Rank em meat tits:

1. Royale: consistently incredible. Nimble and bone dry, less vanilla and more rum caramel and cognac notes. God tier stout

2. Puga25, a touch hot and drying but complex with a depth and tannic oakiness to it not found in many stouts

3. Puga rye: crackly and spicy, hasn’t mellowed a bit and still lively and ultra bright, underscored by a mallowfoam and toffee brittle closer

4. Puga14. Makes regular BT seem flabby when this svelte dancer drops bone dry cocoa and graham cracker meets dr pepper in a thin closer. A marvel. Best vintage to date. I expected a saccharine sugar bomb and it’s easily the most dynamic and carries a fusel closer as a result but never approaches cloying

5. Cherry and vanilla: this is fun and pointless. The cherry is poorly integrated and reminds me of sucrets. The vanilla seems derivative and artificial and it is somehow worse than th sum of it’s parts.

REviews: now exceedingly terse and laconic

TFW you drink 19% abv stouts and need to pick your child up from Saturday school.

It’s not secret that I creep on this beer harder than a Korean ex girlfriend. I am always tryna see where it is, where it’s going, who it be with.

And for good reason, Humulus kills it and you can see the noticeably different character to a freshly tapped keg, straight pineapple juice embracing that turbid lack of clarity.

Whenever some dipshit dusts off the same old Bruery is beetus joke, ask them about Humulus. If they haven’t tried it, (they won’t) be like:

Another hoarders/reserve only bottle coming hot off the block pushing weight and vanilla 16s. This was modeled after Limoncello but achieves something decidedly more delicious as a result.

The carb is on point and silk e fineee. The look is that bruery golden sour with a touch more brassiness. The nose presents an edible arrangements bouquet of lemon, kumquat, peach, waffle cone and macaroon.

The taste at first leads like sitr Kum and seems a touch one dimensional for a moment but wait for it…. That vanilla blast like a soft serve machine in a bukkake film leaving you drippig and sticky. It lingers with a white chocolate and bone dry oiliness.

The golden sour beers have yet to fall short and this is no exception. You can kill a 750ml easily and the waffle cone finish begs for big sips.

Vanilla sours are all the rage these days. Shameless witless apologist in the cut like what

$180? Check
Cask strength? Yup
Ornate ass wooden box? Double check.

Well what do we have here? Another C + S banger steadily creeping up them secondary markets in its second release.

Well this polarizing spirit seems to pull on the nips of the traditional bouton purists, it has a secondary finish in port barrels which usually would indicate the adjunct stout gambit of the spirits world. That is simply not the case here. If you have had the AE rye in rum cask you will know this is a legit spirit even without the showy secondary conditioning.

So almost two thirds of this is straight up alcohol, and the look is a deep burnt penny, and copper tints that show the aging and them port side punishments.

The nose is wafty and a touch alcoholic, but not off putting. It leads to a raisin, plum, cocoa powder and port sherry waft that finishes with a sort of cognac sweetness. It is far from the standard playbill but you will stay through the intermission because the characters are so engaging.

The taste is far from your average cask bourbon outing, but it is in a memorable sort of way, not like the Corti Bros deviant that makes you wonder if it is bourbon at all. It has a merlot and cab grape presence, light smoky earthy aspects like chanterelle morels, a pruney tastiness like a holiday treat, a brandy closer and heat that lingers in the bitter zones.

Again most people won’t peg this as bourbon right away because it has such crazy spoilers and body kits adorning it. At it’s core is a solid offering that may be a touch gaudy for some, but if you like the flashy panache of like an Evo MR, you will nod lovingly at this apeshit offering that covers so many bases that it fails to master any one presented.

Should you buy this? Let’s be honest if you read DDB you probably spent all your Xmas cash from Autozone on vanilla stouts or some shit, but if you see this at a bar at like $30 a pour, give it a whirl you won’t try anything else like it.

Like an amputee escort. WHOAAA.

Batch 1 Catadors be having Total Recall and shit.

For those of you who weren’t on BA back in 2010, someone got banned for attempting to trade rare coral. The LULz ensued and the punch line now lives on in our hearts next to Bitzy.

Man I am glad the trade value for this has fallen through the fucking ground because this is still such a delicious stout without qualification. Better than Nooners or Rarererers or triple chocolate deviants: the OG is still best.

It still provides a svelte approach with a nice degree of attenuation and doesn’t lean too hard on residual sugars , which is amazing considering what state this beer hails from, the Mecca of 1.030+ FGeezies. The chocolate and sweetness swings the flying jib and goes full mast with a cargo of delicious vanilla and caramel in the brig below. During this time of year some asshole will invariably chime in with “BCBS IS BETTAR AND I GOT A CASE AT WEGMANS WHY WONT MY COWORKERS GO TO LUNCH WITH ME” or some shit. Yes we get it, regular bcbs is tasty and widely available, maybe take that shit back to BA where your haul pics are still relevant like it is 2009 up in this bitch. Seek this out, the trade winds are ripe for rare dos and you won’t be disappointed.

No I haven’t bought assassins creed unity yet, I have been completing IRL fetch quests, aka Xmas shopping at Bass Pro Shop. SO MANY ACHIEVEMENTS UNLOCKED WITH MY RELATIVES, third level holiday cheer obtained.

Small format, big hnnngggsss

Fully torqued, finally someone will bring some farmhouse firepower to these Saison forsaken 312 ratchets.

Man some times you trade for some old beers and just roll them dusty dice. This is the old oxidized snake eyes through and through.

Man this popped without any pageantry then just sat there looking like Everglades pond water. Or Mexican tap water. Or yoohoo.
The nose is gross like diacetyl, movie popcorn, green apple suckers and butyric acid finish.

The taste isn’t as bad but it certainly isn’t good, it is tart and kinda greasy in the mouthfeel, and closes with this stomach bile and this odd Brett aspect.

Blegh

Fremont is the ultimate sniper for secretive PnW gems, popping delicious .50 cal rounds at traders from the lush wet Washington weeds. People are just now catching on to Bbomb and lamentably they released a fantastic series of Kentucky dark star deviants so the Midwest thimble pour contingency got all fired up. So cop their offerings while you can, before you start seeing a series of trifling offers for these bangers.

But what is this barleywine treat we have for this day of thanks? A 900 bottle multi blend of different barrels? What kind of celebratory decadence is afoot crafted for Brouwer’s Cafe 7th anniversary do we have here?

Initially I was supposed to toss this into the blind babw tasting but couldn’t land one in time to properly rep the cascade cadre. Instead I put in Old Birdbrain and them PnW tickers felt shorted like I intentionally sand bagged them. Well Bryan Turner hooked me up with this so now I can finally stunt properly on behalf of the wet regions. Rest assured, if I popped this at the blind babw tasting, I would conjecture that it would land in the top 10 due to its distinctive sweet profile.

The carb is silky and gentle, but kuhnhenn and hair of the dog would call that excessive levels of wispy lacing. The nose is decadent and presents plum, currant, black cherry, cocoa powder, and a touch of molasses. It lingers with no fusel heat and actually reminds me more of an old ale on the nose and the barrel is well integrated and doesn’t make a separate statement or overpower the base beer.

The taste is sticky sweet with notes of rolos, scor bar, raisin, and maple syrup. It is decidedly sweet in execution but has a linger oak resonance to the mouthfeel that oddly closes dry more akin to a ba quad in many ways, but that’s hardly a complaint, just one of those inexplicable overlaps in these dovetailed styles. It never has a heft that is cloying in the manner that say, Melange 3, can occasionally exhibit, nor is it underwhelming in mouthfeel.

The balance claps stacks together and hangs from the top of the malt pole, red bottoms clackin, and you know you want a private barrel dance with this particular offering. While it isn’t my absolute favorite barleywine of all time (luh u kuhnhenn bbbw my bae) it is awesome and worthy of your attention or futile ISO attempting to land it.

Dust off that scone waffle gummi worm abduction and get to it.

Just finished my Xmas shopping. Done.