Oh man PGHpenguins be a fool for this one. I am all for 13% bbbws in pint cans and this did not disappoint. Take a sticky, resin forward barleywine and merge it with the American oak and dripping molasses of bourbon barrel residue: that leaky caramel bung. Bananas fosters and carmelized raisins. If you loved Sebago, this is your go to for blackout eraser dick make out sessions on the riverbank. We are building something here. Deep River: brewery most responsible for unprepared pregnancies.

Notes of axe body spray, third owner wrx, kettle bell, seven diamonds shirts, supreme hats, tones of sneaker heads, advanced vape rigs, emptied swishers, loans from parents, six years to finish undergrad, a hint of dating under aged girls, starts sentences with “I’m not racist but”, is rude to wait staff, the swallow drives fast through residential neighborhoods, has a Rockford fosgate bandpass box, there’s a note of chain wallet, real estate license, talks about being Keto, goes to burning man to hit on chicks, leases a car that is a third of this beers monthly income, still lives with his parents but just planned a trip to Phuket, has several spartan race medals, really wants to get into oracle boat racing, loves OPUS ONE and screaming eagle, has a gsxr but no M2 license, beer is good at pulling out, ghosts people in the DM; never uses a turn signal, 2nd shift nailed it: just a quintessential douche bag.[fn1]

[fn1] this is excellent with restrained acidity and bursting with tangerine and Buddha hand, cut melon and Agua Fresca, the acidity never gets out of pocket and holds firm in the pineapple juice realm, tame carb and bone dry white grape swallow. I hope second shift continues to stand in the monolithic side Project shadow, so long as these remain accessible and completely delicious.

The prior offerings from Free Will were good but, this new talent they scooped from McKenzie is overhauling their wild ale game in a massive way. This is a total shocker in that it provides the depth of something like white lodge but has the careful acidity and poise of advanced oak theory. The result is this fantastic satsuma rind and lemon pith that is beer first and acidity second. If you dialed back the aggression on cable car and fortified it with a Brett B musk found in the likes of old Fantome Printemps you would arrive and this pleasant, drillable, soft spoken pGueueuze that grips the hem of Allagash Resurgam’s robe with affection. This will definitely be a brewery program to watch carefully if this is a harbinger of things to come.

When you pull out that murky cognomen “strong ale” it’s kinda like seeing an “action adventure” video game: that shit tells me nothing. You can end up with something like Double Bastard, some boozy garbage, a trifling old ale with smoked malt, who knows. With component blends it’s like picking a jelly belly and just hoping it isn’t buttered popcorn.

When Fremont says old or strong ale, like a teenager with the prospect of feeling up some malty tits, I lean forward. Regular ass BBOMB is already in that Sucaba orbit of world class quality converging with staggering accessibility. AO BBOMB took shit one step further like a New Game+ that upped the complexity and depth with greater rewards, now enter this circumspect blend of “Matt’s” three of them, presumably.

The coating and heft is the goldilocks in between the regular BBOMB and the AO, it sheets dramatically but the substantial legs take just as soon as it conveys. The booze is mitigated by a dizzying barre profile that reminds me of a component blend of PNC and Kuhnhenn BBBW. There is nougat and agave nectar, a leather saddle dryness and touch of bakers chocolate, with a lingering American oak profile that imparts cohiba tobacco. 

For a blend of rusty nail, bbomb, bing cherry and a smoked b2000, it is incredibly seamless in the transition between the elements. I will take no great joy than watching blunt palate dumb fucks complain that there isn’t enough stout, like we don’t have enough of those readily available. 

The net result is a phosphorescent display of barrel strength, like a stave wheelie just to show what is possible from smoked barleywines to fruited stouts and stick the landing with a result that drinks like Bells BA 9000. Don’t question it. Just marvel at what you just witnessed.

I don’t even know any of the Matts’ses.

I don’t care if it wasn’t a Kevin Gates reference

It is now

You had your barrels? You never had your stout

You ask any brewer any REAL BREWER, it don’t matter if you barrel age within an inch of FG or a mile

And you owe me a 9 second barrel

If you ain’t out of stoutrol you ain’t in stoutrol
Fuck this website is embarrassing 

Maybe late but worth the wait. That old school Russian river heritage with a pinch of San Diegan pizzazz. Stoked to tear into these.

Kiwi is peepin that gin barrel v skeptically but I keep reminding her of that Upright magic and how good Eek was.

I hate to deck out superlatives, especially hot in the first month of 2017 but lord this is undeniably legit.  I can’t say that this result is entirely surprising  given that back in 2012, this beer haunted the BA top 100 and was one of the best saisons I had ever had.  Those 300 bottle PA Bangers setting the standard on some lowkey Upright shit. So yeah, it’s been a while, since the days of my Blackberry Potato phone. Days of them narratives.

So I walked into this assuming:

1. Changing of the guard, different talent
2. some shift toward PA new currency palate pandering
3. some reliance on fruits to denature what was previously amazing about the base beer
4. an acrimonious intense acidity or otherwise fuck up in the pH realm

So imagine my surprise when NONE of that shit was the case.  Not only was the fruit restrained and perfect in its vellus hair landing, but the juicy aspect was a merger of Persica b1 750 and New Glarus Wild Peach.  The acidity was a complete afterthought and even made the casey stonefruit examples seem intense by comparison.  Imagine how fucking pillow down duvet soft you have to pull to make CASEY exist as the upper registry counter point for excess.

The nose is zero of the typical eye watering jolly rancher atomic warhead shit, it is first and foremost a saison.  It is M.O.B. MUSK OVER BITCHES.  There’s a brett B profile and a sort of fruit leather peach fruit roll up and dried apricot earthiness.  If you agitate it and then swallow it opens up into this peach meringue type of Home Run Pie type of sweetness that is counter blaanced by the french oak vanilla profile just latticing the fuck out of that biscuit crust.

The middle body of this is sweet but lightly tannic like apricot pie filling

“If you are eating pie filling, something terrible has happened” – Paul F. Tompkins

But in a good way.

The swallow is hardly dry and even less residual marmalade, somewhere like a fastball in the inside corner where it feels like grace in art.  If you’ve ever watch Fedderer play power baseline, it’s that peach smash with mad backspin that feels effortless but remains fielding shit on its toes nonstop.  There’s hardly praise for agility in the stonefruit game since they are usually split 9 ways but, I implore you, take these Sampras peach BALs to your own face. Do not share this beer under any circumstances.

Ask yourself: when was the last time that a 750 simply wasnt enough? Sure in two dimensional beers like Live Oak hef, all day, but i mean a COMPLEX beer that you want more than a single bottle. That is above all impressive to me. I don’t mean some easy to apprehend shit like a 4 hour ROTHKO exhibit, I mean like a peachy discography that continues to deliver like the first four Mars Volta album in AWA form.

I don’t want to rock on my heels and pander out the same 14 randomized stone fruit sour adjectives you have seen ad infinitum, i want to underscore that I took time out of my busy ass schedule because this brewery deserves utmost praise for this. Hats off McKenzie, cementing the very real possibility that Pennsylvania is the best state for beer in the United States. srs.

God damn I’ve been waiting for that 2am text from McKenzie to smash again

Been tryna dig that peach since the 8th grade

That free will about to get dug out like where all of them players sit. Even if you choose not to Goozie you still have made a choice