What is the deal with number crunch? On paper it is the baller ass FO with a sun roof and leather interior, inside its super subjective. The nose is more foreboding and balanced than the straight bean bomb that is FO. In this instance I give it to FO, number cruncher is kitkat, FO is coldstone creamery. You’d expect number cruncher to be crazier but it’s actually more tame in a ricey whatchamacallit way. 

NC is more bitter and roasty but here’s the trade off, it has that slick heft of s mid west stout. If you want to do a dumbfuck 14 person share, NC will impress. And you’re dumb as dog shit. As a composite, it is worse, but if you love heft and a ride krispie aspect, then maybe you’re an instarone who will love this.

I don’t know I’m just here to pump trade values bc I desperately need more beer or whatever.

Alright here’s the real deal Holyfield on fob3: the nose exceeds b1 and makes b2 look tame and mildly integrated by contrast. It is chocotaco and smashed Drumstick, intense bean flicking intensifies. The body is not as viscous as b2 but nearly as thick as b1, and it shines as a result. The drag is oily and exudes crepes and a wide vibrato of skor bar and dry dark chocolate like them Trader Joe’s cash register bangers you can’t afford. It isn’t yankee candle and falls closer to Klondike bar. It comes near the peg of toasty roasted refreshment exhibited by name Vanilla Shake b1 and Vanilla eclipse if anyone is old enough to remember those.

If I had to make an arbitrary barrel assignment it feels like Blantons in execution, creamy, substantial, older than stated, but gentle. All around the edge sanding compels a tip of the trilby m’lady. I know that a less flabby stout body in beer world for basic palate dumb fucks is a flag on the field for instarones who got into craft beer under Obama’s final year and see Baigcss as a massive whale. The takeaways is that this is better than b2 markedly and almost hits b1 albeit without a massive mouthfeel, but providing a more intense nose as a tradeoff. As a result you can drink the entire bottle without a custody hearing or a meeting with ur manager at Sizzler.

Pairing iridium flare with New York steak is too apeshit for my baby palate. It’s carbonated malty mead, bragging has tumescent flexing merlot gourds and then a waft of dry Pinot skins rolls across like some fortified ale, iced cider and smuckers discard bin. It’s pastry jelly roll Morgan overload, danish eye rolling. I know the honeyboi contingency will gurgle into their CPAP masks about how unrefined my palate is but, chest clenching intensifies. 

You ever eat fucking Airheads? Guess what they still make those. Raspberry airheads dipped in wildly expensive barleywine. It isn’t thick or poorly made, it isn’t robitussin or Promethazine, it’s just massive. It’s like carrying all the groceries from the car in one trip and I’m too pussy to handle it. It’s thin and dialed in and intentional but disturbing like Lars Von Trier Nymphomaniac. It’s complex but way too much for me.

The common refrain is that eventually all Monkish cans taste similar, that’s like saying all ferraris sound and accelerate similar.

I mean. It’s like, fine.

In the pursuit of palate science I opened these three for yukyuks. The results were totally not what I was expecting.

Whenever someone brings up krieks or any cherry beer the standard refrain is “yah but cuvée  Rene so accessible and so good” and it turns into this obligatory stroke job. Sure this is far easier to find than a brewery only Jester King but that alone doesn’t make it incredible. This beer in its vibrating intense cherry pit is just too fucking sour for my baby palate. Its intensity doesn’t have a depth to the body level out the acidity nor does it give you some conciliatory sweetness to offset the face inverting tartness. Despite what the dudes at lambic.biz tell you, merely being Belgian isn’t enough to get a free pass riding on a geographic pedigree. This beer seemed wildly unrefined and ironically the most American in execution by contrast.

This is my favorite JK genie bottle and this release does not disappoint. The edges are rounded off and this falls in the less acidic spectrum of Jester King beers and is praiseworthy as a result. The nose isn’t traditional cherry and it comes across more of an earthy orchard vibe, Brett is peeping silently through the cherry tannins. The taste has a silky body that isn’t during or cloying, grenadine and sucrets meets Smuckers and cherry Italian soda. I always enjoy this one and ironically this felt more poised than the Pajotten pedigree, I feel the heresy as I type this, trust me. So imagine my fucking surprise when I opened this:

God damn. I was not expecting an upset of this proportion. Sometimes I will leave a brewery alone for a bit and circle back around to find that things are absolutely different than I recall. Alamanac never fell off, they just silently kept improving and flooding the streets with dank wares and we all guffawed at the Costco wales and kept trading for Midwest turds like complete fedex dipshits. This beer is excellent and takes a hard right where most sour purveyors drop the ball: exceptional restraint. If the old rag was that Almanac was lacto or too tart, this is widely divergent and pushes soft cherry skins, orange wine, farmers market wafts, a faint almost Malbec sort of dryness. It does everything so well and the small format is frustrating. I just want more.

Alamanac slayed with this release and I hope this is indicative of things to come, Cherry popping daddies, throw back a bottle of beer.

This is easily one of the best beers that De Garde has ever made, I slept on this b1 for way too long. There are instances where De Garde flirts with the acetic bouncer and rolls deep in the acidity club, bottles on bottles. This is not the case with this flawless stone fruit iteration. It is concurrently thirst quenching and drying in equal measure and the 750 disappears with celerity. The carb froths out like a Bolivian foam party, glow sticks and pacifiers in tow. The waft is so quintessential that it almost feels fake, it’s too purely nectarine, distilled fragrance like those scented markers form when u were a kid and you damn near wanted to eat them all zfg. Gumline is left intact and no porcelain bridge is needed after killing this, just a tight lemon meringue drag and thin clean closer. They knocked it out of the park with this, props where it is due to them Tillamookian ballers.

Blend 4 and it does not disappoint, I feel like this might be my favorite blend to date. No disrespect to the dudes with BMI 40+ and chondromalacia standing in line for tete as we speak but, this beer just crushes. It’s the next Digimon evolution of Avril, lemon lime Powerade mixed with crackly mineral Theraflu. Intensely drinkable, pillowy carb, that dry limestone finish like an unbonded contractor. It checks all the boxes and is ultra economical relative to the usual scrotum twisting cost of entry those [x]:1 StL bros usually demand. Get this and miss me with the razzle ammo

This was pretty okay, mouth feel is well done and I admire that they aren’t just going the exact route you would expect with pure Tropicana cunnilingus. It’s a touch vegetal and chardy with shallot and resin, knife hits off the stove, apricot and foxtail. Getting there.

Alright now we are cooking with tittygrease. This is very well done and holy shit the fact that this is a clean, tightly stitched TRIPLE IPA is staggering because those usually run head on into a crystal ethanol median and kill all passengers. It has a slight twitch of fusel but it’s almost charming relative to the pineapple and gymnosperm going on, endless days of raked leaves with guava juice thereafter. I had a complicated childhood. It finishes oily but the body washes away instantly and makes this one of those dangerous family gathering beverages where suddenly the secrets are coming out and why is Nana crying. Offshoot continues it’s completely bipolar 50:50 KD ratio. I’m ok with that.

I love this mead and every time I open one normies look at me like I am eating white cane sugar straight from the sack. This is a bargain basement approximation of the god tier meads and you can sip it and dream of the sights that melomel eagles must see. Crushed blackberry, currant, black cherry, grenadine and sucrets meld together in this jammy IHOP fellatio of flapjack proportions. I don’t have the time or energy to attempt to hype and manipulate the raffle values of meaderies that haven’t even opened yet, so instead I’ll just drink this soda concentrate and look at my ever expanding silver dollar nips, diverging from one another in a cellulite expanse like these gorilla tits exist in a loveless marriage but still share the same rib cage. What am i even talking about again

This one was a surprise that RKO’d me out of fukn nowhere. My hobby is finding shit that selfish locals are furtively enjoying and then ruining shit for them. It’s the palate equivalent of taking a kids Nerf ball and throwing it into a runoff canal. If I don’t get it, then no one gets to enjoy shit. Creamy chobani peach mixes with vape oil, apricot hookah and this weird 7th grader bedroom dankness. WE ALL KNOW UR NOT JUST LISTENING TO TOOL IN THERE.

It’s no secret that Bookers is my consistent work horse and I love the Beam lineup of casky, oaky, age stated gems: the Pepsi to the Buffalo Trace lineage of Coca Cola shit. If you remember the recent special Knob Creek releases that are probably still haunting shelves with that crippling $120 price tag, then this may seem eerily familiar. At first blush a $130 bottle of Knob Creek single barrel might compel you to get up from the chair you no doubt just fell from. Regular ass single barrel knob creek is like a third of the price, so do the extra years make this a solid buy? Eh, kinda. To most people this would land squarely in the LOL YA RITE sector when seen in a glass case. Price aside, this is excellent juice and presents itself with a massive barrel proof presence, a noteworthy age statement and fucking single barrel. It has it all on paper and just short of some fat younger Willett picks nothing else is running in the teenaged segment like this. The age is evident in a sanded pine and leather bike saddle nose. There are red hot candies and grated nutmeg. The taste is hot but very dry so it isn’t a a pure firebomb. Finish is extremely long and layered like a Grands biscuit. Red fruit and almonds close out the experience and light local anesthetic along the bitter zones. Exhale through the nose exhibits a kind of peppermint spice. It’s a lot to unpack. It takes the Bookers model to a far more civilized realm and feels more akin to EHTBP and Stagg than the youth of the six year olds youre used to tasting on. It’s no bookers25th but it’s also a huge improvement over the grocery store ballers. I contemplated buying a second bottle but held off, I really enjoy this Noe genome but for the price you could spend less and land in similar territory with ECBP or eh Taylor. Try it at a bar and see if your tight little coin purse has the elasticity to accommodate these heavy whiskey stones.

Wow the first bottle out the gates from these guys and it is already admittedly stellar. Grapes can be a tough ingredient to massage on a wild ale base, and goldens in particular can do sloppy tannic things or go apeshit acidic. Black Project holds the reigns on this complex jammy treat admirably and first crushes some preserves out of this destemmed banger. My@biggedt fear in these offerings is overextraction and that’s not present at all here, the coin lands almost Framboise side up: It isn’t overly vinous on the olfactory and instead leads with a raspberry meets blackberry sort of residual sweetness. There’s a slight sharpness but nothing bearing red wine vinegar or Korean nail salon levels, more like cranberry juice. The taste is very dry and almost hits the bicuspids a touch too hard but whips back on the throttle and lends a saving arm of berry purée as the car falls off the cliff. Michael Bay acidity with a James Gunn resolution. Swallow is long and acidic with a warming French oak quality that dances with the Smuckers factory playing in the mid palate. This is as good as the grape fruit stands from Casey but still lacks a touch of Brett B/L depth found in the Cfp series to get to the top podium. 

Still a shockingly well done and graceful fruity sipper. If I had to guess grapes this feels decidedly more Tempranillo but I could easily divorcees sipping this at a gender reveal party, or that “me time” weekend in Palm Springs. Janet from accounts receivable will drill the shit out of this and drive home peeling the fuck out in a Chrysler Pacifica, burgundy tongued, child seats be damned, Travis has them this weekend. Dry July starts soon and this season of the Bachelorette just isn’t scratching that Burgundy itch.