This might be one of my top ten favorite beers of all time. Easily my favorite barleywine, it is so good that despite being almost dead flat year after year, my malty perineum still tingles.
It is unendingly delicious and you might as well be a Craft Beer Critic-tier ticker if you haven’t hit it at least one time.
Local unknown and subpar brewery from a heretofore undiscovered region has announced their bold plans to release a beer made with some attention seeking bullshit. “We listened to the nonexistent consumers and went with our gut to generate press in the most petty way possible,” head brewer noted confidently, “some people may see this as a completely tactless ruse to generate buzz for our other substandard boring lineup of fortgettable offerings, BUT THEY CAN JUST WAIT AND SEE.”
This shitty brewery may intend to use these, it doesn’t matter.
This local brewery previously serviced the people around their general vicinity with underattenuated riffs on a California ale strain, that is until Head Brewer discovered the wonderful potential of this stupid kitschy gimmic ingredient. “Yeah at first everyone was like ‘that doesn’t belong in beer, you use that to cure meats with’ but we wont listen to them, our desire to receive undeserved attention is too great. We are too innovative and ambitious to hold ourselves back,” Head Brewer noted while slicing up vile portions of the gelatinous ingredient, to be added during the boil and into the secondary.
They are just gonna put basically whatever into the fermenter, who gives a shit
Most local patrons had already assumed the Local Brewery had shut down before they attempted to launch this most pathetic of marketing ploys. Already this forgettable nothing brewery is generating linkshares from Aunts and ignorant co-workers alike, each more shocked than the last to see what wacky things these beer people like. “Yeah, I heard about this irrelevant shitwater that I will never try, I even heard about the nonstandard ingredient that they added. I keep having to hear about this bullshit from everyone who knows that I enjoy beer, ” local Craft Beer connoisseur lamented, “every time some shithole brewery does this, the links come pouring in from friends and relatives who assume I am into this stupid shit. It never fails.”
Could the shitty base beer involve this ingredient? It really doesn’t fucking matter.
At press time the Irrelevant Brewery stated its plans to press on despite objections from insular completely unknown protest groups. “We wouldn’t be where we are today if we listened to people telling us how to brew and we aren’t about to ratchet up the actual quality of our beer when we can just add obscure items to it. Call it simple, but that’s just what we believe here at Unknown Irrelevant Until Yesterday Brew Works,” the formless anonymous brewer stated with a gleaming pride.
As long as stupid people continue to share the link, who give a fuck if they actually use these.
UPDATE: the link concerning the shitty attention seeking beer has now been forwarded over 1.2m times and Forgettable Brewery now plans both a 100x increase in production and a new offsite facility to serve its nonexistent customer base.
Brewers should be encouraged to experiment. You wanna put Jicama in a Dortmunder? Fucking go for it. Peanut butter and Sriacha cask? By all means, you do you. The one thing brewers should not do is pass off horrible beer as either 1) intentionally sour 2) CUTTING EDGE or 3) a mystified ancient style that they are doing you a favor by unearthing. This somehow covers a bit of ground in each category. A SOUR OLD ALE: the style no one has ever asked for, returns to us in today’s review and holy balls is it horrible.
Two years ago, another Michigan brewery tried to pass this shit off on us when Dark Horse dropped their own SOUR OLD ALE> https://dontdrinkbeer.com/2013/02/08/dark-horse-three-guys-off-the-scale-sour-version-apparently-if-you-ruin-beer-you-can-just-call-it-sour-version/
So maybe people who live in bleak perpetual winter most of the year actually like this style, who knows. Let’s fall down the sour staircase and get some internal old ale bleeding in today’s painful review.
Midwest taster glass in full effect, and even that pour was too much.
Kuhnhenn Old Village Stock Ale
Sour Old ale (?) 14.2% abv
A: This looks fine I suppose, you might even squint and trick yourself into believing that this is a regular BB4d, those muddy lakewater notes on full puddle swerve. The carb is legit for the abv and massive nature of the beer, appearances cant set forth the palate terror to which your facehole will be subject.
Popping this solo before nestling in for a marathon of Franklin and Bash.
S: At first smell, there is a twinge of hope, caramel, molasses, and OH FUCK IS THAT ROTTING CITRUS? What is going on with my old al- oh god its red wine vinegar, followed by an acetic filthy grapefruit in tow. The closer is the sweet peanut brittle, albeit dipped in solvent. You know shit isn’t going to go well from here.
DDB will continue to scour the planet to review shitty beers for your amusement
T: Like the reversed call against the poor Cowboys, this shit is a pathetic travesty of a once proud heritage. How do you pull BB4d down a peg? This is a fantastic demonstration at how tenuous the life of a beer can be, snuffed out with bacteria and off flavors like an orderly pressing a sour pillow over a struggling patient. If you loved the creme brulee and toffee aspects of BB4d, wait until you add stomach bile and orange juice burp into the mix. If you get through half a bottle of this, you should get a text from Guy Fieri for self flaggelation by way of the mouth zone. Nothing works and you feel like a French soldier shivering in a trench at the battle of the Marne, wondering where the BB4d went, dreaming of times past, thinking about simpler days before everything was ruined.
M: This is bone dry, crisp and only serves to highlight all of the awful things attendant to the actual flavor. If a loud venue can make a blind date less creepy, this is a blind date in absolute silence, in a police interrogation room, for your palate. There is no escape and you are gonna do some hard time.
MFW someone offers me a 14% abv SOUR old ale.
D: I cant really quantify exactly how shitty this is with the adjectives and words at my disposal and I can only LOL that this is classified as a “GOOD” beer on BA. In fact it has an 84, just one point below The Bros review of Fou Foune. I am clearly not cicerone enough to appreciate this heap of lukewarm gastritis discharge.
“I am totally the cool mom. Babysitter? No way! I will just bring my infants in the rain to this brewery LOL! Check it out, guy paddling boiling mash, the beer fits in the bottle slot. LOL i am such a progressive parent, so glad we thought of this!”
DDB is the Rodney dangerfield of the homebrew game
The next condolambic will be brewed with black cherry and rhubarb.
Ticktease.
Despite my suspicions of this recent 6 pack, this wasn’t nearly as lackluster as I was anticipating and actually falls closer to the realm of “I can drink this if I have two other people.”
A BRAGGOT is a blend of mead and usually a substantial malty beer, in this instance it seems like some incantation of their old ale series, base 4th dementia would be my guess. This has a lower abv and seems to have a lower mead component. It is far better than the 2011 as a result. They say
“Braggot is mead and beer combined, this batch won the Bronze medal at 2012 GABF, one of only three medals given to Michigan breweries in the state This batch was made with Michigan Wildflower mead and Scottish Ale. Frank and Eric collaborated to make this award winning mead.”
So apparently it is a Scottish base but, at this pointbpostblending it hardly matters.
It has a silky carb that is never excessive nor lackluster, which with kuhnhenn and their HOTD execution has been an issue in the past.
The nose is honey and toasted almond, agave nectar and Carmelized pralines. The taste is exceedigly sweet and you get bit O honey, o Henry, sugar daddies, all that candy aisle shit but with a toasty Cuir or substantial old ale presence of bready pumpernickel akin to Adam.
In sum, this could have been far sweeter and far worse, it is amongst the best braggots I have had, but that is probably a pool of like 11 beers so my basic ass palate can’t chime in credibly, big shocker there.
It just feels like they packed this, the Brett old ale and the American stout as a heft sidecar in a heavy handed marketing move. Then again, if kuhnhenn told me bb4d and bbbw were sold together for $40, I would readily comply as they are the top of the game, in almost every respect.
Michigan ticker got them laser lips, his mama was a snowblower
d00d wants 5 kiwi for a kibbibbibiibis, legit.
It never gets easier, lyke if u cry evrytiem.
In what is being called the premiere organized labor movement of the beer world in 2015, profiteering muling groups have now demanded union rights and benefits from the local breweries they patronize. “We are organized, and we aren’t going anywhere, we want medical benefits and the guarantee to buy several allocations of limited bottles, we refuse to be bullied any longer,” local foreman, Chase Bellicose noted proudly, “It is 2015 and we refuse to be beholden to 1 per person limits any more, if we can’t get cases upon cases of these sub-1000 count releases, our muling groups starve. That’s just immoral.”
No longer will local muling groups be forced to starve due to bottle limits.
With increasing frequency, muling shitlords have assembled their diabetic laborers into Facebook groups to demand the rights to which they feel entitled. “This isn’t the gilded age, I dont work hard 28 hours a week at Office Depot just to walk away with two Hill Farmstead bottles, this is America, they need to realize what we deserve,” Daniel Jaunders stated firmly, a look of Dickensian filth upon his cargo shorts, laser printer ink smeared across his pockmarked mutton chops. “We toil under their regime, these brewery capitalists just watch on high while I neglect my family and job to stand in a single-file line for hours. Because I stood there, I deserve far more. I want triple allocations, also access to health care to provide my fiance with nuva rings,” Jaunders stated while playing Clash of Clans, standing pre-emptively in a line for a Tired Hands release he suspects is forthcoming, “Other people look at me and just see an obese man-child standing in an industrial park waiting for sugar water, sure, it’s partly that, but they don’t see 22 other hungry mouths from all over the country: MY FACEBOOK GROUP. If my muling group goes thirsty is it not right to steal a loaf of breadwater?”
While not standing in lengthy lines, local mules enjoy a variety of equally-excessive hobbies
Magic Hat Brewing head brewer, John Stavinski, has watched this situation bubble over for the past few years and sagely noted, “being the worst brewery in Vermont, we thankfully haven’t had to deal with anyone lining up for anything we make, but Godspeed to our contemporaries, it truly is the proletariat reckoning that has been forthcoming for so long.”
Fueling the controversy are groups of covetous, shameless adults who seek to breach the restrictive allocation requirements and share all bottles in common, specifically with one another in limited groups at the expense of the general public. “We are just about what’s right” local resident, Chad Merkins stated as he loaded cases upon cases of Goose Island Nuthulu into his Mitsubishi Mirage, “we understand there are limited bottles but, these locals need to realize just because they come here daily and drink their peasant pale ales, that doesn’t mean they should get the limited bottles. The entitlement of locals these days, I swear you wouldn’t believe it.” Merkins’ pregnant girlfriend and migrant laborer colleague seemed to express similar dismay at standing in a line on a Tuesday morning. “Yo no creo porque estoy aqui, hay muchos gordos, esta muy triste,” Guillermo Esquivel noted sagely while standing in line in what appeared utter confusion.
local girlfriends look forward to spending time standing in lines evaluating their tenuous relationships
Despite the clear opposition from the needlessly oppressive Brewer Regime, these revolutionary upstarts are determined to seize the means of post-production from their restrictive overlords. One such beverage magnate, head brewer of Side Project brewing, Cory King, noted “we really just try to spread out the releases in a fair way. We realize that it is limited and we try to act in a manner that is equitable for all our consumers. These people aren’t employees, I am not even sure why they keep demanding health benefits, Cialis, Rogaine, access to elective cosmetic surgery, all kinds of outlandish requests. We are trying our best to keep everyone happy.” The capitalistic tone was evident throughout the interview that most brewers don’t even feel that they owe these strangers PPO insurance.
local attendees express dismay at the 4 per person limits on the most recent adjunct stout bottling
“We will overcome this tyranny,” Merkins stated defiantly, “by organizing on private Facebook groups, no one can stop us. We will organize pricing on secondary sites and make sure no one is getting shortchanged by the prices that we set. Only then will the beer industry be free from these laissez-faire pigs. Our anonymous grumblings and passive-aggressive complaints will be felt throughout Twitter and Yelp reviews. If they think we are going to lay down and accept 2 per person limits, they have another thing coming.” At press time Merkins was busy pre-drafting complaints about a wristband system a brewery intended utilizing.
Dripa in the growler, like a glove.
dontdrinkbeer 