Pale ale with coffee? Approaching with extreme suspicion. 

  
Florida trades got me all Running down Slauson in my red dickies suit like Herca herculeees Herca hurculeeees

Wren House, another Arizona upstart in this lineage of nuanced desert dwellers who have been turning out uncommon riffs from a traditionally under-serviced area.  If I wrote for Paste I would make some tired pun about “THE BEER DESERT: HOW ARIZONA WILDERNESS AND SUPERSTITION ARE MAKING 15 NEW WAYS TO WREN HOUSE” or some shit.

Wren House previously sent me growlers and their porter was pretty tasty, akin to Founder’s porter, but since two of the growlers were damaged in transit, I have been waiting for a valid sample to review. WELL THAT DAY IS TODAY.

So their barrel program is bubbling along and their current lineup is interesting without going to abject gimmicks, so what is the hook? Why should I give a fuck about Jack Nicklaus golf courses and orange faced sandnomads with halogen white hair extensions? Their stout game.

When they sent me Who Hit John, I was like “great a $30 growler for a 8.5% non-BA imperial stout.” Admittedly, in the realm of being spoiled with every palate of black to mahogany of BA stouts, it takes a pretty stellar naturally aspirated imperial stout to get my needle to move.  This beer takes me back to the days when Abyss was still thrilling and Kate the Great was a relevant quantity.  It has that anise, that simple two dimensional roast meets black licorice, and a clean crushable swallow.  The first time I have Kern River Class V or a vintage Stone IRS, that’s where this simple beer treads.

In a class almost entirely overlooked as “unfinished” or “pre-barrel” in today’s competitive market, there is a degree of GRIMM intentionality to the execution of this beer and it shines on the foundation of clean lines and simplicity, like a toasty, brownie batter 911. Rye bread and pumpernickle with a mild mild sweetness round out this gentle baby centaur. I honestly don’t think that barrel aging will improve this beer because it is so fun as it is, a stripped down racer that hearkens back to the 240sx days of roll caged stouty goodness.  I am not saying actively trade for this, or go apeshit trying to land it, but it is indicative of their capacity to brew focused clean beers without gimmicks.  Which is why this gimmicky shit gave me immediate pause:

OLMEC, the antithesis of simplicity and an additive breakdown that is almost compulsory in today’s market: vanilla, chili, and cocoa nibs.  BRB taking some Lunesta.  There’s innumerable ways to fuck this up and the fact that it is not barrel aged is what surprised me most about how well done this beer is.  I seriously don’t know of a non-BA “Hispanic Stout” executed with this degree of care and balance.  The mouthfeel is manageably hefty and it feels like the non-BA version of the inimitable (&+) or Thursday.

The coating isn’t milky or sloshy, it maintains a satin soft frothiness, murdering out your gumline with matte black chili tones.  The spice enters first but is more of an expositional character, setting the stage for whoppers and nougat, but the entire affair has the restraint present in Great Lakes and Minnesota Town Hall/Central Waters stouts. It has balance but without sacrificing depth.  This isn’t cunnilingus in a waffle cone factory, it has levels and remains entirely possible to drill an entire growler before you shift at Foot Locker.  Feided on that bean lookin like a barcode for 4.5 hours bc no meal break.

This beer you should absolutely seek out if you want to see the middle-specialization between the chili poles from Huna and the excesses of base Mexican cake.  As a caveat, if this is like “$25 hydroflask + $30 fill” then maybe slow your roll, but from a purely taste perspective, this is a fucking incredible base beer.  Srs.

I am informed that this went into barrels and my concern is that 1) the beer thins our further and loses the panache of this awesome base beer or 2) by that time DDB ruins shit and those bottles are a bitch to obtain.

Either way, MY BODY IS READY.

  
Bent Paddle about to fire off a CnD too.

Don’t worry, the other Weekdays are coming, calm those puppy mill hagtits.

For those 160 people in the extended family, the Casey membership punishes their wallets with incredible releases on the reg. Oddly, most people are electing to actually DRINK these beers instead of trading them for flour enriched trub slurrIPAs. Weird, I know.

So let’s look at two recent releases, since I was a negligent dipshit and totally forgot to order my April bottles. Typical.

  
Inb4 grout comments. Grape fruited awa/Saisons are dicey territory. You can hit an odd retention that kills the carb, you can fall into an overly vinous character, or you can be left with some tepid Welch’s shit. The pitfalls are innumerable. 

  
When you go this apeshit on fruit and barrel treatment, the capacity for failure rises faster than Greek EU debt. However, this beer drops low, engages the core, and does a clean jerk in every respect. The merlot goes in an almost blackberry meets plum skin direction instead of the typical ho-hum partial maceration some beers reach for. It is intensely dry but, in classic Casey form offers up some sweet preserves character like boysenberry spread on a wheaty English muffin. A mild cheesiness hovers in the realm of kombucha/Gruyere melange. 

I killed the entire bottle Zfg in between dying over and over in Bloodborne and them tannic merlot skins kept my self esteem intact. You should absolutely seek this out, it is easily amongst the best in the stellar Cut/laceration lineup. THE CUTS MAKE ME FEEL LIKE I HAVE CONTROL.

Too far. Let’s keep things moving.

  
I don’t know how I got put in advanced oak theory, I barely passed regular oak theory. This is advanced in every sense of the word. I love that this beer rests for like half the time that expensive ass stranahan spirit itself occupies the casks. The result is a careful tempering of acidity by spicy oak, a pepperjack cheese meets jazz apple canapés profile. You can drink these exceedingly fast and the subtle carb never slows you down.

  
The silky mouthfeel coupled with a tangerine/apricot aspect makes for a great combo, accessible to entry level grocery store Hennepin ballers and CDxx vets alike. Casey is getting into an issue where ALL of the bottles are increasing in quality across the board and throwing my full weight into this over say, regular ass East Bank or hell, even the exceptional base saison is hard. It is a great problem for a brewery to have and there are no losers in this arms race.

Wait I take that back, purveyors of forgettable, over the plate Saisons will definitely suffer. People doing stainless Westmalle strain or some uninspired DuPont standard will inevitably turn to some kettle souring to remain relevant. But you can’t really feel bad for those guys. 

They trying. 

  
Tart lil devil: basically a Brett addition to their already ho hum BPA. The hops with the light lemon is mildly thirst quenching but comes across like vegetable water Gatorade. This certainly isn’t their wheelhouse, and that’s fine. 

Port barrel wee heavy: I loved the bourbon version of this and this treatment adds complexity at the expense of enjoyment. Sure you swap out the caramel candy store faux barleywine aspects but in return you get figs and currants, plum and red berry finish. It bruises the awesome malt profile and, while more interesting, it’s like a tinder date with a level 5 vegan: there is no meaningful future for this fascinating match.

Cask kau speedway: this is the first treatment since Vietnamese that has outright wowed me without qualifier. Speedway treatments can get derivative or samey but this Long long nestle quik cocoa powder finish feels straight from the tin, dust plumes and bakers chocolate. The cask wipes out the mouthfeel but increases the incredible smoothness and silky residual oils from the coffee. I really hope they bottle this, ow lawd.

Nitro speedway: same shit different day, speedway with that tiny microbubble that works so well like a well crafted mocha. I don’t have shit to say about this. Yahreaddyknowwhatdiseiiiiissss

Honorable mention: robust porter, while you can regularly find me giving dome shots to Edmund Fitzgerald as the greatest classic porter, this toes the line as a largely overlooked gem. Clean without being watery, light roast with a huge flavor blast of malt and pumpernickel. Shit bangs.

If you recall, DDB previously reviewed these guys and shit was pretty legit. I didn’t even die.  So let’s check back in with them and see if they are the next low bottle count Floridian whale preserve, (SPOILER: they aren’t.)

This beer is fucking bizarre.  Ok so if I am to understand this right, it was initially fermented on stainless, then “conditioned on french oak” which like…spirals? In the stainless?  Then they racked it to red wine barrels.  I get not fermenting primary all in red wine barrels, but why even bother with the conditioning? WHAT IS HAPEN.

The beer itself is fine.  It has a restrained barrel presence largely because it leads with a haymaker of black patent malt and almost phenolic character which would be Mikkelleresque if the red wine tannins didnt take things to this pruney, red fruit, bruised plum realm.  The mouthfeel is awesome and it never hits a syrupy disjointed aspect.  I finished my pour and finished shaving my pubes.  This is an excellent manscaping beer.

Alright this shit is outright horrible.  Like if Pootie Tang were transmuted into beverage form, you would demand the ticket price back.  When I saw a dark sour with raspberries, I was like “oh nice like Wanderer? No? Like Nightmare on Brett Street?” This was just Nightmare, hold the street.  The first issue is my saggy gorilla tits cant handle sour stouts/wilds.  Even when they are FLAWLESS like CD4 or Always In Death, I am left with this weird cherry cordial chalkiness in my gums.  It’s like that fruit tobacco at hookah places, unless you drive a white 3 series, who enjoys that shit?

The next issue is this is way too fucking sour.  It drills up in your mouth no Novocain.  Some sours have a juicy spread from sweet to sour and open like an acidic daisy, this goes straight for the gumline and starts groping your cousin’s ass.  It is tart, intense, over the top, and like a weaponized version of Tart of Darkness.  The CIA could leverage information from ISIS detainees by serving them this.  No thanks Jeff.

THIS SHIT, HOWEVER, IS FUCKING AWESOME:

From “okay” to “throttling” to “god damnnnnn”: Aardwolf is all over the fucking map with these releases.  This is easily the best beer that I have had from them to date.  It is nimble and dances like Nightcrawler on its adept toes.  The carb is like chocolate cotton candy or brownie roofing insulation.  It has almost a “massive porter” thing going on because there is residual lactose sweetness but the cling isn’t irritating or saccharine.

The real show here though is the interplay of vanilla and coffee: madagascar latte nocturnal emission.  That’s why they don’t let me write beer copy I guess.  None of the adjuncts overstay their welcome and work in tandem like a band of rag tag scamps who are behind by 3 in the bottom of the ninth.  The sweetness starts acting up in a Dreyer’s ice cream sort of way and the lactose froths it away like heavy whip machination foam, then coffee finishes long and dry like artificial hazelnut gas station coffee, that weird waxiness, but in the best way possible.

Ignore the other two and seek out White Russian, this freebases straight from the foil, vanilla Bic pen right in your teeth.

  
Dudes in Phoenix bragging about 90 degree temps in Winter are about to have a rude awakening when the summer plug hits.

No such thing as an Arizona “cool”ship nomsayin, that authentic AZ lambic production about to suffer

Louisiana has had a silent renaissance bubbling down south and to see the oppressive ATC regime, it is a miracle of sorts.  Let’s start by looking at a small slice of the type of bullshit Lersierna brewers have to adhere to:

There are two types of brewery licenses in the State of Louisiana:

Microbrewery license holders can only sell their beer at retail (through a pub) and can only produce 6% and below. Think Crescent City Brewhouse.

Beer Manufacturers are different, and they can produce beers of 6% and above. They can also sell at wholesale through a distributor, but they can only obtain a retail license to sell 10% of their production in their own taproom. Think Great Raft or Parish Brewing.

We are looking at the latter today, two valiant upstarts who despite administrative kicks to the dick, maintain strong ale based boners.  So shit, let’s review them from best to shittiest, why not:

Alright, so a hoppy saison.  We know it CAN be done well, Holy Mountain, Noble King from JK, and Dorothy from HF have demonstrated that.  This is something that is definitely not that in any respect.  All of the fun from the underlying base farmhouse strain gets strangled under oddly offputting rye spice and sticky waves of hamfisted Mosaic additions.

In 2012 Citra was the brewer panacea, more and more it’s a huge reliance on Mosaic and sometimes brewers still fuck that up and you get this arugula, kale, chard, shallot thing going on with the sweet ritz cracker underneath.  Shit is not tasty.

Envie by Parish brewing is an APA that is pretttty OKAY but never treads into some genre defining Hoppy Birthday or Zombie Dust realm.  It is content to his all of the expected benchmarks, never overstay its welcome, or command your attention away from the Saints in any meaningful way.  The greatest problem is that this brewery is so skilled at brewing dialed in beer (discussed infra) that the additional of caramel malts to a clean simple beer is totally unnecessary.  It has this long burnt sappy drag to it that feels out of place.  I am sure this shit is probably cheap and available all over the place, and many an LSU Tiger has probably vomited this on the steps of AXO.  For my applications, it remains “moderately tasty” and doesn’t bring my cones to oily completion.

Now we are getting somewhere, we aren’t QUITE there yet, but we are well on our way to greatness.  First of all, a 7.3% DIPA seems like that dude with low body fat percentage who thinks he is huge bc vascularity and definition on a waify tiny frame.  This is more single IPA than double and the malty caramel stickiness really weighs down the nimble dreams of what could have been.  I love the carb and long alpha acid swallow to this beer and the sweetness is almost restrained because the hop profile delivers cut melon, pineapple, guava and cut lumber on the swallow.  This is a solid extra and something anyone regional should seek out, a treat that is a cut above the standard IPA offering, but not quite in the realm of Kern/Trillium/Other Half/Tradehouse.

Alright things have gotten completely real in and around the field at this point: Ghost in the Machine is fucking amazing on almost every level.  I didn’t want to believe the hype but this is an undeniable gem.  It is intensely clean and refreshing despite the hefty abv, the malts are a flawless stage for the alpha acids to dance upon.  It never has a saccharine heft and I could kill these back to back just chain comboing that soft orange julius meets green onion Simcoe type of swallow.  I couldn’t tell you the hop blend used in this but the opener has such a pronounced grapefruit pith that it dries into an inimitable conifer complexity on the swallow that keeps the Cajun Country far from sober.

This is a beer you should actively trade for as it will probably stomp nearly anything local in your distro footprint and it is worth every fedex dollar to obtain.

SO WHAT COULD BE BETTER THAN THAT? This. This beer is fucking astounding:

Great Raft Brewing, Old Mad Joy Baltic Porter aged in HEAVEN HILL Barrels. I know I know, who the fuck is Great Raft and why are you hyping a random beer that the cicerones on BA gave a “4.0” which is essentially a C minus in their esteemed metric.

Stay with me: this is everything that you crave from the BA Everetts of the world with the slick nimble mouthfeel, the substantial barrel character but never leaving a hefty wave of chocolate muck on the palate.  The carb is microfine bubbles that crackle with a silky texture like sloe gin fizz caramel marshmallow edition.  The barrel treatment is phenomenally executed and this is definitely a sleep gem that no one is ISO and delivers in a huge way.  The taste compels waves of Whoppers and Skor bar but you dont need to sip, you can take a legitimate pull and let it hit your molars and occupy you gullet and allow it to sheet and breakdown the confectionary aspects because the body is thin enough that you never get pissed off.

This is very much akin to the awesome Framinghammer lineup and, coming in with no expectations, this was a stunner.  I can already feel that dissent and hatemail now, but ZFG, ask your Louisiana dude to toss you one of these, unless they were apeshit limited? You won’t regret it.

So there we go, those raft riders living below sea level finally got their day in the sun and I didnt make a single 504, Abita, Cash Money, New Orleans Pelicans or No Limit Reference. PSHEW.

  
I love how criminally overlooked this brewery is, lock down dank ass bottles with no looming shitlord profiteer tax.

They enjoy that same quality to ultra chill ratio that Upright silently enjoys in Oregon, the ultimate power to weight dynamic. Thanks to Ohio and my own complete lack of self control, I might die bingeing this box.

Part of me suspects that the needle on these alcolzyer readings might be sandbagged to comply with the punitive Ohio laws, WHO KNOWS, my body shall be the judge.