Timbo from highland park went to Florida and now is turning out adjunct stouts in the land of NASCAR and water hags. Fortunately this is excellent, body isn’t syrupy, the profile isn’t dripping in artificial stevia sweeteners. While this is a massive brown it drinks akin to that Chickanut shit that they made an entire reserve society dedicated to. Thank god the cinnamon doesn’t dominate and instead contributes a dusty earthiness to the sweetness like nutmeg. Barrel has to somehow compete with all this madness, but it remains buttery and caramel in the background. On paper I would hate this but in reality I could smash an entire bottle of this. Solid stuff sniping out of nowhere.

I will say this right out of the gates: this beer is incredible and perhaps the best beer Almanac has made since Farmers Reserve 2. It’s easy to beat up on Alamanac for hot Costco card carrying deals, or rail on about relying on fruit too heavily or having a limited spectrum of offerings. I get it. That’s the cool saber rattling shit that people do when they haven’t checked in on a brewery in a bit, but god damn this pillow down duvet is a gentle melon embrace. First and foremost it feels like they completely adjusted their water profile because this has an amazing creamy aspect to it like Naked juice machine and never drills that Chardonnay dryness. There are waves of cut honeydew and ripe guava, a touch of lavender type notes and lemon meringue. I don’t know what Pichia culture is, but this is unlike anything in the ABC lineup. 

I don’t know if some of the cringey additions like passionfruit or ginger are necessary but thankfully they play a support role that adds depth and never distracts. You will clear this small format bottle incredibly fast and the satin carb does little to slow down rampant consumption. The whole affair seems tropical beyond belief, mango and papaya, like those cum colored Life Savers. I have seen the tired ass refrain that myopic dudes embrace when railing against these Bay Area ballers, but honestly if you can’t enjoy this fantastic beer I have no idea what to tell you. This squeezes my pith and the juice be running down my Bugle Boy pant leg.

Shockingly, this barleywine from acquisition masters, Green Flash, is completely legit. Sepia Frumento has a heft to the body with a sticky spun caramel candy apple goodness. The residual sugars never go overboard and exhibit a Skor bar type of decadence. Barrel profile is slightly bittering aspect but that may be coming the the completely unnecessary fruit additions. When you’ve come to expect complete garbage like Sleeping With Shaggy, this beer comes out the gates as a welcome and refreshing surprise. As a corollary, the pours at Surly Goat are getting out of hand. 

Beachwood BBQ drapers dram, this is a bizarre riff in the “sweet potato bourbon yam” realm like autumn maple, but with more barrel and unfortunately an overriding clove, nutmeg, allspice, and saturated cinnamon type of thing happening. It’s anomalous because this is both aseasonal but also astylistic to what beachwood is about. It makes me want the base beer without all this bolt on nonsense. The underpinnings of this is a Sadie, barrely, manhattan old ale but then the holiday cheer squad comes in and reks shit. It’s for that exact reason that I age Fantome Noel for years before I fuxxx w them. Beachwood stays legit but this wasn’t a fav of mine.

Also LOL look at the iPhone 7 struggling with this janky ass fake Bokeh, 2/10

Back in 2010 KBS was a personal white whale and when I landed it seven years ago, I thought I was on some Radio Rahim shit 📻. Every year, someone would inevitably extra me a single bottle and I would stroll down that malty memory lane, still unique and occupying that coffee soaked cockle of my heart like an album you’d heard so many times you could only skip to the deepest cut. After seven years, this is the first year that I was able to go to a retail establishment and buy it with no FedEx involved. In a world of rapidly evolving tastes and palate differences, this remains a steadfast constant that may wane as the growing bones of adolescent palates seek more salacious framework, but like a well oiled mitt or a RealDoll you used to French kiss before you met your secondlife wife: this holds a special love that endures. With the waxing and waning of the need for trade machinations, we have a new crop of eager and excited BevMo ballers and Total Wine warriors becoming instaRones overnight, as they should. The framework for rapid palate evolution and traditional neglect is built upon the shattered staves of top of the spear neckbeards falling upon countless limited releases. In World War I after the Battle of the Marne the cycling of troops from the front to the rear became standard to prevent psychosis and shell shock. Every rising palate investing in $37/slot raffles today will be a grizzled dortmunder drinker in three years, having witnessed the horrors of luxury consumables. The vets and greenest troops can still find solace in these beers. Stout. Stout never changes.

Let’s overlook the Avery janky mail label, homebrew chic look to the marketing and focus on the salient points. We all know barleywine is life and wheat wine is tangentially “existence” then, wheat wine is “getting by” as Helldorado can attest. Be thankful, at least it isn’t another stout with Reese’s cups added to it, or whatever else. This is distinctively barleyesque and leads with a substantial malt profile, tempered by honeycomb and Chic O Stick sweetness. There’s a weird minerality or like alkaline thing on the nose that dips and weaves with an orangey “gran mariner” aspect. 

The taste has an appreciable barrel character but starts to veer into the “American strong ale” oncoming traffic. I enjoy the distinct imperial martinellis cider and ginger snap taste but for 11% this thing has far outgrown it’s britches and tufts of fusel pubes are poking through the zipper. That is either off putting or sexy, depending on how deviant you seem. Swallow is boooozy melon and turbinado sugar.

 If you ever played Gran Turismo III and maxed out the Suzuki Pikes Peak escuda, running it into walls and full throttling that bitch: that’s this beer. It’s a wild run and ultimately worth it, but bizarre and lacking precision. Still down to smash tho.

I mean, probably.

They sell Almanac at Costco so SOMEONE in Compton is drinking these wilds. 

Fine I’ll go do it.

This beer gushed like a lonely woman after a successful tinder date. Thankfully, the end result was worth the Gallagheresque pageantry. This can stand squarely with the likes of Norma, Casey, and BFM ADSBC in that complex, robust and most importantly “not red wine vinegar” realm of BdGees. The gentle malty profile has a red grape and plum aspect with veins of vanilla and sandalwood pulsing through the mouthfeel. The acidity stays far from the realm of Aquanet but also doesn’t phone in some grenadine aspect either. 

Carb is, excessive as hell. They took a page from Logsdon on this one and I lost a third of the bottle. Oh well, I knew it was coming and I do naked diamond push ups on my front deck to prepare for days like these. This style receives no love and I hope it continues to stay that way. Ddb has so precious few spaces upon which to retreat with Megaballer locusts rapaciously devouring the simple verdant countryside.

At this rate dortmunders will be the only beer that doesn’t cost $120 secondary by 2020.

I know I am an EBT tier ticker with this b2 but god damn this is phenomenal. For Perennial to demonstrate their range with an all motor no adjunct firework show is extremely telling. I initially had reservations when the coating was some Sherwood Williams massive; I expected pure sugar. It has a syrupy heft above Huna and on the lines of bourbon ba Dark Lord except actually delicious. It is hulking and expansive and oddly fusel given the relative abv. 

However, this drink has insane depth and attention to detail. There’s roast and tobacco, earl grey and leather, a highly restrained profile. Despite the expansive gurgling body, it remains drinkable and side by side with regular ass Huna, it was saddening. This purity in execution is a testament to a brewery rooted in hypebeating Supreme one off adjunct sneakers. They make Rag and Bone, Theory shit too I guess. Anyone sleeping on this shit needs to stop crushing up that syrupy ambien.

People with severe OCD will have their teeth itch seein Clover in the mismatched glassware.  Don’t worry, all is remedied below. So what do we have here today? Some serious Wallonian Greco Roman wrassling, oiled up with musk and funk, rollin in them hay bales.

With some limited qualifiers, I don’t think it is a point of contention that Side Project and Hill Farmstead are arguably the highest rated saison producers in America at present.  Casey and SARA fanatics temple veins be on full throb, I see u.  These  two beers represent the pinnacle of the entries from THOSE TWO canons.  Each is a component blended saison comprised of the discrete “highest touted” offerings and we can test the hypothesis as to whether a saison can be greater than the SAIsum on its parts.

Clover is a blend of Ann, Art and Flora.

Tete is Oude Fermier, Oude Du Ble and “experimental saisons”

Composition fallacies aside, these two are unquestionably world class and represent the tip of the spear for the style.  Yes, they are decidedly american in execution but neither drunkenly stumbles into that faux-wild ale realm of buckling acidity that has so deftly poisoned the credibility of North American saisons due to mixed branding, mixed ferming, and monoculturing.  I can already see some dumbfuck in the comments carrying on about Blaugies and TRADITIONALLY NUANCED GRIST. I get it. Sit down, take your Nintendo Switch to Ypres and leave us alone.

SO WHICH IS BETTER DDB? I ONLY HAVE $350 IN MY BEER CELLAR GIFT CERTIFICATES AN CAN ONLY GET 1.

That’s a difficult question to answer because both are solving the question of depth and control, with staggering power and panache.  This isn’t some hemming and hawing, the two address the same issue in different ways: what is sublimity in the farmhouse genre? For Tete the expression is a sort of Rationalist box checking endeavor that leaves no element unaddressed.  It has a more fulfilling creamy whip to the mouth feel, additional heft and churned malt for a longer finish.  It is easier to apprehend because it is less delicate, Tete is the Lars Von Trier with a clear message, while Clover is more of a Michael Haneke that needs to be unpacked and examined carefully.

The nose on Tete is like Peach chobani, greek yogurt and cut stone fruit, corded rope, cut construction paper, popsicle sticks and clementines.  Clover opts for a more zesty approach with lime and gruyere, Comte cheese and meyer lemon rind, peeled Cuties.  The contrasts are difficult to articulate without reaching to base consumeristic metaphors, so strap in, there’s a lot of head cradling similes in today’s review.

Clover reminds me of the delicate brett B, Brett L balance with the faintest hint of acidity. It presses the capacity of the genre to new levels only excelled by Art, SARA WOL, and Ann.  It is the timeless body line expression of a Carrera 911 which will remain relevant beyond the life of the content.  Tete is the dizzying capacity of a Nissan GTR which outperforms competitors by sheer mechanical attention to every detail.

Tete is inferior to the likes of say, Saison du Fermier b1 and Unblended 40.  But that’s about it.  The Voltron approach addresses every concern and usually I can pipe up with a condescending yarn about “FOR THIS PRICE YOU CAN DRINK [whateverthefuck, usually Parabola] INSTEAD!”  I simply cannot do that here, because the closest analogues are still pretty fucking expensive.  In an odd shift, you can drink THESE instead of going for Ann or Unblended 40.  Hill Farmstead is its own discount brand.

Ironically, I wanted to drink more of Clover because it’s that silent child who needs the extra attention, but the small format is the ringing of the school bell, off Clover goes back to that alcoholic stepfather who makes him cut Granny Smith apples and churn Brie.  Tete survives longer sessions and produces a wide spectrum of flavors as it warms.  It doesn’t rely heavily on the slightly more acidic profile because it also gives more of that Brett B musk.  It feels like it is trying harder, which may be good or bad depending on your proclivities.

In a vacuum, both beers are genre-defining but they serve to highlight different ways to the core of saison sublimity. Clover makes Tete seem heavy handed and Tete makes Clover seem insubstantial, but neither is deficient.  It’s like a buddy cop movie where Tete is always tryna touch Clover’s radio, but Clover is too old for this shit and 3 days away from retirement.  Those tropes.

Realistically, these should only come in magnums, but this is the world we live in. Sadly, these beers will usually be consumed in an Ohio backyard split 14 ways by drunk dipshits with filthy taster glasses getting their daily cardio by taking a knee to obtain a horizon level photo of the beer for Untappd.  What a time to be alive, 2, 14; BIN CONUS INCLUDED.