Like the passion fruit this is incredibly clean and intensely refreshing like an ocean spray cocktail. Unlike the passion fruit, this exhibits massive juicy fruit and tart tannins like a bunch of Syrah barrels burst inside of a Smuckers factory.

The mouthfeel is incredibly thin and nimble never leaving too jammy of a presence but offering a dry tartness and an oaky finish like a crisp Chardonnay. It could stand to be a touch more substantial in the grist since the Brett profile finishes so low that it can feel limp wristed in its punch. Thankfully the berries add depth and make this beer perfect for warm weather or extravagant sessioning if you are fucking loaders

One of the best releases from CS this year, shouldering with Brett d or grand cru and cherry grand cru. And oddly enough, generous ass CO traders flip these like silver dollar pancakes. I will never understand their generosity and sheer high quality, limited beers. It’s like the beer game ten years ago when this shit used to be fun. Colorado is still having plenty of fun, somehow. There’s no horrible releases, no auction trades, no instawhales, no famous assholes you can readily cite from the area.

I am blaming the weed and high altitude. This beer is really damn good though, enough patting CO on the back.

DDB staff recommendation.

In riveting cereal-based news today, it was recently announced that Black Bottle Brewing went to a local Fort Collins grocery store and bought up every last box of the limited Count Chocula cereal.

In a state barely recovering from the legalization of marijuana sales, this came as a complete shock to the lethargic residents of Fort Collins. “We had just finished loading up our Subaru Forester for a bouldering trip when we heard the news,” local resident Carol Jennings noted. “At first I was afraid it was going to be our Whole Foods, but then I remembered that Count Chocula had processed caramel dyes, synthetic marshmallows rendered from horse hooves and polymer cocoa starches, so I knew the Whole Foods was safe. I put on my Vibrams and ran out the door just to make sure.” The local drum circle participants from Stewart Case Park expressed stern disapproval of Black Bottle Brewing’s baleful actions. “Count Chocula is about freedom, like the freedom to eat 50g of sugar to start your day and this brewery is just here harshing everyone’s mellow, typical corporate move, we’re just tryna dab it out here,” park resident Jacob “Cruncher” Balmsly noted.

When asked for comment the representative from Black Bottle Brewing, manager Stever Marrick, appeared unapologetic and noted, “listen, it’s a free country okay? If you want to eat several bowls of cereal and listen to Godspeed You Black Emperor, that’s fine but we have a god-given right to make adjunct beers laden with completely irrelevant fermentable materials. We need our sugars to be in the form of amorphous marshmallows and we need our corn pieces to have at one time kinda have resembled a fictional Count. What next, you gonna go tell Pipeworks Brewing ‘hey maybe you don’t need to make that Abba Zabba Brown ale?’ yeah I didn’t think so. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have wort to ruin.”

Despite this tragedy, the resilient residents of Fort Collins noted that they would press on. Dietician, Nancy Olmstead noted, “listen, if at the end of the day a brewery wants to make an absurd beer, that’s fine. There’s plenty of other ways to get sucrose and empty calories into your children at the top of the morning, there’s still plenty of Boo Berry on the shelf or, if you are punishing your child, Frankenberry works just as well.”

Stunned Fort Collins residents sat in disbelief staring at the parking lot for an uncomfortably long period of time.

At press time Black Bottle Brewing noted that they would be pilot brewing a batch BlaeooBaerry and that no box of Boo Berry was safe from the ever-grinding maw of their insatiable grain mill.

It is 76 degrees in October, time to put on a screen printed tank top and review some salt of the earth staples from the other coast. This is one of those Yuengling-tier items that people swear by and will shiv you with a sharpened Oral B if you attempt to take it down a peg.

So how is this beer really? Is it all nostalgia predicated on heritage, like the way people act like they enjoy Jenna Jameson videos when the smut industry has evolved in the passage of countless straight to DVD releases. This is admittedly a pretty beer, golden pilsner aspect to it, a radiant brassiness that would shoulder lovingly into any bbq buffet in a backyard with an above ground pool. Like that guy who works in shipping and doesn’t give a single fuck if you don’t like his demeanor, this beer has a certain brashness in the packaging and stripped down aspect.

This is as reductionist as beer gets and it takes a certain soul to appreciate it. If you see a roll caged crx and think ” good for him” you will dig this. It has a lightly sweet honey to the nose, some pear, the esters are a touch in the realm of baked corn but not exactly DMS to the fullest. Hops are saaZ or some place holding zero and don’t play a real part in this production.

The taste is pretty okay, again sweet and a little bit of waxiness to the swallow that finishes clean but nothing really stands out to make you say “oh fuck, if you don’t try this, your life will be forever flawed.” If you have ever been to Enterprise and they assign you a Chevy Cruze or something like that you know what I mean. This beer is present and accounted for on all aspects and glosses over the areas where it could make a statement in lieu of guaranteeing it’s place in office.

I can only assume this is like $2.00 a can and, from that standpoint, it represents a noble and exceptional offering. I would pair this with lawn darts or give it to David Chang and watch the precum webs spin as he effortlessly paired it with a $35 bowl of peasant ramen.

If you haven’t had this beer, you still probably have. It is the base upon which all else is built, the power chord of beers, the Ramones of the ale world that some can overlook in lieu of some apeshit prog rock lambic. That doesn’t diminish this beer’s charm, but it doesn’t make it add any depth either.

At the end of the day, the Raiders are gonna lose and your children will come to hate Sundays.

Let’s set the record straight, this is a very tasty beer. It is understated and demure like Banana Republic neutral basics you can always turn to regardless of the capricious winds of couture. That being said, it lacks that crimping point for those sour boulderers who want something to latch onto in a flavor profile. It isn’t exceedingly sour, nor does it jam your bung with fruits. It exhibits a faint chalky musky like gypsum and twine but that isn’t the real star either.

This is the beverage equivalent of an ensemble movie where all the parts are well oiled and you can crush the gentle acidity and mango water with rapacious delight. If you need a title character and hated Crash and Magnolia, maybe this isn’t for you. You can always go drink flaming fury if you want to point at something. This is moving in it’s simplicity and if you have ever suffered through a lecture from someone really into Vienna lagers, they will tell you endlessly that the clean simplicity is the hardest task in brewing.

Except in this case we aren’t addressing pedestrian smoked pilsners, we are talking about entering the sour octagon and getting Vaseline rubbed on your broken wounds. Is this good? Sure. Is it fantastic? I guess it depends on if you like outside stimulation or deep penetration. It is a soft fruity hug where the middles don’t touch, but you know it means it.

You can do far worse, but perhaps you could drink Brett d or grand cru and do far better as well.

Str8 lounging.

As far as bourbons go , this has an intensely bright and fruity profile bleeding bruised peach, plums, pluot, and a Carmelized fig, waft will water your eyes with a deep rip but has a great cream of wheat burnt brown sugar and the slightest hint of oak.

It’s easy to see why this hits the taste and flavor g spot without pushing into the back wall, causing discomfort in either realm

Hnnnggggg

I be like

This is essentially Brute 10 calorie edition. All the things you love with the volume turned down, nice Brett L tartness, mild acidity, light citrus and Brett B musk all wrapped up in a clean easy to drink package.

It makes me miss Brute more than anything, back in 2010 when that used to be considered a wild ale, now brewers would probably just call it a saison and give zero fuxx.

Luminous is pretty tasty tho, worth your time and consideration.

pizza Boy Brewing, those elusive minxes who for so long disallowed offsite bottles, well now we knock out another one of these tiny run bottles AT HOME.

The carb on this beer sizzles and immediately dissipates leaving you with an essentially flat beer that is intensely lactic and acidic on the nose like fresh cut apricot and peeled tangerines. The carb would help ratchet back some of the acrimonious tartness but thankfully this is not an especially complex beer and drinks easy with a thin dry mouthfeel like angry Chardonnay pricking the gum line playfully. As it warms there is a tropical fruit and a sort of 1D type of beatification , like if beat were a table beer.

Ultimately it gives with one drinkable hand and takes with a rapacious lack of complexity hand. What a horrible metaphor. This seems like it would be a fantastic base for fruited variants but seems incomplete, like buying a Mitsubishi Mirage and wishing it were an Evo. Some things need a touch of power panache or poise, not that this beer necessarily lacks any, but it fails to move me beyond the subcompact realm.

I need that Permasmile, obviously.

DDB Nukes them PA beers, gotta nuke something.

Side Project, Missouri
7% Flanders (?) Awa aged in wine barrels

God talk about the most controversial SP beer to date. People already blew their loads over fuzzy and when this came out a mere weeks later, everyone was so saddle sore that they had no choice but to grumble and hem and haw. I have heard everything from glowing impressions comparing this to Blabby and hate speech saying this is a phenolic nail polish remover unfit for even Canadian consumption.

So what’s the real deal? Is it an acid bomb? Does it bring balance to the super tart SP catalog? Like a well placed maxipad, it lies somewhere strategically in between.

First and foremost, this isn’t a Flanders in the strictest sense. Sure the grist bill and best intentions may have started that way, but if this is a Flanders then Wanderer is a Rodenbach clone. It is slightly muddy but has a charming violent and plum aspect to it and contrasts the burnt amber when illuminated. You don’t get that straight magenta foam from most BilberZille offerings but it is serviceable in appearance.

The smell gets roughed up in the octagon by two opposing forces. On one hand we have the ultra pleasant blueberry and plum tannins imparting a slight juiciness and you want to hold their palms and run through the verdant clearing. At all times is an auspicious acetic harbinger of death that looms at cold temperatures threatening a red wine vinegar portent that speaks of grave implications. If you aren’t some toddler tier tickers with two ounce pours, you can let this open up and the real sweet spot is in the mid 60s temp when the two work in tandem. The berry bringing a happy depth and the acidic a cruel reminder of the baleful nature of the Flanders style and its angrier progeny: oud bruin. So the depression from the deeply acidic aspect is rounded out with a gentle sweetness like a well balanced Ivan Reitman film.

The taste reflects the foregoing and leans more toward the acidity and lactic dosing you have come to expect but never veers over the median into oncoming acidic traffic like Upland or Cascades blueberry offerings. It’s that special genus of overly acidic the you tolerate like a really slutty cousin, you know he is gonna grow out of this gaudy phase and into a well rounded individual. It’s better than chevalier but tough to place in the same realm as flora BALs and Lucy blue simply because it lacks a subtlety and nuance in that it punches in BERRY FLANDERS ACIDITY AND SCENE . If Al Pacino had a blueberry monologue this would be his emphatic delivery, that doesn’t mean you aren’t gonna still watch Hear for like the 50th time. I mean come on, blueberry bank robbery; it’s amazing.

So in summation, it’s a very good offering and ties back some of the loose threading that the prior ultra acidic side project offerings suffered from, if you have a curved cock and need a definitive SP ranking list, here you go:

unblended
Oude fermier
Grisette
Fenced out
Blueberry Flanders
Fermier
Blanc du blanc
Fuzzy
Le saisonnier
Saison du ble
Brett project 1
Pulling nails
Brett venture 1
Bv2
Black and mild

Once I tick those fruited fermiers I will keep you posted but for now I hope this gives some context to a brewery that continues to improve.

Writing praise is no fun. I need to start drinking shittier beers.

I am the best at what I do.

Splitting a 2L of a beer as crushable as Live Oak just don’t feel right, but gotta keep my PO off my back and all that.