The tamarindo salt brought out the terroir of the montmorency tannins.

The shrimp rim accented the minerality of the Colorado water profile.

It would be a massive understatement to note that St. Louis is enjoying fertile fields of trade crops.  The rains are bountiful and regular, and even the “dismissed” releases like Fuzzy b2 compel other regions’ finest offerings.  As such, between the massive cliffs of Frambois du Fermiers and the sheer face of Tete du Cuvee lies a valley of cool babbling brooks.  These shaded offerings are the seldom tread paths and uncelebrated riparian streams laced with glinting gold waiting to be tapped.  The regular Bles, the dismissed Grisettes, even then brow furrowing Marietta: the secret StL gems.

Today’s review is the finest trap door farmhouse spider, lying in musty wait for the unwary consumer to stumble into the lemony web.

I had my suspicions about this beer.  The grisette in my estimation was better than many of the highly touted “raffle time” ticks.  These feather soft, low abv, soft spoken libations get stomped far too regularly and for all the time people spend prolapsing their buttholes to obtain Derivation_X-subscript.DLL  this beer presents a comforting alternative.

The pour is effervescent and crackles with orange pop rocks and a mild sustain of foam without lacing.  That De Garde ground bloomer of smoke and sizzle that immediately subsides, dem sucrose krausening tones on the 1s and 2s.  The nose has a clean intense alkaline minerality like lime Pelligrino, tangerine zest, construction paper and above all else, lemon lemon lemon in your eyes and nose.  We need more lemon pledge. eh no….ehh no.  Mr. King no es home.

This is no Avril nor is it a mug of chamomille on a cold day.  You will face acidity, but it will never reach the labial vestibule.  Like a tightly crafted timepiece, this flows with sun soaked radiance that almost reminds me of a baby Brute, for those of you who are old enough to even remember Ithaca Brewing.  There is a jasmine and clementine juciness that makes up for the water thin body.  Part of me wants a bit more of a substantial yogurty grist to the body, but then again, maybe I should realize this isn’t a grisette and appreciate it for what it is.  Notwithstanding, the comparisons to Clara and Lady in Gray are inevitable and this takes a more tumble dry heat in contrast to the musk and funk of the hangline drying attendant to the former.

You can crush this beer and it quenches thirst without drying or bleaching the your palate’s butthole.  If you have ever been poor enough to make a GatoradeMosa, then you will already anticipate the light carb, faint salinity, and lemon lime squeeze to this.  It’s the type of shit they serve you at a day spa while you wait for you garish mud scrub or whatever the shit that recent divorcees are spending their alimony on these days to feel actualized.

By all means, still go ahead and chase the Arts and Westlys, no one is saying dont do that.  All I am saying is this is something akin to the Mazda speed3.  Sure no one will lose their shit when they see it, but deep down you know you got something special on the cheap, even if it has a gaudy FUBU jersey mesh interior.

What are we even talking about again

If only they put this in 16oz cans and did a Petaluma truck sale.

I am gonna wait for (in the following order):

Very stoopid wit

Very hazy stoopid wit

King very stoopid wit

King very stststooopididid wit

It would be no understatement to decree that Toppling Goliath has demonstrated, to date, an almost untouchable barrel program.  On top of this, their stout program is amongst the best if not the best in the entire world.  I know some salty Scandinavian just choked on his Kaggen, but they have free health care so I dont give a shit about raising their blood pressure.  The point is, TG has enjoyed an almost flawless track record to date.

Some would temper this statement with acknowledging that they haven’t stepped out of their comfort zone of hops and chocolate malts. There’s some legitimacy to that demurrer.  We have yet to see a compelling wild ale or saison from them and they have yet to really execute a paradigm-shifting old ale/barleywine/strong ale.  Today we will get back up to speed with their hoppy offerings and see if they have the capacity to dominate yet another segment of the market: barrel aged stark biers.

At the top, I will just reiterate that SOSUS remains one of the finest DIPAs in the game without resorting to gimmicks or bakery aisle pageantry.  I have nothing to state that wasnt addressed in this SOSUS review of the inimitable Mosaic bomb.  Golden Nugget remains pretty deece and a solid France44 scoop for those in the know.

What about the other new shit? As an overarching generalization: their hop game is silently and steadily improving in an organic and meaningful way.

This IPA is listed as an American Pale Wheat on BeerAdvocate, so it’s good to see that those Cicerones are still hard at work over there.  Right when I poured this I was given pause at what seemed to be a reactionary caving to the tenants of Turbidism, a religion converting millions by the day.  Thankfully, this wasn’t some carnival milk jug game set up to beguile you.  This has a fantastic silky resinous creamy body, an eggwhite whipped whiskey sour swallow, that fine microcarb akin to hand pumped cask with a watery closer.  There’s grapefruit and apricot that is tempered with a type of coniferous sandalwood like musty women’s perfume. Floral and juicy in equal measure, with what I can only assume is a degree of milled husks and wheat in the grain bill, so maybe BA wasn’t all wrong. Who gives a shit, really.

Double Dry Hopped Citra Pseudo Sue eked out a nice bunker of Pale Ale greatness in a foxhole next to the genre-defining Zombie dust.  It is decidedly PALE ALE in character and never relies upon a wateriness or needless biscuit sweetness, and is “PA” in the that undefinable “imperial porterness” that is difficult to identify but you know obscenity when you see it.  This has a touch more heft to the body and swallow than I recall but the blast of one dimensional citrus is enjoyable throughout, the bouquet is a massive blast of rhizomey pineapple goodness. I can see drunk caucasians husking that Iowa corn, reeking of alpha acids from their pores.

Sol Hunter. Get it? EQUINOX HOPS. Eventually some brewer will make an analogue named TROPIC OF CAN-cer and put it in tallboys.  But that would necessitate a brewer besides Jean Broillet IV to read Miller.  The taste of this is structured in the exact way that your expectations are framed.  For a relatively svelte little offering, it has this lack of balance to it that makes the 70 ibus feel oppressive in a sticky oily way like clear cutting in the sierras. Smashed pine cones, french pressed christmas decorations, crushing up danky buds on nana’s coffee table bc she doesn’t get home from bridge until 4pm.

This beer is fine, and how many breweries make beer that are like “yeah, that’s cool, welp time to go work at STAPLES” and you go on with your life.  This is one of those sandwich boards on a aserose sidewalk, a forgettable appellation that compels a mild smile.

Alright, lets get to the reason that you came here: RUE THE CROWN.

Most people are probably like “what in the fuck? Toppling Goliath released a barrel aged beer that ISN’T a stout?”  Well, that might be a canard calling a $50 bottle lotteried to Mug Club members a “release” when the 150 bottles sold would make Upright Brewing nod in solemn reverence for the consumer vexing methods.  And of course, right out of the gates, we have people offering up $450+ worth of beer for it, 8:1 trades, sight unseen.  That is a testament to people’s faith in the sheer quality of TG barrel aged beers.

Their faith was misplaced in this false idol.

I love that TG released a starkbier in the first place, compelling so many cicerones to dust off their BJCP classifications and then reading “TG MAED A BARLEYWINE” and someone else stating that it is “THE THE NEXT KBBS.”  Suffice it to say, TG did not make a barrel aged barleywine.

But I am remiss to gloss over the issue of objective prescriptivity: what SHOULD a barrel aged starkbier taste like? Can you name a single other example? Sure we can all have a malty bukkake fest of OLD ALES and list analogues.  I can’t name a single example, but I went in with a buckler and scimitar held aloft ready to slay this ultra saturated beast.

One thing that sticks out is the fact that most Starkbiers are lager strains, and I don’t know that TG has some crazy Kuhnhenn strain that they leave lagering around. Secondly, this was aged 35 months in a 27 year old Heaven Hill barrel.  If you know anything about casking, and the body of Starkbiers in general, tell me when you see the problems start to align: the body is way too fucking thin to support such an endeavor.

For these massive caskers, you need a ridiculous residual malt backbone for that lumbar lifting of prolonged captivity.  On this realm RdC faceplants and Rob Dyrdek chuckles sardonically.  The body is thinner than the cheese cloth pants you wear to the bottoms off Gentleman’s Club.  It cannot support four plates on each sides, no matter how hard it engages that lagery core. The result is an flaming hot ethanol bomb that has little chance of cooling over time.  The oak is so so integrated that it presents almost a fresh American Oak cask profile with duraflame, black and milds, intense cut lumber, and wafts of funny car exhaust.

The good thing about this beer is how seamlessly the massive notes are integrated, despite the insane alcohol profile.  Under all of that flaming Archon exterior is a POWER OVERWHELMING that only a Dragoon could love. The core reminds me a ton of Adam from the Wood, that loveable rye type of herbaciousness, an almost Fernet meets caramel disgetif, a custom Prelude with plates that read FUSEL.

Some times you try a beer and feel that you aren’t leveled enough or maybe this guy will be more approachable later on in time with better post-storyline palate equips.  NOPE.  This will not calm down because there’s no order in this fracas and melee of fire and brimstone.  Sadly, for a beer that I had unfairly high expectations, it failed to deliver.

Thankfully, most people have no clue what this beer was or why they were supposed to want it in the first place, so it’s old DDB left drinking beer SO YOU DONT HAVE TO.

On a pandering/self-fulfilling note, we hit the print goal for shirts and there’s only one day left to buy this repellent piece of fashion dissonance.  So buy it now, so I can continue to dump money into beers that you shouldn’t be contemplating in the first place:

Great, 1300 words of bullshit. Here at DDB we just call that Tuesday and wait for the subsequent hate and ingratitude to cascade inward like a wave of manchild musk.

A fickle region, vascillating between abject DDB hatred and donation boxes. Cascading waves of compassion and aggression, a pendulum of intolerance and bonhomie. Isn’t that undulation not unlike the inclimate conditions of the region itself.

The macro and the microcosm redoubling within itself like the folds of a mitochondria. The powerhouse of the South.

Also today is the last day before DDB shirts go to print. If you give a shit:

If I have to field mealy mouthed complaints from some man child about how he missed out, I will clap those sweaty tits together like blackboard erasers.

Somehow I have gone 4 batches without ticking bdp.

Slipping so hard. Given the fact that the SP grisette is secretly one of their finest offerings I am actually almost more stoked to get Pays’ed

This is amazing. Next step: Cable Car Krieky Temples.

Your move Toronado.

Photo credit: Tyler Baker.

I am not shitting you up the dick with this one, someone took the time to make this.  This is an actual show that pushes the cringeworthiness beyond BREWDOGS into a post-Dark Horse realm of beerTV embarassment:

Before you ask, no, this is not an ironic DDB parody.  That is an actual trailer for an actual show.

So the premise, so far as I can glean from the MODERN AHABS website is that a crew of people go to ultra rare beer releases and then…purchase a beer…at retail.

You know those mega-whales that everyone is always talking about, the super limited/tens of thousand of bottle runs, that barely see distro to many many states across the entire nation?  Well dream no longer, the mystery of these massive cetacean delights can now swim in pods directly to your eyes.

If it were just a shitty show, then fine, put it on HGTV, and I can move on with my life.  I am still waiting for VH1’s I LOVE MONEY to release a criterion collection Blu-Ray, so I am not being some bookish snob about shows that make you pinch the bridge of your nose.  This show compels sighs because it degrades beer culture in the way that REAL HOUSEWIVES sets women back to the Gilded Age.  The show is unresearched and portrays pursuing these libations as 1) something praiseworthy and 2) fails to authentically demonstrate rare beer, its consumers, or any of the actually hilarious non-ironic aspects of ex-bando beer recluse pathology.

The production value of this show is like if you handed me a GH4 and told me to expose the secret underworld of Frisbee Golf.  I am sure that would be an entertaining show for some people, but here’s the thing: I KNOW FUCK ALL ABOUT FRISBEE GOLF.  I want to see a profound self-realization about the futility of a hobby that has legitimately degraded into MyFirstStock portfolio.  This is some Charlie Papazian pangloss take on a subcultrue that is currently entering an I AM LEGEND phase of ale-fueled brutality.

I posit that the best way to watch these non-ironic shows, is to treat them like a Christopher Guest mockumentary.  I can only hope that someone makes an intentionally hilarious iteration of this concept, but I cannot be bothered to do so at this time.

OH SHIT SPEAKING OF BLATANTLY SELLING OUT AND SUBVERTING THE BEER WORLD BUY THIS FUCKING SHIRT THEY ARE ALMOST GONE IMPRESS YOUR CADRE OF TABLETOP GAMING FRIENDS:

The “authenticity” of American wares is contantly impugned when cast under the examining lens of their Belgian counterparts.  No sooner than someone begins to extol the virtues of Duck Duck Gooze, they are met with the reverberating refrain that “LOL YA BUT REGULAR 3F GUEUEZE BETTER AN EAASIER TO MAKE HAVE URS!”

It’s the mandible grinding equivalent of PARAARABOALA standard bearers, making blanket statements about shit they  1) either have never had, or 2) have set out intentionally to fell new idols to bolster the old.  The most frustrating part is, the sentiment that Belgian beers are superior is USUALLY correct.  This is a synthesis of both the multitude of one dimensional lacto-forward American wilds, and the pedigree of bottles to which they are being compared.  BUT WHAT IF YOU MADE THE FIGHT FAIR: TAKE THE BEST FROM BOTH REALMS AND MAKE THEM GROPE AND GYRATE AGAINST EACH OTHER BLIND DARKNESS?

DDB set out to do just that, assemble some of the most lauded examples from each side of the globe and let them have the UFC 200 on full musty steroids. At the outset I am sure I will hear absolutely vapid objections from both sides with innumerable “LOL POVERTY TASTING NO BRABANTIAE? WER DAFUQ IS BEE KEEPER” or whatever else.  Regardless of your OCD compulsions, it would be difficult to nonironically maintain that this list fails to capture some of the best from both sides of this dispute:

Belgian Contenders:

2005 Brouscella Grand Cru

2011 Geuze Mariage Parfait

2012 Cuvee du Saint Gilloise

2012 Cantillon Classic Gueuze

2010 Cantillon 100% Bio

Drie Fonteinen Armand and Tomme

American Shasta Deviants:

Broken Truck 1

Broken Truck 2

Duck Duck Gooze

Cable Car 2013

Obviously we omitted fruited lambic and pLambics, gooze or die. Sure we could have included innumerable allagash coolship batches or whateverthefuck else.  I get it.  De Kam, sure, Zomer, fine, tweet me your complaints so I can assemble a ZFG list.  Let’s get to the results.

Tasting Order:

1. Cable Car 2013
2. Broken truck 2
3. 2012 Cantillon Classic
4. Mariage Parfait
5. 2005 Brou Grand Cru
6. Cuvee Saint Gilloise
7. Duck Duck Gooze
8. Armand and Tomme
9. Broken Truck 1
10. Cantillon 100% Bio

SO HOW DID THINGS SHAKE OUT?  RESULTS FROM BEST TO WORST:

First place: The Broken Truck 1

Second Place: Armand and Tomme

Third Place: Regular ass Cantillon 100% Bio

4. Broken Truck 2

5. Duck Duck Gooze

6. Cantillon Classic

7.  Cuvee Saint Gilloise

8. 2005 Brou Grand Cru

9. Cable Car 2013

10. Mariage Parfait

Commence the bitching immediately because DDB “favored” an American beer and ranked it first in a blind tasting with other people.  Trust me, I was staggered by the results as well.  I went back to review Broken Truck in both iterations and was floored by how phenomenal they were.  My personal rankings had AnT above BT1 but both scored ridiculously high. The disrepaired Silverado is likely one of the best AWAs that I have ever tasted, no superlative overload.

Burn ward.

Here are the salient points that I can surmise that changed the course of the results:

1. The baby palates in the tasting eschewed and nerfed the scores of any musk/cheese/funk forward bottles.  The bottom bracket consists almost entirely of less “bright” albeit more complex bottles tossing doses of grist and oxy-cobwebs.
2. Similar to the way that people preferred the approachable sweetness of English Barleywines, the acidic “brightness” was favored almost universally, and when I compared the scores I found a preference for this in lieu the more muskier leathery delights.
3. Cable Car 2013 was wildly overrated, in a way that is crushing to the soul when I think back to what I gave up to land it.  I say this beyond the scope of mere trader’s regret and more in the realm of “the list of superior, more accessible beers is staggering.”
4. Mariage Parfait was reviled for its sickly honeycomb sweetness and tepid watery body. Kill confirmed, the Brewdog of the goozie world.
5. Brouscella Grand Cru poured nearly flat, as usual, and many people nuked it for this, but holy fuck was that bottle complex.  It has the most depth and character to it by a mile.  If you like dating quirky alt-women who play tabletop games and are into crystal chakra healing, this would be your hot alternative medicine.
6. DDG is still swinging like an acidic champ, despite rumors of the anatidicide. It is odd because given the component blending and release dates, you would expect the horrendously underwhelming 2013 Cable Car to have some component blended Phunky Duck or Mellow Yellow, or something resembling that quacky king.  This is not the case.
7.  In the same breath as the foregoing, Armand and Tomme might be one of the best gueuzes ever made.  I rated it easily the best of the evening and I would be hard pressed to think of a more balanced and flawlessly executed gueuze, and amongst my favorite beers of recent memory.  It has traveled so far in depth and grace and nuance in the past three years, surpassing the previously untouchable Zomer.
8. Finally, the most salient takeaway is this: look at how fucking well that regular ass Cantillon Bio/Classic performed.  Consider the fact that you could have anywhere from 4-10 times the bottles in lieu of any of the “touted” entries on this list and the diminishing returns approach “bourbon levels” of hilarity.  So while once again the PARARABOLEAR protesters aren’t right, but they aren’t exactly wrong either.  In the end, that world class accessibility should be the underpinnings of the grace and nature of beer itself.  A living product, for living people, poised for consumption and not to decay in some Indiana basement on an IKEA shelf only to make transcontinental trips annually to bolster the self esteem of some other cargo short wearing dumbfuck.

Beer is meant for consumption and discussion, organically fostering some of the best possible moments amongst friends and family. Those vignettes of gentle repose, beyond the reach of competition or feelings of inadequacy, the fleeting foam a gentle analog to life itself, ever cascading upward to a destructive change in form, becoming something greater than the sum of its simple components.  That is the essence of classic ales and innovative libations, ensconced outside the ambit of covetous carrion grips, transcending to a realm that modifies the social experience lieu of supplanting it.

OH WAIT SHIT I MEANT TO SAY BEER IS MEANT TO BE LEVERAGED TO SELL SHITTY BLOG T SHIRTS: BUY THE DDB SHIRT ONLY A FEW LEFT THAT IS WHAT I MEANT TO SAY EARLIER CLICK THE LINK BELOW SO I CAN BUY A CHROME SUZUKI HAYABUSA: