I hate writing these praise-heavy reviews for a multitude of reasons: first and foremost, my readers are 70% shitlords who complain that my impressions are somehow influenced by geography. The other 25% complain that the reviews with praise are less funny and contain less fingerbanging jokes. The final 5% meant to go to motherless and accidentally hit the DDB bookmark and dont give a shit about maple barrel stouts.

So this beer was never sold to the public, 1 per Hangar 24 Barrel Roll Membership, SO IT MUST BE AMAZING RITE? Notwithstanding the inaccessibility, this beer is an absolute masterpiece.

Alright so what is this shit, anyway?
“A single barrel of Pugachev’s Cobra that spent 6 months resting in a 25 year Heaven Hill barrel, then EIGHTEEN ADDITIONAL months in a bourbon barrel that we soaked in maple syrup for 3 months prior to filling with the beer.”

Initially I was going to do a head to head write-up due to the natural contrast between Puga Maple and StS, but dealing with Georgia cicerones is already tiresome, but suffice it to say, these two are not near one another in scope or execution.  That’s not to say that StS wasn’t pretty good, it’s just the Black Maple is bonershattering in almost every way.

The pour is viscous and somewhere in between regular puga and Royale in sheeting, that Goldilocks sweet spot of legs and heft that never distracts.  To be upfront, while I enjoy Maple stouts they aren’t my absolute jam.  Often those IHOP notes are way overdone, or muted into a latent turbinado sugary sweetness. This is not the case here, the 14%+ abv can offer up a fusel bicep to wrangle the sticky pancake batter, whipping the bowl.

I hate hate hate pulling the branch down to make comparisons to KBBS, but that is the only beer that really runs neck and neck with what Puga Maple is up to.  This beer presents excess and balance concurrently and through the paradox, the chocolate armor of Daedalus is forged, that bourbon Icarus flying so close to the sun, but never falling to the sea. You get a black blast of sticky molasses and Tollhouse chocolate chips, melted sugar daddies and carmelized lava cake. THE ROAST IMPARTS A DEGREE OF COFFEE LIKE ACIDITY TO BALANCE OUT THE SWEETNESS DESPITE THE FACT THAT THIS BEER DOES NOT CONTAIN COFFEE [fn1 this beer achieved this effect without added coffee, therefore this review is still a valid subjective account.]

THIS BEER IS BLAISEIN.

The swallow is long with Hershey squirts along the closer, lingering Nestle Quik and Aunt Jemima post nasal drip.  This would have been included in the DDB top 10 of 2015, but I technically did not review it in 2015, so I had to grit my teeth.  At higher temps the beer has an expansive frothiness like a Machiatto.  The maple never is some sweet crutch to lean upon, nor is it some overbearing presence, it is seamlessly integrated into the narrative and functional to the plot, not some tacked on B story to pad out the length.  Also fuck Hangar 24 for making these in small format. Cruel Redlands temptress.

To be candid, I dont think Hangar 24 is capable of brewing a better beer than this: but neither are the vast majority of other west coast breweries. It remains to be seen if H24 themselves could replicate this one.  I foresee this as one of those lightning in a bottle beers that through some alignment of the planets, the single barrel yielded a mind blowing experience. I hope I am wrong. I hope I see these bottles next year in Total Wine, turding it up.

I shouldn’t have to type out 300 more words of tired syrup similes, this beer is world class without question. Absolutely staggering.

  
So long as their baby palates remain capped at 107pf, all of the things I love will remain safe, except m10, it is already starting to turn. 

I will miss her dearly. 

  
Congrats to the 100 Chicago residents who were able to buy a bottle of Monkish Fruit Cart today.

Fastest f5 fingerblasters in the west.
I have received numerous requests from Southern California residents asking DDB politely to not review this beer: they can suck my tits, this beer is awesome.

I KNOW FRUITED SOURS HOW MANY DO WE NEED? But this 100 bottle release warrants commentary simply due to how balanced the acidity and fruits dance in austere 3/4 scherzo time.  This never walks into that mouth ravaging realm of being wildly acidic but it doesn’t just lay there and get pounded by jammy produce either. 

The nose is pure cunnilingus in a fruit roll up factory. There’s musk, wafts of brackish mineral profile like a berry pelligrino, skins like a tart Malbec, and a kind of chobani yogurt finish.

The taste lacks depth, but the levels it does present have clean lines like some fruity frank Lloyd Wright edifice. At higher temps the ph becomes more apparent and the tartness is what obfuscates the cheesy complexity which represents my main complaint. Instead of some preserves or produce in pectin, you get some some dry rose with smashed cherries, 17 year old inner city youth about to get twisted. 

  
Is this the best beer Monkish has made to date? Probably. Will everyone ruin subsequent releases for this brewery and then act surprised by the result? Definitely. 

God damn I am sick of getting requests to review these fucking Who Farted cans. If you follow this site religiously, as you no doubt do, you’ll recall that I posted this prejudicial appraisal without even having tried the beers.

As a result, no fewer than eight different people from Ohio offered to send me Hoof Hearted cans for free. Ohio beer nerds trying to unseat PNW/Colorado as the most generous at every turn. The rallying behind these HH guys is inexplicable and heartwarming. In short: I couldn’t go on making light of these Italian dressing IPAs if I haven’t even tried them.  So now it’s time to put the chicken broth where my mouth is and determine if these cans are worth the hype.

PULL OUR UR DONG, ITS GETTING DANKY

How in the fuck this hasn’t caught a hot C&D from Shigeru Miyamoto is beyond me.  I doubt Nintendo would be on board for a DK Glory Hole, Kranky’s Cabin notwithstanding. Alright, white elephant in the room: this looks even worse in real life than I expected, but  I will try to focus my commentary on how the beers TASTE instead of pandering out tired visual similes until I hit my wordcount.

The nose is so over the top that it’s almost hard to frame this in the common parlance of the NE IPA realm.  You get grapefruit zest, not the juice, the white bitter pith, oily pine nugs, conifer, smashed juniper, intense evergreen and this long chronic closer like the bedroom of an 8th grade TOOL fan. It is simply way too fucking much.

The taste takes that pinecone rendering and continues to push things until you have to use your hop “safe word” which in my case is “Rhizome.” It is concurrently oily and so drying that it is paradoxical.  I cannot session these beers, it is the fury of hopslam with nothing in the body to balance things out.  If you have ever made a hilarious player in Madden with all the stats on a single trait, that’s the reality of this beer.  Amongst the hoppiest onslaught I have ever had.

yukyukyuk, slam it visually all you want, this beer is insane in a way that “doesn’t align with my flavor expectations.”

This beer is by no means bad but holy shit you have to have incredible elasticity in your hophole to accommodate the girth of this oily cone.  I am not trained enough in the alpha acid arts to equip this gear, need to grind my palate to harness these spells.

MUSK OF THE MINOTAUR:

This was my favorite beer from these guys in the respect that I could chain several of these together, tap two red mountains and fireball my palate into nothingness.  This is cleaner, less residual oils, less cut King Fir, and lends itself into a “less remarkable” tropical zone.  I will easily take the path of less resistance when their intense hoppy offerings are akin to learning how to drive stick shift in San Francisco.

This is clean and almost watery in the swallow compared to insane Konkey Dong.  I prefer this brewery when they are at their tamest because maybe these old saggy palateballs just cant keep pace with the taught coinpurse nutsacks of new money tickers. I really enjoyed the lemony/apricot/tangerine thing going on here and I never got fatigued, left me wanting more.  If these are easy for Ohio tickers to land, they have their own private Pizza Port honey hole to enjoy.

Of course HH has a Sauv barrel version of this, and I cant even begin to imagine what that experience would be like.

EVERYBODY WANTS SOME:

Pay attention to the foreground, disregard bokeh’ed out background.

If Konkey Dong was a schedule III hop water, this is top tier schedule I, essentially designed to be abused. I could barely finish half the can before this wore me out like a visit to the Social Security Administration offices.

This takes me back to a time that many readers may not have been around to witness: the Hop Wars of the late 2000s.  Stone began border aggressions with new hop blends and every brewery sought to push IBU levels increasingly higher, with the gauntlet of what was insane at that time, Ruination becoming the standard bearer.  At a certain point Hopslam entered the mix with honey and Sierra Nevada just made HOPTIMUM, which was essentially water from the bowl of your month old Christmas tree.  Never to be outdone and never one to shy away from being obnoxious: MIkkeller dropped 1000 IBUs and shattered the public’s will to power.

In the tattered remains people scampered to other sources of succor and this great war went into remission. Lower IBUs, cleaner execution or “matter in suspension” to offset things.  Well now Hoof Hearted has declared fuck all that and they are tossing piles of Reichmarks into the oven and ramping up hoppy militarization, reannexing that oily Sudetenland.

NO ONE IS STOPPING THEM.

So here we are, they took the insanely hoppy profiles of the past and joined it with the London Ale III strain, and then decided to not clarify anything. They are playing free and loose with the hop game and it is unsustainable, palates will bleed. These cans are mindbendingly bitter, compost and landscaping trimmings, chlorophyll and wheatgrass, biting into the skin of a tangelo like a savage. The cling is like the residual profile of a massive stout, but it’s just probiotic culture gathering in pools along your gumline, a de facto starter culture in your interstices.

I can understand why some people love these cans and I certainly can’t knock them for doing so, I will outright declare that I am too much of a belching birth canal to embrace this hoppy aggression. It’s too much for me, I have seen too much destruction in my time, my face hole aches.

Man I am reticent to even dip my toe into the Saint Archer/Golden Road/Breckenridge/whoeverthefuck tide these days.  If someone is acquired they attain immediate pariah status and fielding bullshit some mid-level beer nerds is taxing on the soul. Even worse, BCBCS and BCBBW are infected so we will never heard the end of the torrents of septicdeuce coming from the mouths of entry level to mid-range cicerones.

People early in the game don’t give a shit, they are reading Charlie Papazian and trying to figure out what the difference between a porter and an export stout is.  People deep in the game don’t give a shit because Sculpin is a beer you drink illegally in a movie theater, not something you actively contemplate and twist your nips over.

At any rate, Saint Archer has come back for another round and this time they are walking into the chalk circle of some serious shit: component blended barrel aged ales.

So why not do a faceoff with ANOTHER SD BREWERY, that has not (yet) been acquired. Tusk and Grain no. 1 on paper looks identical to Reforged in many ways. Both have barrel aged stouts and barrel aged barleywines blended together for max damage. Sure Tusk and Grain doesn’t have a Wee Heavy blended in, but considering most beer experts completely neglected how good Alesmith BA Wee Heavy is, they dont deserve it anyway.

The pour is deep mahogany bordering on outright black with light ecru head that has moderate cling but low retention, like that middle child that you didnt breastfeed. Appearance wise, I like Reforged more, but honestly look above, who gives a shit.

The nose on the TG1 is actually pretty phenomenal and the blending of the barleywine and stout give it this sweet meets roasty execution akin to a massive BA Baltic Porter.  There’s a touch of anise and black licorice, sticky tobacco, good and plenties dipped in caramel, and a clean woody finish. The reforged is less stout in composition and leans more towards a straight up barleywine/american BW profile with oak and lacquer, sticky creme brulee shell, sugar daddies and SKOR bar. I like the TG1 nose better, something about it.

The taste on the tusk and grain leans decidedly towards a thinner stout with euopean sweet elements akin to like Barrel Aged Blackout, Czar Jack, CW16/17 and doesn’t lead with the barleywine aspects, which is kinda a shame.  There’s a roastiness that isn’t quite imperial stout or barleywine, like when you slightly burn a toaster strudel and get that awesome pastry char. The mouthfeel is the most disappointing aspect to this beer in that it simply is too clean and doesn’t have enough residual hang to the swallow.  As a result you drink it faster to chain combo that DRILL CLAW, because anyone who plays as Iron Man is cheap as fuck.

Marvel vs. Capcom jokes aside, this was surprisingly good and kinda ruined all the yukyuks i had planned predicated upon SELLOUTS SEE THIS IS WHAT IS HAPEN. When a brewery made a decidedly competent and very tasty beer, where does that leave old DDB? I can’t do my job reviewing shit like this, there’s not enough meat on the old jokebone. Incidentally “jokebone” is what i called my penis up until a hot glue gun accident at age 17.

As a whole, I enjoyed Reforged more simply due to the more barrel forward character and sticky barleywine notes in lieu of stout dominance. However, the two Latter Day Saints I invited in to try these with me enjoyed the TG1 more, so your mileage may vary.

I don’t know if this is for sale yet but it’s pretty fucking tasty, and part of me wonders if this was racked pre-buyout and this is a fluke BA offering.  Time will tell, but in the interim, snag one of these, it’s certainly worth your time. Or just wait until that $60-80 bottle of Rare hits rock bottom in the next few months and trade it for this. No box needed.

  
Got me bugging like Gregor Samsa, I’m like damn bruh

  
“Hi when I saw a maladjusted middle aged man on tinder who collects sugar water and predicates his self esteem on stagnant ethanol, let’s just say these lane Bryant sweatpants were soaked. Hit me in the DM so I know where to send this Beerplanet screen print tee, our first date will be magical.”

  
At least now the public will know I am a beer snob. Proficiency in any field is best demonstrated with Bubba Gump tier screen printed apparel.

http://www.businessinsider.com/most-overrated-beer-brands-in-america-2016-1
I don’t even know what the angle is here. At a certain point when beer writing gets so shitty I can’t tell if it’s a bad AdverTorial, trolling, intentional misinformation, or outright satire. Not only does this article fail to even tell you specifically what is overrated but its solutions are somehow even more opaque. Did I honestly just read that Fat Tire is the solution to overrated beers? Is someone nonironically telling me to drink ESBs instead of IPAs? I want in on the bit.

We are all dumber for having read this shit, I award businessinsider zero points and may God have mercy on their soul.

So apparently Inbev is allegedly giving pushback against people using the superlative “infected” when describing their clearly infected bottles of bourbon county coffee, and bourbon county barleywine.  Well, that is according to the inimitable MIDWESTBEERBLOG, which I am sure is already all of your homepages and #1 source of beer news.

Check this shit out:

This blog is claiming InBev contacted him directly and told him that he shouldn’t call BCBCS “infected”

I was like wutttttt, inbev never comes and touches middles with old DDB.

According to the site:
“UPDATE: Megan Lagesse, communications manager for Anheuser-Busch InBev’s craft beer division, reached out to me Friday afternoon to clarify that the beers are not infected, which is the word I used to desribe the beers in a previous post.

“The beer is not infected,” she wrote in an email. “Infected would imply a bacteria problem or cause for safety concern.”

To be clear, when I used the word infected it was not meant to imply that the beer was contaminated by some deadly bacteria. Instead, I was using the word infected in the way it is commonly used in the beer world. That is to say, the off flavor was possibly caused by a wild yeast or bacteria that made it’s way into the beer without the brewer’s intention of it being there.”

U guize better not say that the beer is INFECTED, that’s straight up defamation per se alleging bad business practices and they’ll suffer srs losses n damages. THEY GET TO SKIP DUTY AND BREACH IF U SAY THAT. ur fukd.

Right. Because every time a brewer discusses an infected beer, everyone runs for hazmat suits and diflucan.  I drank Hellshire II, I survived.  I pooped some blood but hey, I have also lived through Small Animal Big Machine, NBD.

So then I was like WAIT A SECOND it must be that midwestbeerblog is more RELEVANT than DDB, so I went to Alexa to check the reach of this journalistic titan:

MIDWESTBEERBLOG.COM

Global Rank

18,725,849

Global Rank

955,217