When u hit the lean and boxes start droppin like Super Mario Maker.

You can grind your teeth and rail against the Toppling Goliath hype machine and decry Iowa traders until Trump is president, their shit is fire. It would make my job a lot easier if they were only a stout machine or if their catalog was so clearly one note that I could grind some levity out of the grist mill.

Frustratingly that simply is not the case and TG has proven ability in the hop game and across the stout spectrum. I am bunkering down and praying they don’t find that Good Burger sauce for Saisons, barleywines and wild ales. If that happens then Dr. Robotnik gets all the chaos emeralds and every other trader is proper fucked.   

 But let’s talk about this gem. Backlit or not, this is a beautiful radiant golden ring coveted by Tails. The carb is spot on, frothy and pumps oily resins upwards like a water park with alpha acids instead of piss. 

The nose is a paradigm of mosaic on mosaic action, m4m casual hop encounters. You get this chive and lemongrass, mulched leaves, weed whackers running at full clip and stomped apricots languishing in the still summer heat.

This is a massive dipa in the mouthfeel, syrupy almost to a fault, conifers and sappy robitussin creating occlusions on your incisors. The kush is not unapparent, wiping the gum line produced bitter earthiness like chard and shallots that is magnificently refreshing in the dry garlic swallow. 

  
I very seldom will bend my knee and sugggest actively trading for a dipa, largely because a stupid two row dry hopped analogue is probably local and more fresh anyway, just waiting for you. This is one instance where I lamentably have to break my first date rule and advise you to smash this, outside your area code, foregoing monogamy. 

Even if Sosus don’t call you back, that taste in ur mouth is worth it. Bro u earned it.

This beer is like getting head on a GSXR: it’s just too hard to wrap my head around.  
If you’re dissatisfied with how clean your kitchen is, just open this overattenuated mess and watch the double dare foam fly. 

This is a strange one, the nose has this honey comb meets anise and juniper. This has a interesting dynamic of 1) pour three ounces 2) return five minutes later to enjoy 3) repeat. The foam is relentless and made a huge mess in palatial estate.  The nose closes with a tannic Merlot with phenolic esters that leaves me honestly kinda stumped as to what the intent was on this one.

  

Mfw this saison.

The taste is a strange sans culotte caramel and Biere de garde change jar, long oaky finish that crackles into a kinda digestif fernet closer. You probably haven’t had anything like this, unless you muddled Biere De Norma with Vicks vapor rub. I know someone did.

Certainly don’t trade for this, but if you have a Minnesota homie ask him to kick you one for the lulz and then split it like 5 ways.  You could certainly do far worse but unless you have exhausted literally all the local saison options and now are into freaky shit, nipple clamps and Juniper berries on your taint.

  
If you feelin froggy: jump.

The Midwest: still getting the Hang of Saisons, one destroyed kitchen at a time.

[fn1- don’t come to me with your Jolly Pumpkin commentary]

In what one can only assume is the scraping of the bottom of the incendiary bullshit clickbait barrel, Deadspin Concourse just released an earth-shattering determination: ” Iris is flat and boring, a one-note beer that tastes like a tablespoon of old sour cream buried in a 5-gallon bucket of dried-out topsoil.”

Read the full, expert analysis here

This article is the pinnacle of due diligence.  They sent their most knowledgeable, highest caliber beer writer, Will Gordon,  to investigate the hype behind this “Can Till Eon” and their mirthful holiday “Zwuhzaney.” In journalistic thoroughness only endemic to the highest source of craft beer news, Gordon had no fucking clue what Zwanze Day even was.  In a profound effort to pad out the article, as usual, we are treated to a first 200 word fluffpiece about other holidays to hit that clickbait requisite wordcount: FLAWLESS.

Despite having never had any Cantillon, Mr. Gordon showed his credentials for impartiality early in, “These are the sorts of beer we tend to call “sour,” even when they’re not.”  I think we can all agree that Fou Foune is lacking in this department, not that Mr. Gordon would give a single fuck about that, or even remembering which Cantillon beers he tried, aside from Iris.  The pinnacle of breaking beer prose to the masses, straight from the cauldron of Hephaestus.

The article stammers on, fixating on price like a stay at home NASCAR dad, really getting to the meat of the issue. Like Zeno’s paradox Mr. Gordon wants to challenge your mind, he notes “most of the stuff I’ve tried from them has ranged from very good to excellent” and closes with “I can’t recall what they had in 750-milliliter bottles, but I know the Cantillon they had on tap was the Iris, which we ordered and hated.” Tre magnifique, it’s like I went to the very event, such description, such consistency in imagery.

The article is padded out with more complaints about the price of his glass of Iris, which is ironic given how underpriced Cantillon is relative to demand but FUCK ALL THAT, MARZENS AMIRITE?

After dealing out upwards of 6 whole adjectives to describe Iris, Gordon feels qualified to make sweeping statements about Cantillon at large.  Being the foremost authority on beer news and a noted Marzen enthusiast, I think we owe him that.

I think the article can best be summarized by parsing down one of the final sentences:

“And I’m not qualified to comment on the actual Zwanze beer.”

“I’m not qualified to comment on actual  beer.”

“not qualified to comment on beer.”

“not qualified to comment .”

“NOT QUALIFIED.”

  
Hats off ,Will Gordon, another fantastic piece of incendiary clickbait bullshit bereft of any real investigation, knowledge, perspective, or actual talking points.  YOU HAVE DONE IT AGAIN YOU BEAUTIFUL GENIUS!

The clipping pace of the beer stream moves quickly these days.  Does anyone remember when people gave a fuck about Dragontraxxx three weeks ago? LOL ME EITHER. You can barely dip your toe in the Heraclitean river before the piss from some muttonchopped asshole upstream comes down your way.

We already did the Grrrz set

LAST

YEAR

SO THE FUCK WHAT

Welp, one of these is a repeat, same exceptionally made/delicious kriek.  BUT WAIT HOLD THE FUCK ON.

Take a look above.  What a magnificent “kriek,” right? Except it isn’t a fucking kriek at all.  This is some like fruitless parody on consumers, a cherryless enclosure like every Delta Gamma sorority house. It honestly tasted like a worse version of the regular ass Le Roar Grzzz from last year.  Some musk, a little lemony cheesiness like brie and jazz apples, but where in the fuck is the fruit i so painstakingly traded for?  This is no fruit wild ale and it is somehow more deficient than just the blank Le Roar from last year, which as incredible.

How could they fuck this one up this badly? Was the bottle mislabeled? Was there a barrel that simply got zero cherries?

Let’s do a quick analysis:

And just to drill the point home, let’s take a look at last year’s “cherry free le roar”

Complete fucking ripoff, mislabeled or misfilled, a wildly disappointing endeavor.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE OTHER THREE?

Thankfully, all of those were fully strapped like a Vietnamese dominatrix.  Each one was impressive in its own light and present new and rad riffs on the already remarkable Le Roar lineage.

The berry could be considered the “worst” of the three but it is still god damn delicious through and through. It passes the DUI sobriety test by walking the jam/acidity line impeccably, presenting nice tannic structure like a Grenache wine.  The dryness is kept in check by a lovely silky crackly mouthfeel and the whole experience had me nearly lactating lacto out these sanddollar nips.

Like most strawberry beers, I buckled down and puckered my butthole for the inevitable plastic, bandaid, or outright earthy sickness of insoluble fiber.  This pulled me the other way and instead went the pleasant red 5, fruit by the foot, Gushers, squeezit, and acidic jolly rancher path.  The sweetness is tempered by this awesome clean finish like a Rose to the mouthfeel, lingering buttery oak expansive like a major chord from a Les Paul.  Just short of Omniscience and Proseltyism and Kiwi Herman, this is amongest the best I have ever seen strawberry executed.

BUT WHAT ABOUT THE BEST AND HOW MUCH OF THE BEST IS IT COMPARED TO THE OTHER BEST BESTS?S!?!

I don’t even need to feign surprise with this one.  It was a magical award winning combination out the gate: them stone fruits that people who never eat fruit covet, coupled with an incredible wild ale base that fruit eaters will never taste.  The merger is a magical melange of fruit and acidity, skins and shirts, garden nursery and cheese emporium.  This hits as hard as the best of them in the realm of Chez, but falling short of the Persica b1 contingency. It has just enough tempered juicy kumquat sweetness, mandarin orange, this lingering long as fuck buttery chard closer: it goes hard in the paint.

Time for the inevitable question: is it as good as Fou? That really depends on what you are into. Fou of course will age gracefully and present more of a grist at the outset and acidity over time, this is better at the juice and fruit and getting the skis waxed up because juicy fruit is gonna move ya.  It is outstanding toe to tip and even though Bullfrog tested the elasticity of my anoos with a complete ripoff Kriek, this more than made up for it.

I still prefer last year’s plain old Bullfrog Le Roar Grrrz though, god damn was that beer flawless American Pajotenland incarnate.

inb4 “THATS Y U DONT TRAED FOR BEER U NEVER KNOW WHAT U GONNA GET BEERS NOT MEANT FOR TO BE SHIPPING ALL OVER THE PLAEC NOT BULLFROGS FAULT COULD HAVE BEEN A KRIEK BEFOR SHIPPING U NEVR KNO”

in case you have a Compaq presario and don’t use Twitter or Instagram, here’s some a1 raw COMIN fresh off the scale, unstepped on

Bbbw feels kickin in

Thirsty ass tickers leveraging hard

Lol sike newmoney don’t want kaggen: no adjuncts

Mbc bills ain’t gonna pay theyselves

PayPal account lookin haggard AF

“What’s foo fun?”

Talkin bout its they favorite saison an shit

Such maple tones, Tommy Handy #1 bourben, the waiting for the steeping is the hardest part. BRB putting bottles on MBC to recoup costs, no one can tell.