Man this was a rough hewn blast from the mid 2000s land locked past. Take the POG apricot haze craze and invert it as completely as possible, thick malty resins like an oversparged American barleywine, crushed potpourri, extreme sappy extraction akin to all boil warrior hops, tree bark, Palm fronds, and raked ground cover make this swing far from prevailing market trends. The nose has this stemmy overextracted/oversteeped dry hop aspect to it that is bitter and reminiscent of Darjeeling sun tea. The carb is good [?] so there’s that. This presents a market alternative to the things that everyone is currently demanding, so it is occupying a segment, albeit one complete devoid of consumer desire. Wisconsin people drink more beer than any other state in the nation but I would be shocked if this was a staple in those binges.

Matt Matt from the Veil Veil, (god damn)x2. “Youalreadyknowwhatthisshitis” a Every SoundCloud ever. It’s exceptional and on the upper middle tier in the genre defining monkish realm which continues to remain content competing with itself. It’s like the Ussain Bolt of trubcans where you already set the Olympic record but you keep competing just to nerf everyone else. “Brewers recognize because Veil n Monkish is the truth and the haze same color Tropicana orange juice” – Young Jizzle from the bottom of the map, 50 round clip on the bottom of the strap/cicerone

DONT SAY A WORD, don’t be grateful if shitty beer reviews ever made you laugh. What’s at stake here is more than just stone fruit reputations. Toolbox even after Peter Perrecones departure to Belching Beaver has been putting out wild ales that do two things: first drilled and screwed as fuck, the drops are 1.00000 to the JK exponent. Acidity, here’s the issue, no frosty grist no creamy whip just chardonnay and tight dry fume blanc. It’s less peach and more atomic warhead, salt and sour ropes, brackish tart finish. It reminds me when an awesome Gt mustang undergoes the saleen or rousch “upgrades” that makes it wholly undriveable on a daily basis. As it warms it becomes more gentle and less pure Chardonnay. It’s tongue buckling and hard to endorse for long mileage, I feel the lingual furrowing, bisecting along the salivary glands. You ever get hella into rock candy and then can’t perform cunnilingus? LOL JK no one has ever had that problem. In sum, this is pretty good albeit not a solo mission. As a corollary, the 10th anniversary 180g pressing of Juturna is a must own. 

This is well tread ground at this point: I love what this brewery is up to.  The hop game is lower upper tier, but god damn these absurd, massive barrel aged beer in cans just continue to floor me figuratively and literally.  Not quite BarleyLife but not yet pastry stout either, PastryLife as it were. This beer has a roasty frothy body like smashed walnuts, the middle swallow imparts a chocolate macaroon with them coconut flakes present in more of an oily degree rather than straight up Mounds indian burns.

This doesn’t belong in a can. I have a feeling that Elk Valley has a bunch of criminal defense attorneys on the payroll just cleaning up on DUI cases.  If you want to see a SeaDoo crash onto the lakeshore, this is how you accomplish that.  You know those WACKY ZOMG EPIC FAIL videos on UNILAD where someone eats total shit in a golf cart down a 9 stair? This is the inception of those activities.

It hides the booze exceptionally well, and the sweetness never dominates over the graham cracker body. If the olfactory is blocked and legitimately enjoyed out of a can, then I hope your ride on mower has an autokill feature because someone is falling off that bad bitch.

It would be an LSAT tier logic game to attempt to name something else of this quality to cost of entry ratio.  I don’t know if these are accessible but I just want more of them, MY BIERSTICK BECKONS.

RIP OKLAHOMA DANCE MOMS, NISSAN MURANO CRASHED INTO THE CRACKER BARREL.

Having had a huge slice of Wolf’s Ridge offerings, they present a wide swath of styles and color palates to play with.  Their top seller is a coffee and vanilla cream ale that was not lacking, but it was god damn confusing.  Their tripel was extremely dialed in and fusel to the point of being off balance, but then they also brewed arguably the best Dopplebock I have ever had outside of Germany. Their shit is bonkers and all over the place.  So by this metric: their adjunct stouts are well executed so under the law of K/D, their wild ale has to suck shit? Wrong.

Terre Sauvage demonstrates that this brewery likes to keep one foot on the traditional steps of the brewing pool and hang onto the edge, emphasizing the base saison qualities without going balls to the sauvage wall relying on the rose hips and coriander too much. It’s faintly acidic and presents melon and kumquat but stacked on a firm base of saison phenols, lil bit of fruit stripe gum and ritz cracker body.  This wont rock your world, but I would defy you to find anything lacking either.  I would far prefer a focused, clean approach that demonstrates skill and control in wild ales over the lactic acid mandible dissolvers that really have no application outside of shares with 18 maladjusted dipshits in a backyard.

The common refrain is that Cycle beers are “too thin” and yet, the greasy Floridian populace shuffles daily to their malty breadlines on the weekday releases to claim their candy water succor.  Since the sheer volume of 5 bottle sets from this brewery is overwhelming, I usually have to remain content to sit back and wait to see which is the “best” and then gauge Cycle’s development accordingly.  These sand dollar nips cant take the caloric hit of repeated ba stout ravaging, poking around blindly for quality.

Thankfully this beer is very deece, is not a touch on the more svelte realm that will disappoint people who got into craft beer 18 months ago, aka the TRU BEER VETS. It is entirely drinkable but maintains enough of a heft and sticky cling to present an A frame for the admittedly one dimensional vanilla character.  It’s a very good dimension, but just not a ton going on.  Krang opens dimension X and its like, basically nothing but rock soldiers, and that’s fine. There isn’t a sheet cake oiliness or that Yankee candle bullshit from oversteeped/overextracted shit that comes across synthetic.  It’s a stout first and foremost and presents a great lil waxiness like a klondike bar shell.

The swallow reminds me of whoppers and a kit kat sort of thing but you can actually drink the entire bottle and you dont feel like you just engaged in analingus at Coldstone Creamery, so high merits for that. DDB’s attention seeking bullshit notwithstanding, this is a really solid entry and seems to hit that sweet spot amicably.  It’s tough to reconcile the cost of entry when you can have FOb3 for basically the same price and be much better off, but that doesn’t mean this is deficient in any way.

Go drop soft loads in ur waffle cone.

Holy god who do we blame for this grenadine laden astringent pile of dookie? On paper this seems almost impossible to fuck up: perennial take Maman and add Maraschino purée, or just otter pops into KDS. Boom you’re done. There must have been some epoxy huffing intern who was like “hey what if we make a wafer thin oatmeal stout, hit that coveted “questionably infected” realm that we attained with Maman 2016, and then add smashed Sucrets? How about that.” God where to begin. Thankfully the nose is free from the port and iced cider on the taste and it hovers in the realm of “more disappointing 2017 Parabola.” The swallow is as punishing as Silver Surfer for NES. It’s so sharp and astringent, it causes immediate recoil like an SKS with tart gum buckling “Cherry” that is akin to Charles Shaw and Barq’s root beer. I made it 6 ounces and I deserve a Cicerone platinum trophy 🏆 for making it that far. The drag is long and punishing like prunes and beet juice mixed with chocolate milk. Really thin choc milk made with skim and cut with water like powdered milk made at a Mormon summer camp. Usually I blindly love Fremont’s Barrel program but this has almost zero redeeming qualities, and like a racist Bumble date, it gets worse as it opens up. It’s a hard pass from me for a litany of cherry driven failures. If you have a beer scavenger hunt that reads “drink red sharpies” then sure have at it.

I gave up Supreme Cliente, a god tier wild ale that is legitimately phenomenal, for this. You’d be hard pressed to set up a shittier, more disparate trade..

@elkvalleybrew excels in the negligently canned ridiculous ba beer realm, but is their oil dab on point? This murky shatterpiece is good notwithstanding outside the realm of the god tier chowderbangers. The mouthfeel is silky with a mild arugula and tangerine but a frothy sort of expansive vape rig that’s not close to the treehouse and monkish kipping deadlifts. It’s likely the best thing Oklahoma is gonna get within a three state zone Kim Jong Un nuclear blast so termpering my “🤔great but-” needs some statements of clarity, if this is readily available then scale up my rating for sheer accessibility to quality ratio. The finish is too bitter relative to the citrus presented but it’s still pretty solid, this goes out to the fuck tickers been hating on you all summer. Hipster tickers on Instagram straight flexin. Inb4 🥔 🎥

Elusive new challenger appears: tequila barrel aged life. And let’s get this out of the way, this sweet agave creme brûlée shell works masterfully with the flawlessly lean albeit foreceful malty cervical spine. No formanial spacing in these discs because the entire execution engages the core throughout. It’s toasted rye and fig jam spread across the marzipan charcuterie plate. As a corollary, I don’t know a ton about @upslope but if they are busying themselves wit putting 15% abv barleyLIFE in stove pipe cans then I don’t even know what to think. We are living in 2017 and they are mashing in 2067. I thought it would be a normal Sunday night and now I’m full stovepiped, writing Family Matter fan fiction. 

Colorado continues to consistently silently slay across many segments. Typical. 

Man I love to hate on Fresno as much as the next guy, maybe more so as some self flagellating catharsis since I’m from there, but goddamn his hazy NE lager Summer Vibes absolutely slays. An absolutely crushable body with a watery lager finish that accelerates the long alpha acid swallow. It’s the aesthetic and light creamy body without heft or residual malty cling, dudes are gonna fall down and face plant at grizzly stadium. The orange and bitter gymnosperm swallow lends itself to the most pool beee ever just short of including a ph correction kit and a Funoodle. It’s hilarious being in the 559 and seeing cans of this banger just sitting in the cooler, downtown Fresno looking like I Am Legend IRL edition. Scaled economies leads me to believe that there’s an M43 of sorts in every locale and I look forward to this rhizome proliferation for mutually assured bitterzone destruction.