This beer always comes up when the best Double IPAs in the world are discussed. Hell, it is on most top 100 lists and constantly spars with Ephraim and Citra. Let’s stop pussyfooting around and figure this shit out once and for all, how good is the crowning DIPA glory from San Diego’s finest hop masters? We shall see.

This particular 64oz growler, I did not skull to my dome piece, so my judgment was not impaired. Better than Hill Farmstead Ephraim? Sadly no. But still amazing. There, I said it.

Alpine Bad Boy, 9.5% abv, Double IPA

A: This has a radiant golden glow to it with a great clarity like majestic apple juice. The lacing looks like an abandoned haunted house and these a tons of webs all up in this piece. This be looking mad antiquated. The carbonation from the growler is solid and sticky throughout. This looks dangerous and somehow session able.

This beer has an amazing salad meets hop oil converging with pineapple and bunny musk going on.

S: The smell even on opening the growler is relentless. The hop presence detonates like pinecones galvanized all up in your dome piece. There is a grassy pineapple to it with some herbal grapefruit. I would deem this 60/40 herbal to fruit which is a solid balance. Hop Wallop needs to take some notes. This has more balance than a Chinese gymnast with an inner ear infection.

T: This is exactly what Alpine does so. Damn. Well. It just delivers a huge initial sweetness that fades into a freshly cut grassiness that makes you feel all elementary school for a second until, bam, honey sweetness that fades. This is like the more tactful version of Hopslam. A friend you can confide secrets in, a hoppy buddy you can take places and know he wont talk about when someone touched your no no. That kind of friend.

The scope of the undertaking is impressive, wait till you see the taste.

M: The mouthfeel is impossibly light. It is Pale Ale thin, imparts a huge herbal character that swirls a maple cape and fades into a loveable sweet note. It is David Blaine ass hop work. It leaves my mouth all astounded but wanting more. I suppose a growler is both an appropriate and inappropriate serving size, for obvious reasons. This will take a serious prestige amongst Ephraim and Citra. To be clear, this is far superior to Exponential Hoppiness in the way that Nightcrawler is superior to Colossus. It is just someone I would rather hang out with on a regular basis. This is nimble and bad ass, not some lumbering asshole who always asks you to save his sister from a tractor.

D: Holy jeez, this is the Live Oak of DIPA’s which is to say its drink ability is off the charts for the ABV and the complex character of the hop profile. I almost want to run my own tests to ascertain if this has any more than 4% abv but, the old liver test is sufficient. The fact that this is not in bottles has allegedly saved CalTrans millions in roadside clean ups. So there’s always that.

With a growler in tow, you can go on some epic San Diego adventures where you will no doubt lose your shoes and your entryway will be soaked in the morning.

Narrative: “Well? Did you find anything? All OF THE OPENINGS ARE SEALED!” Tarynn cried with the utmost agitation, Mark felt that a reference to ‘that’s what she said’ would be not apropos in the case of a spelunking disaster. “WE ARE GOING TO DIE DOWN HERE!” Tarynn exclaimed while running her fingers through her thinning hair. She fell to her knees in desperation and clutched the halogen lantern desperately. “We can’t be below the water table, so therefore, the sediment should push up some sustainable filtered water and, potentially some veget-” Mark tripped over a thick tuft of underground foliage. “What in the-” he discontinued his sentence in that staccato manner that characters in situation comedies do, despite not being interrupted. “HECK” he finished, but so much later that it didn’t seem canon with his previous sentence. “What is it Mark?” Tarynn called out. There was a fresh pool of water seeping through the floor but it was fully entwined by sticky, vinuous hop plants. The smell was overwhelming. “This-” he did it again, “is our only chance of survival.” The two nodded gravely and began to suck from the pools the sticky water and push raw hop flowers into their gullets. “If only we-” Mark declared before falling asleep. The geological team found them 8 days later, high out of their minds on raw hop flowers. Mark’s sentences have since been correc-

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Sam Adams 1995 Triple Bock, A Beer That Is Older Than Your Girlfriend, Sicko.

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Ah finally a beer that is older than your girlfriend. Let’s mix it up a bit with a rare gem from earlier days: Triple Bock. Ok, transport yourself back to 1995 for a moment, you’re listening to Spin Doctors, buying Beyond Baggy Jeans at Millers Outpost- shit is going pretty well right? Well not for craft beer. Unless adjunct lagers got you all half mast, craft beer was not as it is today. This beer was an innovative testament to show the world what beer COULD BE. These days, it is more a testament that COULD does not always mean SHOULD. Let’s hit on this geriatric gem in today’s Elder Abuse review.

This beer is like an ICP fan: strange while young and abhorrent when it matures.

Boston Beer Company (Samuel Adams)
Massachusetts, United States
American Strong Ale | 17.50% ABV

A: This beer comes in a weird little 7.5oz cobalt bottle, but don’t worry, you aren’t getting ripped off, you wont want much more than 2 ounces of this beast. So it pours our like spent canola oil with potato skin burned fragment sludge bobbing gracefully in the wake. This is what Lake Tahoe is gonna look like in the year 2031. There is a murky sludge aspect to it with teenage chunks of malty char chunks suspended in the medium. Spoiler alert: there is no carbonation. This beer looks like bottled felch.

Just keep sipping on these, you’ll be safe because no one will want to hang out with you.

S: The smell is like the tire aisle at Costco. Then you get this deep cigar muskiness from the Golden Age that is like rummaging through old dresses at Good Will. Next comes a putrid wave of Kikoman soy sauce olfactory rape. It is like your nose is doing lines of Dragon Roll. Finally a sickening sweetness like asian candies where you don’t know exactly what it is, but you’re afraid because you’re pretty sure there’s durian or shellfish in there.

T: Oh man, this is where they really slam your cock in a car door. This initially tastes like pencil graphite, burnt gristle, and Skoal dip cup spit. You get a lingering sweetness and a chocolate presence that pushes its hand to the glass but the death sentence is clear. There’s aspects of Lowe’s peat and gardening dirt, pennies, and tonguing an open coldsore that imparts an iron rich maltiness. Finally the oxidation sets in and you get this dryness that tastes like used breakdancer cardboard and Filipino sweat.

Sure, this might not be the best beer I have ever had. That’s a class composed of (every beer I Have ever Had – 1 ) I can deal with that.

M: The mouthfeel slops and sways like the contents of a lava lamp but the solution rides upon a hot layer of booze everywhere it goes. It is like Iceman, how he used to tear ass on that ice bridge, except this bridge is made of composted solids, tar, and the blood of Owlbears. While I was finishing my final refreshing sips, I got a huge chunk of black malt on my tongue, which usually means that an angel just got its wings. I pressed it between my fingers and it looked like I just got booked by LAPD. Which is so appropriate because what apt foreshadowing for a beer that will get you really hammered and make you feel like you just went down on a Cal Trans worker?

D: This beer could not be less drinkable if it were a gas. This plays an important part in beer history but, the sheer importance as an extreme beer does not a good ale make. I am glad to have tried it but it makes me longingly look at the state of today’s beer market with love. One great use for this beer would be to give it to your kids at age 11 and be like “YOU WANT BEER! THIS IS BEER! NOW FINISH THE WHOLE THING AND LOVE IT.” Scare them straight before they turn into a mesomorphic asshole like me.

This beer is barely legal.

Narrative: Walter Murkmire was a regular fixture in the Boston Common. He trudged covered in muck and melted tar and people avoided their gaze if only to avoid thinking how someone became so caked in the dregs of society. “DONT FORGET TO ROTATE THEM TIRES!” he would scream at insouciant pigeons in the early morning with petulant refuse dripping off of cloak. Some Boston fables said that he used to work at the Boston Tire Company and lost it when they took his Z rated patent from him. Now like an urban Lazarus, he found the most fragrant and odious piles to rise from, each day, like a putrid trash phoenix. “1995! The tires toll! Not for you, but for US ALL!” he called menacingly to a disintered hot dog vendor. How was a guy supposed to earn a living with a local Baron haunting the park smelling like burnt hair and indian food? A 17 year old boy looked on across the park and caught his penetrating gaze. Murkmire produced a piece of filthy California Roll and smiled a knowing grin. His lineage was secure in this lad, drawn from the mire in 1995, but the clinic would never admit such a thing.

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Blueberry madness

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In addition to being a generally acrimonious beer curmudgeon, I also home brew. I know, I know, that’s like the sweaty neckbeard pushing his Babylon 5 fan fiction on the masses, stay with me now. Anyway, I am brewing a blueberry lambic that I just racked to the secondary, check it:

Purple Drank.

Inb4 “What vintage is that Jello Biafra CD” or other hiarious background comments.

More reviews to come, still loading slugs up in that Chiquita banana.

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Cigar City Jai Alai, A Game of High Speed Balls and Super Alpha Hops

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Here’s something that always seems to poke its hoppy head into beer boxes that I receive as extras. Either this is falling all off of shelves in Florida or someone loves me. I would assume the former. Enough jibber jabber about states with electoral issues, let’s open this hop IED in today’s Hop Locker.

A game of precision, balls, and severe injury, IPA DRINKING.

Cigar City, Jai Alai, IPA, 7.5% abv

A: This beer seemed pretty tame out of the glass, no radiant Marcelous Wallace glow, no Ark of the Covenant face melting hops, just a nice gentle IPA, here to stay a moment and spin some yarns. It is a mild orange with yellowing. Nice carbonation and some haunted house webbing on the glass. Only, no one touches your no no.

Sure, I have seen some amazing IPAs in my day but, my jimmies are in a default state upon seeing and smelling this offering, they arent unrustled, I guess.

S: Strangely, I don’t get a huge acidity, sure there’s some obligatory mild orange zest but mostly it smells sweet and crackery like a warm cornbread. Not par for the course in IPAs at all. Not bad, just like a watered down version of Hop Slam with more honey.

T: This doesn’t have a huge citrus profile to it, it goes a route of middle ground non-offensiveness. It begins with a nice hop bite that retreats like an abused terrier, giving you a bit of pine and grassiness and, that’s about it. The honey notes provide a solid maltiness that washes away quickly.

This beer flexes hard in the club and lets you know that is shit gets cutty, it has your back like Warrior hops.

M: The mouthfeel is crisp and light and lends to the session ability of this beer. It isn’t as filling as a Tim Allen stand up special, but unlike that, you aren’t bloated afterwards. No hop resins set up shop and it is like that tame worker who comes in, does his 9-5 and doesn’t ask any questions.

D: This is where this beer shines. Maybe it just isn’t hot enough in LA but, this beer seems like it would be great to drink while putting some sick flame decals from Pep Boys on my 93 Monte Carlo, you know, Florida shit. I’d love to knock a few of these back and then enter a voting booth, maybe build a home in the way of recurrent storms; we’ve all been there. But in all seriousness, this is a solid IPA, not bad in any respect just not that citrus bomb that I love to rub along my gumline.

It is incredibly familiar, maybe a little too familiers.

Narrative: Roger Bellows had a serious dilemma. Did he abandon his lifelong dream of owning an apiary farm and propose to the girl of his dreams? Or follow his dreams and hope that, amongst those bees he would find true love. “ROGER! I said just pick one, come on!” Kaitlynn called to him down the halogen white aisle. He picked the highest grade honey he could find and shuddered at the agave nectar section, “but how will I explain this to her?” he ruminated, glancing furtively to the bee set in amber on his ring. “I JUST….I LOVE FUCKING BEES!” he cried to her in the frozen foods section. “Ex- excuse me?” she stammered. “Well, not fucking bees, I love, I just love them. I need you to know that.” Kaitlynn rocked heel to toe and furled her brow like a worn button box. “Ok? And, I love you HONEY!” her writhing index finger left something to be wanted of a stinger as her pantomime fell flat. “Oh great, puns, my DREAM IS A PUN TO HER!” “Yeah, I’m all buzzed about, it,” he trailed off looking at the many varieties of Cool Whip. “God, you are such a bitter, forgettable drone, WHY CANT YOU STAND UP FOR YOURSELF!?” His amber bee ring dug into his palm when Kaitlynn cried “ROGER! Three things of honey? Come on!”

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Re-up the flows

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Alright I have been slacking, I will pump out some hot new yeastbeats soon, in the interim peep out what I have been sippin on lately, don’t worry, unlike Judy Winslow in season 3 of Family Matters, I won’t abruptly disappear.

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Barrel aged partridge with the Louis Vuitton belt buckle when it is keeping all the heat strapped.

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Bourbon barrel hunaphu, for when you want that cinnamon ancho to rock some BALs.

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Hill Farmstead Norma, next level lactic maneuver.

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Stone QM Virgin Oak El Camino Unreal, No peppercorn stems no fig seeds no sticks. Put your BALs on the 78 freeway for an Unreal experience.

Enough beer porn, reviews will be back soon, cancel that Welbutrin prescription and flip that to some Valtrex instead because DDB is about to make it nasty.

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Green Flash Double Stout, When a Single Stout Isn’t Enough, Double That Shit Down.

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Green Flash, ah, just the name feels like the deal of the century. They nestle shoulders with Lagunitas warmly and provide amazing beers are incredibly affordable prices. I love this brewery and they consistently roll out great gems for everyone to enjoy, not just elitist aleholes with boxes littering their homes. So let’s double down some stouts in today’s review.

This beer is stunning and this shit didn’t even go into a barrel. . .that one is coming soon. . .FORESHADOWING TO THE MAXIMUM.

Green Flash Double Stout
8.8% abv

A: This is a welcoming blackness with some deep brown hues. There is a fantastic huge carbonation and lingering forestry of lacing that webs over itself and sticks with aggression. The entire beer is incredibly well done and surprising, not in an elitist way, but come on for the price this beer delivers more than some of the overhyped brewery only releases. I am super serial.

I need MORE OF THIS STOUT. All the time.

S: This is incredible for a beer that is not barrel aged. It presents a huge drying coffee, burnt wood, and 85% cocoa chocolate profile. But with a smoothness like a Feist sustained note. Deep, dark, but entreating. There’s a dryness and a crispy brownie batter aspect to it.

T: The taste is very simple. It imparts a huge burnt dryness that tastes like the dregs of a great espresso that melts into a chocolate profile with that bitterness that is common to very dark chocolate and then a splash of water, and it is over. It is a chocolate splash mountain of flavor and Brier Rabbit barely has time to say anything, edgewise or otherwise.

With something this dark and powerful, shit gets dangerous real quickly.

M: This is swift with a medium coating but a solid coating for about 2 seconds and then it scurries off. It is almost like they want you to drink the entire 4 pack in a single sitting. WELL GREEN FLASH, I see your challenge and respectfully decline, I have other matters to attend to. The end taste of the coating has a sort of a burned black licorice that is interesting, but fleeting. This is a swift little stout but even the most capricious Clipper spies a Galeon on the horizon. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

D: This is incredibly drinkable if, and only if 1) you enjoy coffee, a lot or 2) you cannot wait for baked good to be done and you like baker’s chocolate, a lot. If you want a huge filling stout, this isn’t the one. This is a deep dark oaky coffee ninja that imparts and retreats. Toffee shurikens are likely involved.

Smootheness coupled with an integrated alcohol profile makes me not know what the hell is going on before I knew it.

Narrative: “Another one, this is a series, to be sure.” Detective Branning spit angrily upon the ground and clenched his jaw. “Another chocolate store robbed blind, in an instant, with the insides gutted and replaced with…shitty coffee.” “Yes sir, it just doesn’t add up.” his assistant, Detective Willoughby added. Willoughby’s glasses slide down the bridge of his nose as he chewed on the end of his pen contemplatively. “You know, if someone wants chocolate that bad, why go through the trouble of replacing it with all this shitty coffee? Just don’t add up boss.” Branning nodded and looked into the bag’s of Seattle’s Best, then into a barrel of Yuban. “Someone is fucking with us, it’s a calling card, he’s letting us know that he can get away with it.” Branning ejaculated and flipped his notebook shut. Meanwhile, in the alley adjacent to the knocked off candy store, a lone Peruvian man garbed in all black shook his head morosely. “No detective Branning, this is far from a game, and it has only just begun,” he chortled as his diminutive 5’2” frame chortled with menacing laughter. “IN THE LAND OF SURPLUS CROPS, THE MAN WITH THE CHOCOLATE IS KING.” Branning took one long look at the crime scene and said, “well Willougby, whoever did this is either really sick, or was raised in a place that doesn’t understand relative product value, OR BOTH.” He kicked a lone coffee bean and watched it slide into a pool of melted chocolate.

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Cigar City, Either/Or Black Ale, EITHER This Beer is Awesome, OR Kierkegaard is Wrong.

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Cigar City either blindsides me with a gem, or you open something like Vuja De and don’t know what the fuck to make of it. This beer falls in the former category and my only complaint is the old amorphous “black ale” title that initially put me off to this. Let’s call this what it is: an awesome imperial stout er…maybe a triple imperial porter…fuck. I don’t know it is EITHER a stout OR this is a shitty pun.

Oh, ok. Either and Or are the same beer. Ba dum tish. Dichotomies about.

Cigar City, Either/Or,
Black Ale, 11.5% Abv

A: What a novel gimmick, two beers, the same beer. Sounds like an expensive bottle labeling maneuver. I was expecting some earth shattering Soren Kierkegaard business, but this wasn’t particularly mind blowing…AT FIRST. This has a kinda watery look to it of freshly pressed ink from a baby squid. Murky but shiny. Mild lacing and medium carbonation. It’s like a halfway home for abused porters and baby stouts.

You can enjoy huge black ales and get super dreeze, heck, enjoy nature, just don’t be a dbag when you take it to the 11% abv dangerzone.

S: There is a Huge hop profile, wood, oak, nice black licorice, and a toasted maltiness. It is like a low-cal version of Hunaphu’s. Low is relative, I GUESS. Actually it is more like a more svelte blacker Huna with some smoothe cocoa swagger.

T: This has a great chocolate/anise taste to it that it sweet but with a nice bitterness to it, without being medicinal. It’s like when you were a kid and had too many delicious Flintstones vitamins, only chocolate and tobacco flavored, and no diarrhea. Not yet at least. WE SHALL SEE.

Discover an amazing black ale, realize it is sold 3000 miles away. Shed manly tears.

M: This has a nice coating and mild stickiness to it that washes away but leaves a little something behind, like a crafty clingy first date that wants you to think about her again. YOUR TRICKS WONT WORK ON ME. Ok well I sought it out again so maybe those tricks worked, who knows? I would gladly go after this again.

D: This has a cool hybrid drink ability to it and is very delicious. Overall the complexity isn’t overwhelming but it makes it all the more appealing. Plus in the 12oz format you can come and go as you please, no need to be a deatbeat dad about your black ales, leaving them all around town. You can gently nurse them and pick up another at your leisure.

I don’t know, what the fuck, is going on.

Narrative: “And that’s how you fit 22 slavs in a phone booth!” Yurgis exclaimed with his own eastern European sort of aplomb. “Yes, er uh, thank you for that Yurgis, Mr. Chalmers, Yurgis is our exchange student and he sure does have an INTERESTING SENSE of humor, pass the peas please sweetie.” Walter succinctly stated to his supervisor. This family dinner would decide the fate of his career for the next half decade, if only his disheveled ukranian house guest would keep quiet. Mr. Chalmbers was the new CFO of Texodyne, a chemical manufacting plant whose operations were largely based out of Uzbekistan, apparently a locale that Yurgis had plenty to say about. “And when the streets run red with the blood of the nonbeliev-” “ok ok ok, thank you Yurgis.” It wasn’t that he was particularly bad or dark, he was actually kinda sweet in his own third world sort of way. Most people just had a tough time looking past his penetrating darkness. “Good and bye Mr. Chalm-bers, I want for to make love to your daughter in soon time, we will be good friends!” The family hung their heads at the prospect of another 5 years without a raise.

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Funky Buddha No Crusts, Pack This in Your Child’s Lunch, Crazy Trading Power At Recess

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Do you like peanut butter? How about sticky jelly? You like being drunk? Well here is the solution for you, drunken PB and J explosion. I had this beer on two occassions, last June it was amazing, last January, it was like peanut butter Consecration and half the bottle erupted. In the interests of fairness, I will review the amazing first foray. Drink those Funky Buddha bottles early, guize, srsly.

Who knows, maybe your shining face will appear on this very illustrious beer website as an alecreeper. One can only dream.

The Funky Buddha Lounge & Brewery
Florida, United States
American Brown Ale | 6.00% ABV

A: This beer had a nice fluffy appearance and great transparency to it with lucid brown hues throughout with amber at the edges. There’s a tame stickiness to it like a turbid glass of sticky chocolate milk.

PB and J beer? Next level ale maneuver. Fucking smart.

S: This is bizarre through and through. It has a deep peanut smell to it. Seriously. It smells like a burnt peanut/walnut with some oiliness to it. There is a grape skin element to it as well. It smells like an uncrustable.

T: This will be incredible easy: this is a pureed peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That is all that needs to be said. A grape juiciness is imparted in the middle with a huge dry peanut finish. I cant believe that I just typed that but yes, it is a peanut and grape beer.

This beer reaches for new heights and scores hard in the paint. Peanut butter alegasm dunking on fools.

M: It is light and lingers gently with a peanut oils finish. There is a huge amount of sediment in the bottom of the glass. It washes away clean and tastes incredible. I have no style guidelines to base this on but its is just simply amazing.

D: I have no idea how that they did this but it is incredibly offbeat and amazing. This is my introduction to this bizarre brewery and I am incredibly impressed. I feel like I could drink a ton of this, in the same way that I weighed 120 lbs in 5th grade. I love PBnJ sammies. Hands down.

I am content, but I want this many more of these.

Narrative: The Ukraine Gulag was oppressive and cold. The winters were harsh and provided little reprieve to its prisoners. Fyodor broke granite slabs in the dry cold winds day in and day out. The prisoners would have no hope were it not for one thing: the smackerels. Sergeyevich, the local lifer had developed an incredible knack for taking the hard tack, provisions and crafting delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from them. The prisoners bit delightfully into the sticky messes with careless abandon. “To the devil with the proletariat masses who keep us within these walls brother Sergey, for a single bit of your smackerels, I would brave the plains of the Gobi desert TWICE OVER!” An overseeing magistrate rapped his cane hatefully on the metal railing twice and the prisoners meekly demurred. “for your jelly…I will live on.” The prisoners nodded in concurrence. Sergey raised a single palm and sagely advised: “I don’t think you are ready for this jelly. No Alexey, you are not ready for this jelly.” He exhaled with indolence and continued to smash granite slabs, looking out upon the icy plains.

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Avery Maharaja Double IPA, Hoppy Kisses from a Stern Sultan

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In the days of hop bombs, this old warhead was a standard in my arms department. Back then, hop oils were a sticky libation and upping the pine was a sign of strength and endurance. Ah the late 2000’s were a crazy time. Anyway, here’s a throwback to hoppier times.

Ah those good old herbal gems from yesterdays before I was boiling Hill Farmstead on a spoon in an alley.

Brewing Company
Colorado, United States
American Double / Imperial IPA | 10.30% ABV

A: It has a pale amber look to it, or very dark yellow depending on the hue you see, similar to most imperials, but with a bit less carbonation, perhaps that was due to my pour. The lacing looks nice and has a pillowy lacing to the edge of the glass.

If you drink powerful, ultra hoppy beers, give up on girlfriend dreams and prepare to enjoy life in the friendzone. Skyrim still loves you.

S: I smelled this aroma from over 3 feet away, the hop profile is overwhelming. when you get into the mix of it its a cascade of various elements, sweetness, but with a lemony followup, a bit herbal, but nothing exceptionally bittering that makes you think of juniper or the ilk

T: Wow, where to start, first the warmth of the alcohol is nestled between a cacauphony of cascading tastes, it is present but takes a back seat like a patient master, waiting for his minions to dispatch until the final cleaning swallow. Mixed metaphors aside, the first taste is a sweet candy apple hop finish that quickly sets in to a deep bitter hoppiness, foresty, verdant, and kudzu? viney? it feels like a fresh camping trip is the best way to describe this. There’s almost a zucchini zest, a strange unifying element of herbal tastes on the finish that makes it a bit intimidating, but very satisfying.

If you don’t like hoppy beers, you are failing at the beer game. There’s more to life than lambics and sticky RIS action.

M: The mouthfeel is as expected, not too malty, with a crazy character for the alcohol and hops to duke it out in the thin canvas. The mouthfeel is nothing exceptional, but considering there is a complex battle for sweet and bitter being fought in the foreground, it hardly loses points in this area. I would like several, however, I dont feel that I would comfortably enjoy more than a bomber in a night without moving on to other pursuits, simply due to the overture of minor, major, and mixolydian notes playing in concert at the same time, it is fulfilling yet exhausting.

D: very drinkable. the finish is fast and ends abruptly, you ruminate on it a moment and you are left with a piney citrus taste wondering what happened to the various elements taking place moments before. I enjoy this beer, but it is certainly not a session beer and its abv 10.5% certainly precludes it (well depending on the demons you are escaping) from being so. Enjoyable, but not one to keep in the stable as a hackneyed coach.

I like juicy hops, what the fuck is this pine I don’t even-

Narrative: “Place my equipage on the center rug and take care not to scuff the well adorned mahogany sides” You work busily to comply with his requests but his bitter nature and biting commentary is almost too much. “A little something for your troubles.” he presses a crisp $100 bill into your hand, for what? Bringing some cumbersome trunk to the front foyer? This is treatment you can handle, and somehow welcome. He walks and surveys the split landing of the threadbare banister. “THIS WILL NOT DO.” running a finger lightly over the worn wood, he looks to you for approval, you somehow gain a sense of commoradery in his majesty, knowing the complexity in his thought and manner, here you just a vagrant chimney sweep moments ago, now bitterly at the receiving end of his jansenist nature. “What do you feel this is a vestibule for peregrine mendicants? obtain your composure and tend to the rest of my articles, as resolutely as I am sure you are capable.” That was his way, you saw him cooly surverying the premises in his ivory suit, casuistically wiping the sweat from his brow in a manner that showed poise and decisiveness. The drying extraction of his remarks place you in a humble yet hopeful state, not unlike a teeball coach whom you welcome the reprimand if only for a dose of the gratifying approval. “Also, you…you take care of yourself…” his eyes glint a flash of knowing understanding, as though he too had been one toiling with luggage and taking care not to scratch the italian marble, a harsh but culling master, your maharaja.