I sometimes feel like I cover Colorado beers too much on DDB so I will stfu unless there’s something compelling I need to discuss. Iced. Reduced. Roysenberry. Wild Ale. This needs to be addressed.

No one is drinking the modern American sours and thinking “this simply doesn’t have enough fruit.” Amalgam took an already jammy beer, added 350 lbs of boysenberries, pressed it again with a wine press, then freeze distilled that, and bottled the concentrate.

I thought this was mead or a liqueur when I saw it. It looks like a god damn ice wine. It pours out intensely syrupy and I got instant blueberry IHOP PTSD vibes. Wafflerotic syruphyxiation.

The most bizarre thing about this OEC/Ale Apothecary level apeshit beer is that at its core: it remains a wild ale. It’s got intense boysenberry and the “tiny room service preserve jars” energy. What you don’t expect is that lactic, acidic pop on the backend. You’re indulging on some fruit tart and catch sour purple skittle shrapnel.

I can’t say if this needs to exist but I am glad it does. This is genre bending at its finest. It pushes wild ales to a frozen refinement. Elsa all magenta-mouthed, fuchsia ice crystals vomited in the bushes. The degassed profile makes it just feel more refined and silky and gives that pop rocks crackle to the end an extra punch.

This wont replace your Super Smash Bros main. You aren’t gonna stumble into Denver seeking flat iced wild ales. It feels more like a Boyfriend Loophole where something irresponsible and dangerous is being conveyed upon you, and you are tucking this negligent fruit into your waistband and sharing it with your significant other. Neither of you know what is happening.

GenZ loves hypermaximalism in their clothes, insufferable prints and fake vintage mock ups, a tannic blast to Harijuku style. The sad workwear Millennials who like to play industrial dress up don’t get it. Moschino vs Carhartt. This berry pendulum swings. It smooshes the two, someone who works for a fun company but has a shitty role in it. Accounts receivable at Brazzers.

This is fun, but at what cost.

Second City Meadery made cherry mead and aged it in a VSOJ barrel. I will give you one guess whether this busted my pit wide open.

Zoot Suit Riots notwithstanding, a barrel isn’t everything. Even making a cherry mead takes a gentle touch. The most hack thing you always hear from the anti-combs is “tastes like cough syrup.” Sometimes, they aren’t wrong. Viscosity and weird sweetness go hand in hand with medicinal profiles, like protein powder and “Birthday Cake.”

After I saw that SCM won a bunch of awards at the Mazer cup, I figured why not, dip my tip in the hive. The strange thing about SCM is their tendency to default to softer execution so, yes there is a ton of cherry in this, but it isn’t pure Sucrets. It’s more like a Cherry 7up Cyser. The barrel provides structure but at a third use, that’s getting pretty run through and the bee goop is filling in them staves.

You get the rainier cherry type of flesh with a pop of acidity, medium bodied sheeting. It will still draw the Robitussin complaints from baby palates. That’s fine. There’s grown adults who wear Gallery Dept and act like it looks good.

Some things are the same whereever you go. Like if she wears scrubs, Birkenstock Boston Mules and drives a Nissan Altima: that’s about to be your most toxic relationship ever. Similarly this is a fancy cherry mead. It’s not the best example simply because cherry can provide a one dimensional panache but its about as good as you can execute what is now a candy staple in our tastezones. Red 5 is a feeling. It’s sleepover juice. Soccer practice swallows. Prolonged cherry exposure feels primal like using a foam roller on your T bands.

Lots of DDB readers doing rollouts. The real star here is control. Dudes with a Sig Sauer sticker on their Tundras cannot wait for you to ask them about it. This beer has a deep back story but it is ultimately simple and primal and enjoyable, without background checks. It’s for your Aunt or your little Cousin who looks like a rehab patient in foam runners.

Everyone is here to get popped and SCM will oblige.

Halfway Crooks are on a short list of absolute god tier lager producers and they are flooding the streets of the South with attenuated oyster crackers. What happens when a stickier palm is required?

I love seeing breweries play against type. Like Robin Williams in One Hour Photo, there’s something chilling seeing characters occupy a different space. Halfway Crooks are not stoutlords, they spend their days avoiding residual sugars, but when their daughter if abducted they get pulled back into a life that they tried to leave behind FOR ONE LAST MISSION.

It feels strange. You see dudes wearing Soccer jerseys and Adidas sambas doing this Blokecore cosplay and you know that’s not them. It is not what they want for themselves deep down. HCB almost seem to be doing this in a performative way.

I can see their forehead veins bulging at being required to kick that ABV up, to produce a viscous body. It’s like when the engineers at Dodge get the memo telling them that their new electric Hellcat has to make totally unnecessary loud revving noises for guys with VA loans. There’s no reason for this. It is pure vanity. It is unbridled power in the form of barrel aged negligence.

The body has residual sheeting and contradicts all the accomplishments they made with pilsners. This was built to stand bourbon confinement. The carb is minimal and provides enough to support the lofty ambitions for the glucophiles. It is perfunctory correct and hits all the right notes but it doesn’t feel like its heart is in it. If Kuhnhenn made a helles you’d be like, come on, we know what you really want to be doing.

The raw talent carries this through but it is lacking a degree of excess and messiness required for flabby stouts of the modern era. The cask profile is fantastic and leverages graham cracker, shortbread, and See’s scotch kisses. Something about the intent feels misaligned. When you see someone still wearing Carhartt double knee pants and dunks you want to grip their shoulders lovingly and tell them “this isn’t you.”

It’s good because they are good. Deep down, the heart wants what it wants, kellerbier and open mouth kisses listening to Toni Braxton.

Maibocks are one of the most overlooked, passed by and outright ignored styles in the lager game. Not as refreshing as the crispies, not as bready as the viennas, not as outright powerful as the Eis nor as cloudy as the weiss. Where do they fit in?

In modern brewing they fit in a draft line for way longer than owners would like. Is it the toasted challah? People crush helles all day. Maybe it’s these half measures of providing light phenolics and a touch of fusel with none of the high abv fun of a tripel. Martinellis and pear show up for a bit and respectfully bounce, using your palate to preparty for more pressing polyamory.

Beer nerds don’t buy this style anymore. It isn’t a gateway drug for stepdads and WWII history enthusiasts either. In a weird subversion, if you make the best version of this you are almost guaranteed to lose money.

Minnesota. This beer is being kept alive by people who want a dry dopplebock and people in St Paul. The weird latticed crust lacks the nutmeg spice of more exotic alternatives but still holds a loving place in taplist lineups. It is a weird badge of honor that a brewer dusts off in the brew schedule to show people “we are doing this for us, you can drink Skittle goses whenever.”

So in the end this style is A Bockwhistle to those who know. The true bottom fermenters whose crispy perversions aren’t even in the DSM-IV. Goat me up bock daddy.

We laughed about Heaven Hill waxing the 12 year Evan Williams and charging $130 at the gift shop. Then we cried about how they released a $200 9 year Bardstown disappointment at the gift shop. But what about when you go on the special TOUR of the distillery and buy a $200, 14 year bourbon, at the Heaven Hill gift shop?

YOU. DO. BOURBON.

So this is a distillery-only release and, like spicy New Jersey beer laws, you gotta do an entire tour to get it. Select Stock is the clandestine line from Heaven Hill where they release items that are basically Shasta Parker’s Heritage. Marshmallow Matey Elijah Craig.

This one is aged 14 years and only 26 barrels with TAPERED STAVES were used, so we already have circumstances hemming those cornhusk jeans in tightly. Add the fact that this is aged in WAREHOUSE Y BRUH ITS PARKER BEAMS FAVORITE SPOT. Parker would go there and update his Myspace while this was aging, I heard in 2009 Parker had H1n1 and rested in warehouse Y, it’s the honeyhole, Obama-surviving rickhouse.

At the You Do Bourbon experience “you can taste, bottle and personalize your very own bottle to take home” so you get to pay to become a distillery intern and package your own juice. You get some ECBP, Larceny BP, Bernheim and after you’re elote-buttered, they ask you if you want to bottle your own $200 barrel proof offering from the barrel.

It comes with a janky lil metal screw top that guarantees it will leak if shipped, which will make “collectors” furious so I automatically love that.

“Why not just buy Elijah Craig Barrel Proof”

Like “squirting is mostly pee” I am so tired of hearing this nonstop you buzzkill. This markedly better, than ECBP not squirting. Look at that “wandering the desert, recycled urine” deep amber color to it. It is drier than ECBP but not excessively tannic, cuties peel, Darjeeling tea, and pecans on the nose. Taste is spearmint, candied walnut, and ethanol gingerbread hitting your lungs like Kentucky corn dabs.

It’s exceptionally good and worth sitting through a tour. You’re gonna be smelling like Armagnac graham crackers yelling at the Herbalife presentation “HOW DO I BECOME DIAMONG WORLD TEAM LEVEL” with nipples harder than Lion King for the SNES.

I am fascinated by breweries that seek out and attempt unpopular styles. Sometimes it is back of house getting a dunkelweizen hall pass, other times it’s a smaller place that’s content to have a mild on tap for nine weeks. That stubborn dedication fuels me. It’s never spots that have taken on leveraged debt or needlessly expanded into saturated markets that are the ones churning out Baltic porters.

Wren House has seized upon the sizzling hot hypestyle of ESBs for their summer crushers. Part of me wonders if that rare Phoenix Arizona water somehow mirrors the Burton upon Trent profile. This is not bland enough for the “AARP My Pillow Reverse Mortgage” Scottsdale subset, they love amber ales. It also isn’t crushable enough for dudes who roll through for Spring Training and absolutely destroy their air Bnbs.

ESBs are for guys who own a boat and regret it. People who guffaw at Bill Burr and go “he gives it to both sides!” and take a deep sip of that coppery, ester wash. Pierced nipples taste like coins and ESBs provide that refreshment.

In 2018 memes were deep fried, had no punchlines, and were forgotten. That’s how this style exists. You get the malty refreshment of wheat toast, scones, minerality and currency, with a marmalade closer. It’s a beer for someone who has not read a book since the middle of undergrad buy wants to talk about Kleiner’s laws and film theory. People who either genuinely do not care, or who once cared too much and now don’t have cares to give.

Modern craft beer is predicated on styles like this, because this is what homebrewers dabble in. Landing the red fruit and merging it with the grassiness in a low abv context is hard. As a result homebrewers are a more worn out punchline than “Ska” and “NICKELBACK.” Listen, it’s fine to have nothing to contribute.

This beer is good and no one will care about it. If you send it as an extra, they’ll be confused. That fine because somewhere, there’s a leathery skinned, recently divorced guy climbing out of a GMC Acadia who loves them enough for everyone else. He sends me Biden gas memes and that is pretty okay.

It’s tough for me to articulate how shitty this bottle is and what a colossal waste of money it was. I don’t mean that “relative to $200, distillery only, 2 barrel blends” I mean like relative to something you can get at Hyvee for $38.

It makes it even worse when you see this bottle flipping for $400 on secondary. The contents not only don’t justify it, but it puts you in an existential crisis.

Heaven Hill has the capacity to make some of the best bourbon on the planet. The PHC bottles when they hit, absolutely crush. Even their regular old Elijah Craig barrel proof absolutely destroys this 9 year 120 proof corn charlatan.

So how did this happen? Each of the five distilleries in Bardstown held a release to celebrate the “Bourbon Capital of the World.” In reviews I saw, the Heaven Hill was in second place out of the five bottles so I can only imagine how nightmarish that Log Still bottle is.

The box and tiny “premium booklet” is probably the best part of this release. I’m not saying master distiller Conor O’Driscoll was actively like “take those barrels of regular old HH 7 year that we left lying around but make sure they are worse” but this bottle is rough.

All proceeds were donated back to the Bardtown community so I mean, I guess drinking ammonia and Advil coating is worth it.

It’s amazing how dry and thin this is. The solvent peanut skins mix with high gloss enamel, you get caramel popcorn and turpentine. You both reel from the sun tea acrid notes but then it just keeps going endlessly like some Phish concert you only attended as a favor.

The closer brings aniline leather, lemon pledge, and the experience of eating bread pudding next to an idling diesel engine.

I guess the fact that this was extremely limited is a blessing in disguise. It’s tough to dunk on charity bottles but only fitting that resellers flipped them for a profit and likely never even tried them. It’s the financial equivalent of catching a hot dose.

The hype soaked staves of the bourbon world are in shambles and nothing demonstrates this disparity between price and quality more than this bottle.

Urban Roots was founded by two old schools brewers who love classic beers and BBQ. One of them made Rorie’s Ale at Odonata perhaps the biggest NorCal whale of all time. The other is a flavor master who knows how to keep things dialed in.

Their imperial stout program mirrors this pedigree lovingly. All of their Chocolate Mustache and Demon’s Run series are sinewy, tightly wound little grenache timepieces that take price in efficiency. They aren’t svelte to the point of being Central Waters or Parabolaesque. Modern Palates will find them to be splashy nestle quik affairs that give enough oak stage for the 50 person black box stout performance to be showcased.

No elaborate flabby sets. No Michael Bay production values. A distilled stout experience.

Even in their most pastrified form there is an air of decorum and posture. The vanilla is the flecked bean of costly gelato. The cocoa nibs are 85% Whole Food register chocolate. The portions are smaller but haughtier. It is an Augustus Gloop dignification.

You get the klondike bar, but its the smaller European portion, complete with a crossbody bag and smokes. The waffle cone and Whoppers are presented in a hotel mini fridge way where the scaled back size implies grace and restraint.

It’s good in a way that most stout makers wouldn’t dare attempt in the modern era. The 3.5s cascading noisily on Untappd from backyard shares, cries of “ToOo ThiiiNN” panging through the canyon.

These are the same guys who are constantly sweating at room temp and wear shorts in every season noting “IDK i just always run a little hot, my legs never get cold, yeah I know it’s snowing. These Lakais are the only shoes I wear. I just have wide feet ok”

Half a decade ago @threetaverns generated some pastry buzz with their Helms Deep program, and it was pretty good. Not knowing their catalog I was like here we go, a wakefield of Decatur. It seems their true heart aligns closer to a @bierstadtlager x @enegrenbrewing type of affinity. This isn’t the type of 1840 pilsen you smash on the streets. It’s new wave and has a distracting Citra profile that seeks to reconcile the ipa pineophiles 🌲 with the current lager fetishists. Everything ends up in Pantone shades of IPL, cold ipa or Italian pilsner. Here’s the rub though: this is very tasty. The underpinnings and structure of it are so well executed and look at that meringue cling 🍋 and retention. This has oyster crackers, saltine, polo sport cologne, and a lingering clementine drag. Everyone is trying to ride that @firestonewalker Pivo wave and it’s me who remains salty. Just Šnyt me up.

Regular old black label Evan Williams is most people’s first bourbon, maybe even in eggnog form. It costs less than a paperback book and has paved the way to many MFT sessions.

The marketing is self-aware and wonky, the bodega ridged bottle and the screw top. It apes the “luxury” product Jack Daniels in its monochromatic suit. It’s approachable, low risk oak turpentine that is fine for mixing, and 86 proof for underwhelming sippin. Pass the julep.

Bourbon itself though has gotten into a “Hysterical Realism” realm where, like overwrought fiction from Pynchon or Delillo, the metanarrative can get out of hand. Tacky boxes, stupid lore, boxes sold as packages, raffles based upon how much Fireball you previously bought. It makes you yearn for trashy black label Evan Williams parking lot naps.

Heaven Hill has a sense of humor though. They took the same janky bottle, filled it with absolutely incredible 12 year Evan Williams, and then just waxed the screw top. The result? $130 gift-shop-only release that is nothing short of a total stunner. This is not Blantons black label nonsense, this makes that Buffalo Trace cash grab look like someone who posts progressive infographics but does nothing to actually improve the world.

This is exceptional.

You can find this for $45 in Japan but good luck with that. At 101 proof it gives more warmth than your dad showing up to your modular synth show, glowing yet reserved.

The nose has granola and honey roasted peanuts, taste has SKOR bar, currant, lattice crust pie, finish is long and approachable with pangs of walnut and candied pecans. The swallow is longer than a Bad Dragon toy and more fulfilling.

I went into this fully expecting to waste money. A cornwater self-own, tearing my rotator cuff dunking on myself with my classic horrible financial decisions for the adulation of strangers on the internet. Then we do the classic “aw shucks salt of the earth” tagline every wince inducing bourbon review does to maintain relatability “I MEAN IT IS GOOD BUT YOU CAN ALSO BUY [always Knob Creek 9 Year or Elijah Craig Barrel Proof, literally every time.]”

I wont put you through that predictable pandering bullshit.

Top 5 bourbon of 2022.