If you have your DDB desktop calendar, you may recall that there hasn’t been a shitstorm warning since the good old ABVMZABVMDZMZ row a solid three weeks ago.  Sadly, there’s no idol toppling in today’s post because Creature Comforts came correct and pumped out two amazing beers.  If you came here for some yellow journalism, sensationalism, and mudslinging to drive up engagement: apologies in advance. I’ll try harder to undermine my non-existent credibility in the future.

As much as I would love to shit on excellent beers for some alleged petty grievance, I will leave that to my innumerable alt accounts who pander for free beers.  Let’s get to clapping them magic city stacks a second time in today’s review:

Orpheus got the raw end of the deal in the prior DDB review.  While they are far from a paradigm-shifting leader, they are equally far from doing anything deficient.  The Rites is a solid, over the plate fastball that is traditional but easy to get a solid piece of.  The biggest issue that I had with this faintly tropical affair was a honey cornbread sweetness to the malt profile that seems to be attendant to many of the Southern breweries.  BMIs and palates of Southern creatures seem to engender sufficient malty sweetness in the way a waify Vermontean loves FG1.0000 and wooden bowties. This beer is fine and leaves me with little to deride or exalt.

Similar to the foregoing, Wicked Weed shows that its talents lie in purveying expensive wild ales and not exactly in the hop game. With NODA absolutely shutting the club down with Hop Drop, I can’t imagine the average Silverado-pushing Raleigh resident exhibiting much tumescence for these standard wares.  It is less malty than The Rites but also delivers a more resinous sappy enclosure for your big Pooh Bear mitts.  I only wanted a smackerel.

This however, holy shit, now we are cooking with four butane burners.  Other Half has an established pedigree in the hop game but their darker offerings compelled chin scratching that could not reconcile the two.  So then enter Creature Comforts, who up until now have cut their teeth on darker offerings almost exclusively, fruited Athenas notwithstanding. This is a merger of two record collections that results in an incredibly sonorous dulcet aria of chocolate, deep roast, distinctively porter in execution with wafer thin body that swallows exceptionally clean and compels the consumer to froth it along the mandible like a mocha frap.  If this was not exceptionally limited, then holy fuck I would advise to stock up on these pedestrian drillers because it is one of the finest iterations of a standard baltic Porter this side of Imperial Edmund Fitzgerald.  Everett on PEDs.

Photo quality  is commensurate with this pilsner: shit is fine. I am reticent to compare this to the Live Oak and Great Lakes pilsner masters because I don’t think that the Eliminator boat pilots of the world are really looking for depth or nuance in a beer style you can approximate at home.  Sure there’s no certified BJ flaws, no DMS, it’s not exceptionally flabby, nor is it distractingly hopped, but there’s also nothing compelling about it either.  Pivo Pils has already fucked things up for everyone in this genre much in the way that the PAERARARERABOLA refrain will be hot on the lips of anyone buying beer with an EBT card, railing against Fedex deals.  Then again I drank it in a fucking paper cup.  There’s no coffee in this pilsner.

Alright enough foreplay: is Existence a retread of See The Stars?  Do we have to engage in the pabulum of denigrating that poor ATL minority who offered euphonious promises? Thankfully we are saved from that for the exact opposite reasons that made the StS culture so mandible grinding: this beer is phenomenal and almost no one was an asshole trying to redoubtably pump it up.

At 19 months in the barrel, I initially braced myself for the trappings of oversaturation, or some wonky “fresh beer” blended in: the typified high-age/old-cask dynamic.  If the North Carolina way is to cask beer for 6 weeks in a third use barrel, this is a complete inversion of that paradigm.  This falls closer to the magnificent Pugachev 25: long aging, no cutting agents, lacquer and oak forward, a substantial base that can stand the test of time without thinning, and a remarkable roast that neither expresses oxidation nor a beau geste of sweetness.  It delivers so. much. complexity without relying upon any Tiny Tim crutch from the baking/confectionary aisle.  For those who need hard and firm reference points, this was just shy of the Central Waters Ardea and SR-71 platitudes, but that level of moralizing needs to be taken in small doses.  That being said, it is a firm rebuke to homebrewing dumbfucks who clutch a bottle of BCBS and decry any trading or seeking non-local beer.  This is a non-local beer to which you will absolutely not find a comparable analog.

It is the most fitting irony that such a world-class beer was relatively snubbed by the OCD masses of completionist beer traders.  They don’t deserve a phenomenally crafted, adjunct-free landscape portrait of brownie batter and tobacco.  If you can’t handle a region’s shitty traders at their worst, then you don’t deserve ATL traders at their finest.

I would slide the superlative ladder over and start praising this as Creature Comfort’s best beer to date, that is until I dusted off this stonefruit masterpiece that even less people gave a shit about:

I knew that those Creature boys could do stouts, sure they can do porters, but this clipped me in the driver’s side door while pulling out of my peach driveway.  I had no idea they were capable of this degree of nuance and unparalleled fruit expression in anno domini this year of our lord 2016.  This has the vellus hairs right down to the pithy skin, the restrained acidity and delivers with balance and elan unseen since Persica b1 750ml.

Usually when a brewery makes a peach beer they have to allocate stat attributes like Madden create a character.  Too often do we receive intense acidity without tannins, or Haribo Peach Rings with no depth, barrel complexity with no vestige of juice.  This Gamesharks the fuck out of the stonefruit matrix and delivers each with such phenomenal balance that I am left to only praise the milky froth of the body.  This is liquid Jolly Rancher merged with fruit leather structure, that dairy goodness of orange julius that closes with some dry Riesling.

If you have some odd restrictions on regional acquisitions, let this be the only beer from the south that you have this year.  SCOOOP and Decoherence are amazing sure, but bask in the warmth of the second coming of our prophet Chez Monus.  I know that even whispering that shibboleth causes sectarian violence, but seriously it does not get much better than this in my estimation and even my obstreperous attempts at shitslinging cannot deliquesce the form and structure of this peach pillar.

Get pitted fukn siiick pitted fleshy fruit bruhhh.

C:\selfpimp.exe\run.DLL

There’s still some DDB shirts left, buy them so I can stop accepting cash under the table for favorable reviews.  Because that’s what DDB, this non-sponsored, non SEO shithole is all about, PURE PROFIT$$$:

So there was a change of plans, instead of doing it all by hand and using paypal and then getting your address and all kinds of stuff, you can just buy them right now, and they will ship on 7/14/16.  If you don’t order within the next 14 days the sale closes and barleywine couture as we know it comes to a shattering end.  Also the design is no longer Dolan, apologies in advance.  DDB is a smoldering tirefire of wordpress shame.

spam incoming:

VIRGINITY DEFENSE APPAREL NOW ON SALE:

you have 14 days to buy this and stunt on your homebrew club. After that it is gone, forever purged from trub couture.

https://teespring.com/dontdrinkbeer?utm_swu=29#pid=369&cid=6521&sid=front

or dont buy them. I don’t give a shit. these shirts wont even make a dent in my fedex bill.

how has my life come to this

It feels like a classy wedding reception. Nips are aching.

Boy New Jersey sure has drummed up some substantial fanfare with these endless iterations and riffs concerning the impending Dawn.  At first blush it appears akin to something from the protean Bruery playbook from years ago, or the nascent Floridian scene of modern day. Stout + additive = flavor profile that feels safe and welcoming for all.  This path of monoaesthetic expression is the hand holding that many people new to the game so crave and require.  Take those bold brassy notes from the stout world and smash them over the head with confirmable profiles from things that the average cicerone, so aching to be an overnight expert, can point to on a label and confirm the sage learnings of his palate a full 18 months into the game.

But how do these Kane gems perform in the light of this Chopin Awakening of self-assured consumers?  Let’s find out.

Alright, cocoa nib was outright the shittiest variant.  Let’s get that out of the way.  If you are the type who has been clamouring for Southern Tier to weaponize their MOKAH backburner series, welp here you go.  This is a session version of the unapproachably cloying Chocolate Rain, which is to say it is still exceedingly sweet, as is to be expected.  If you finish an entire bottle of this residual Hershey’s bomb, expect fudgey fissures to pump up GERD of not insubstantial crude.  If mama lets you lick the bowl, then by all means lap it up to your heart’s content.  This simply is one dimensional and without redeeming factors when there are so many other stouts that execute without the sake of drinkability.  Perhaps borborygmus is the penance for indulgence beyond the scope of what is intended.  I don’t need to delve into some ontogenetic study as to why these nib beers continue to propagate, they simply have this waxiness that feels like a lack of attenuation, which given how precisely crafted the base beer is, makes no fucking sense.

Just assume that residual sweetness is the DDB cri de guerre against novice palates and move forward.

Next worst deviant: vanilla.  Oh shit here we go I can already here those candle mouthed waffle cone lovers wedging their sweaty frames out of Coldstone creamery decrying the virtues of what is essentially a massively one dimensional, albeit completely on the nose iteration of vanilla.  If the function of DDB is ekphrasis, then nothing pains me more than to try and frame another vanilla additive expedition within the constructs of “stout quality.”  The function of most vanilla stouts is to effectively mask the base beer in a way that Citra and Mosaic hops took the heavy handed DIPA producers by storm in 2011.  It is a panacea of excess and doing it well requires that deft gentle palm from Snowed In, show the barrel, don’t drizzle it in confectionary notes.

That being said, this is still really fucking tasty if viewed in the limited craquelure of a genre that is showing its years.  If you haven’t had a zillion iterations of birthday cake stout, this will be novel and rad.  But in the world of inaccessible, expensive, world class bean offerings, this is in the solid middle of the top tier pack.  Let’s call it “Velvet Speedway” tier and move on.

This was my third favorite deviant but, the problems are not one of execution, but of conception.  I love coffee beers and the likes of BA Americano and BAVASS shine when there is a nimble depth and complexity in the interplay between roast and bean flicking.  This has labia numbing amounts of bean grinding that even the most well made Hitachi cannot withstand.  It is still a very very solid beer, perhaps a touch below the likes of Kane’s own masterpiece, BA Morning Bell.  The issue lies within the inherent quality of the base beer.  As a result the “advanced” version feels like muddled prog rock 7/8ths coffee roast solos above all nuance.  Fucking things up tho.

Double Barrel A Night to End All Dawns: how can a 200 bottle, /cringe $400 secondary valuation ever hope to live up to such a mantle? It is almost unfair to saddle any steed with that ornate dressage and expect it to perform nimbly.  I can say this: this is amongst the most complex stouts I have ever had.  It has layers upon layers of sweet but tempered creaminess like Mille-Feuille, brownie and custard, roast and char, a scimitar dance of light fusel coupled with a covalent bond of toasted barrel.

The bad: the tannic profile feels poorly integrated.  Some people absolutely love that red berry, plum, merlot cum de smashed grape terroir that a red wine and bourbon din creates.  For me it feels like late career Miles Davis, tennis without a net, completely apeshit and all over the place.  I can see why someone would love this additional layer but for my sensibilities it was almost too much, the aesthetic equivalent of roll caging an already apeshit fast supercar.

If I am being completely candid, of the bottles that I opened, I preferred the regular ass base beer over all others.  It exhibits a clarity and depth that is a testament to all of the inferior iterations.  It feels as though Kane is such an accomplished operation with precise barrel massaging, and these adjuncts are the “radio hits” the softened gems to allow everyone to feel relevant.  For the people entering the game, having variants riffs are a safe one dimensional rock climbing hold at 15′ elevation.  They feel like they are really doing it, look at them go.

This base beer almost feels slighted by copious handfuls of coffee or vanilla or nibs because the base is so well done.  It has a delicious baker’s chocolate, 85% dark cacao, nestle chips, caramellow and a long oaky toast that feels blunted when extraneous dessert spoilers are tacked onto what is already a commensurate performer.  You simply do not need these other deviations, unless you simply feel like being deviant and showy within itself.

In the end, my absolute favorite iteration of this phenomenal base beer was unquestionably the blend of all components, in equal measure.  This may appear to be some gauche demonstration or fall of rome decadence to typify “control” or “detachment” from value.  Sure, it can be that, but it was also a noble experiment to unify the profiles of the various iterations into something more meaningful.  A composition fallacy brought to life that proved the postulate despite the flawed premises.

Man it feels benthic to topple the most touted variant and promote the base. It feels like straight pandering or statue-toppling for attention. I hate when shit shakes out in that fashion because I have to field bullshit conspiracy theories from innumerable landlocked tasting groups who are inure with the concept that someone could disagree with them on value appraisal.

Just get the base beer if you are strapped for diaper money, but each one of these beers is certainly worth your attention.  Don’t let the curmudgeonous iris of DDB pull in to tightly to force outright stars out of frame. Most of this rhetoric is Fritz Lang forced perspective to draw focus to particular detail, nothing more.

inb4 “That’s why I JUST DRINK PEAEREABLOLA!!! SEE I TOLD U DRINK LOCAL SEE TRADING MAN NOT WORTH IT JSUT SEE PAEARABOLA SEE!!!!”

and all that stupid shit that constantly hangs over my head like the perpetual sword of Damacles.
Edit: DDB may have received a mixed set of vintages to be clarified

Sometimes I feel like, as an aggregate, I hype PA beer more than CA beer by a landslide.

Some would say that DDB has been historically unfair to Half Acre.  They are a respectable, moderately large, easily accessible brewery that pumps out consistent wares.  The comedic marrow from a single questionable bottle notwithstanding, how does the rest of their lineup beyond Small Animal Big Machine yukyuks fare?

Today let’s take a survey course of some boots-on-the-ground midwest staples.

First and foremost, as an overriding oeuvre, their marketing is pretty slick.  Holofoil labels, intricately detailed characters, and simple unified messaging make these the subject of Pokemon card collector’s admiration everywhere.

But you didn’t come here to read some aesthetic appraisal of copy and point of sale brand recognition breakdown, how do them shits taste tho.

Ah their stable old work horse, Daisy Cutter.  The reason this is such a punchline to out of distro traders is largely due to is accessibility.  This beer has been almost unbiquitous in the parlance of extras for upwards of half a decade. The real snagging point is that land locked masses love to send out cans that have a Kool Mo Dee fade to them, aged to perfection. The fresh can is markedly better but still exhibits a sort of “mid 2000s” panache that only a stepfather could love.  It is not hefty in the sweet profile, but it also fails to demonstrate a radiance cum de tropical fruits that are the zeitgeist in particularly the pale world.  PRLLY NOT EVN ANY MOSAIK IN THIS EITHER. In sum, this is a fine, lightly malty, coniferous meets shalloty romp through the organic produce aisle and you could drink these endlessly in and around bodies of water.

This however, is something exceptional and occupying a special “non-BA but doesn’t feel like a concession” sort of orbit.  Vanilla big Hugs is dialed in, chocolatey, with a moderately svelte execution a touch above the Central Waters/Czar Jack canon.  The reason this beer shines in an exceptional way is the focused, unidirectional SHURE mic blast of vanilla and oreo that is detonates on every level.  It is whipped frosting and cake batter, fantastic watery structure that fails to pull out any single aspect in a sugary manner.  In that Platonic form of vanillaness, upon exiting the cave this is akin to looking at one’s own bean-based shadow.  The oils compliment the touch of toastiness and the whole swallow is unified like a SONOS system playing dulcet tones throughout the oily sweet drag.  This is amongst the best non-barrel aged adjunct stouts and easily on point with the innumberable Funky Buddha riffs that seem to cascade endlessly like so many dick pics in the DM.

Aha, now we are cooking with alpha oils.  Speaking of a traditional page from the DIPA book, look at how fucking radiant and brassy those SRMs are, it’s like poppop finally shines up that tarnished old banister to a sparkling luster. This beer was previously always compared to the “whaley” DIPAs of yesterdays past: Kern Citra, Boy King, Ephraim, etc.  It is tough to explain those days to someone who has a blue vein thrombosis for milky trubby canned offerings from areas covered in darkness most of the year. Suffice it to say, this is a pretty tasty DIPA that, while not deserving of the local-driven fanfare, is certainly amongst the best that the midwest has to offer.  I know that is kinda like “She’s the hottest girl I have ever seen working at the Container Store” type of qualification, but it is something I would actively seek out.  The touch of sweetness is outright dominated by the orange peel and tangerine zest on the nose that was oddly absent from the simpler HADC. It’s greatest attribute is the slowly milky release of hoppy MDMA where you can drill an entire bomber without active appraisal.

I am sure some dipshit who has a moderate knowledge of the causes of nucleation will chime in on the comments, stretching their foreskin like a batwing to demonstrate some “CLEAN UR GLASS” epithet.  It is coming no doubt.  I could waste your time making Ginuwine references, or we can get right to it and say that this is no Reality Czech.  But it is also far better than most Pils offerings, the corny starchy likes of PATIO PILS jump vegetally to mind.  This is narrowly tailored like a Ben Sherman suit and exhibits a biscuity quality and a light honey sweet touch of grassiness.  If I had my way this would replace Daisy Cutter in the realm of one-dimensional “child’s dance recital” beers hidden within clutch bags.  It is endlessly drinkable and something most breweries would be exceedingly proud of if only for how tightly the iris is focused, there is simply nothing left to bokeh with these traditional, tasty low f-stop values.

Hang onto your AXE body spray and overinflated self image, they went and done made a hoppy wheat beer.  If you have had Fortunate Island from Modern Times, you have basically had this beer.  In retrospect, the entirety of this brewery’s focus seems to fall decidedly on the “landscaper” or “hot weather enthusiast” spectrum.  I am remiss to image someone suffering through a gunshot riddled, 2 degree winter on Chicago’s south side hitting up a local bodega for these refreshing radiant treats, but who am I to speculate.  If Half Acre did a collabo with Le Cumbre, the entirety of the migrant worker population in the southwest would slide into decadent hoppy alcoholism, tanking the Constellation stock overnight.  This is a mildly peppery meets faintly lemony run up the fretboard that almost reminds me of a hoppy hef or a shittier/cleaner version of Weihenstephan. I can see it’s place in the market and suffice it to say, it is gauche to set up these strawmen to ignite on DDB.  It’s like those painful “off-genre” covers or youtube videos where you use a clash of context and review fast food in a high brow way.  It’s been so cringingly done that I wont hector you with that transposed rhetoric.  Go look at the 2011 DDB reviews if you want to dip into that trite inkwell.

Half Acre Vallejo. I drank this backstage before a comedy show out of the can, put tersely, DDB lacks journalistic integrity in sensory performance.  That being said, I actually really enjoyed this one, can and all.  Perhaps that is the selected medium of appreciation, for that on-the-go father who is rushing out the door with a bagel but also needs to reek of Centennial before noon. This has a moderately hefty mouthfeel with a sort of ritz cracker sweetness tempered by restrained pine and honeydew.  The whole thing again lends itself to consumption.  If that is the party line, then Half Acre has unquestionably succeeded in being an iconoclast to topple these “$60 a DIPA can” secondary market assholes.  For that alone,  I wish them to prevail all the more.

In sum, Half Acre provides a valuable resource to people who enjoy good beer, but maybe aren’t maladjusted enough to devote their entire lives to it.  The further I tread into this Swamp of Sadness, the more I witness all of my Artax patience die, gurgling under hype and raffles and MBC conscription.  Drinking Half Acre is an atavistic panacea to people like that, an elixir for the soul-crushing realities of the modern beer scene.

Constantly loading musty shells in the gauge 

Well, it took about seven failed ISOs to land this, but we can finally look back in the stark destruction caused by this Blackbird’s carpet bombing with solemn reverence for the power and beauty of this dark beast.

So from what I recall, this beer was originally supposed to be a super-saturated, ultra-casked version of that already world class jugular slicer: Assassin. So they doubled the time in barrels to 18 months and seismic activity of tectonic shifts shook the OCD ex-bando trade culture to its core.  At the time of this post people are still flipping these for what, like Pappy Van Winkle 15 1:1 at this point?  This bird sonic boomed onto the scene and screeched away before anyone even knew what happened.  So let’s see if all of our dollars were well spent on this Lockheed fermented harbinger of death.

The pour is viscous but never slurps into that Chocolate Rainy, Hunaesque realm of gurgling crude.  It remains poised like Eliza Doolittle through murky elocution lessons.  The carb sustains beautifully and gives it a mocha collar on a tasteful obsidian cardigan, a bubbly broach on the lapel dresses up the inherent complexity of this all-season outfit.

The nose requires a wood planer to not only bisect but subsect the compressed depth of gorgeous layers presented.  Let’s just get this out of the way: I would be shocked if this is not in the DDB top ten for the year, and for good reason. If you recall, I loved the Pugachev 25 and it remains wholly underappreciated to this day.  This takes all of the majesty from that cask profile, adds the lacquer and cut oak from Rare15, but unites them with a unity candle of butterscotch and mallowfoam I haven’t encountered since 2010 Rare.  The pappy barrels are usually easy picking for me to shit on traders with no bourbon palate seeking the topest of top shelf just to do so, but here the iteration is akin to that inimitable PVW Black Majick.

The nose bleeds werther’s originals and cocoa powder, a crackly wheater sweetness and finishes like a flourless lava cake.  It is untouchable in the olfactory component without clear analogue, as much as the “Parabola costs only $16 and I can jus-” refrain loves to discount highly-touted beers.  This is without peer.

The taste carries all of the loving care from the nose and has this lively crackly heft to it that almost reminds me of some OESK Four Roses picks, that spicy sweet fizzle of casky salvo.  It takes all of the things you love from the standard BA stout experience and improves upon the model in a marked way.  Usually I can be a dismissive fuck and employ some reductionist “YEAH BUT BCBS IS SO ACCESSIBLE SO FUCK THIS BEER” type of rhetoric.  I genuinely have a hard time disassembling this bourbony Johnny Five. The melted Rolos dip gracefully under the tide of liquid milk chocolate like Augustus Gloop.  Above all else is the “bright” quality of that vibrant barrel that isn’t fusel, it’s this Nic Cage type of intensity that you cannot look away from, Wicker Man notwithstanding.  This is the Zomer of the stout world and it is equally integrated, without comparable analogue in its own realm.

The most dynamic and cap-doffing aspect of this beer is unquestionably that this shit is ALL BARREL.  No forced induction, no coconut wastegate, no artificial vanilla blow off valve, and no need for some coffee intercooler: shit is all grain motor. The recent Ardea from Central Waters was absolutely jaw dropping and this still ekes out a notch above even that industry-standard setting plateau.  It is beers like this that push the levels to that “unbeatable RC PRO AM” type of structure.  In that regard, this beer is almost depressing.  Its inaccessiblity coupled with its capacity to reaffirm what “the best” can be only serves to cast a glaring makeup counter 10x magnification mirror to other “less world class” offerings. SRS PROBLEMS THE TEARS RUNNETH MY TASTER GLASS OVER.

Here’s that point in the review where I temper the praise and shill for the salt of the earth DDB readers and we have a fireside chat about how no beer is worth $700+ and we decry secondary sales and have a general anathema localized to grassroots beer phenomenology. The back patting is reciprocal and many shoulders are disaffected with subacromial bursitis by our congratulations to self and others.  No rotator cuff is spared.  So let’s pretend that I applied that gloss of “circumstance” and “relativity” for the umpteenth time.  The diminishing returns lecture is the fetchquest of this completionist realm replete with wireframe glasses and hobbyists externalizing their worth, gathered static within cabinets awaiting internal appreciation.

Hey fuck it, let’s kick out a narrative to pump this bitch to 1000 words, FOR OLD TIMES SAKE:

Narrative:  The public in rural Decorah awoke to 403 Gateway errors and a mild dewy feeling of unsettling loss on the morning of September 9, 2016.  No amount of swipes or downward pulls could compel a page refresh, for something had changed in the early hours of that morning.  The cargo-short clad populace would later learn that a tactical strike had affected its population in the cusp of twilight.  A dirty bomb had been detonated in the upper atmosphere of the sleepy Iowa town, raining down particulate cocoa powder.  The source of this anomalous aggression was unknown, but one thing was clear: the internet was no more.  So many memories archived in Jpeg format, the confirmation of experience, endless corn field photos were lost under the gently falling bakers chocolate fallout.  A light dusting of a PT Cruiser evidenced a change in the population.  Others began to pour into the town to witness the anomaly, Wisconsin, Indiana, even the soul-shuddering populace of Chicago suburbs could not dismiss this phenomenon.  Children spun in the silent avenues winsomely catching chocolate fallout particles on their  tongues, casting tablets to the beige concrete as dismissively as one would an apple core. In the auspices of momentous events, the paradigm of value shifts. That which was previously prized had been redefined beyond the scope of function within the confines of these bustling Iowans.  People began to take deep pulls of the air redolent with tootsie rolls and grip rough hands in the street in a Rockwellian manner.  Shopkeeps nonironically began to shift and roll the skin of radiant apples on their aprons.  In confronting that which previously made life so bitter, the confines of the cask was shattered, until only radiant sweetness remained.

You can’t pull up a tick on Instagram that I ain’t hit

Most of these new money tickers just ain’t shit