5

Perennial Abraxas SHOOTOUT: REGULAR versus BARREL AGED, My Body Is Ready

|

Ever since this god damned barrel aged Abraxas came out, beer nerds have not shut the fuck up about this beer. It was released in the midwest, which made shit even worse because it is not NASCAR season and people living in the freezing cold dont have shit else to do but wonder what those size 11 women look like under those North Face jackets. So today let’s just economize a bit: no narrative, no bullshit, just direct and to the point, WHICH ABRAXAS IS BEST? Someone from Florida will probably chime in with a tired ass joke like “HUNA IS THE BEST ABRAXAS!1!!” and we all nod and he sits back in his desk and goes back to learning his times tables and shit.

Let’s get this stupid ass review over with already.

REGULAR ASS VERSION:
Perennial Artisan Ales
Missouri, United States
American Double / Imperial Stout | 10.00% ABV

BALLER ASS 564 BOTTLE RELEASE INSTAWHALE GIMMIE ALL YOUR CHURCHILLS VERSION:
Perennial Artisan Ales
Missouri, United States
American Double / Imperial Stout | 11.00% ABV

Technically only 500 bottles were really released since one dude went and scooped up like 80 bottles, but, we all know about that story. I will leave the rest to conjecture/autoeroticism.

Regular on the left, BA on the right, zero fucks given in the middle.

Regular on the left, BA on the right, zero fucks given in the middle.

Appearance:

I am not even doing this, they look almost exactly the fucking same. Seriously. It is like when people ask about the look of Goose Island Rare versus BCBS, I want to be like, are you fucking kidding? Ok for some reason, barrel aged version has a little bit more carbonation, but we are talking minimal amounts to begin with. This beer isn’t winning any beauty contests on either front. It is flaccid, lays there all dark and calculating. If you did a cuvee of Abyss and Huna you’d get the idea. Dark ass mocha foam, looking all like a coffee drink you drop $4.75 on. The sheeting is massive and if you are a wine asshole, “THE LEGS ON BOTH ARE SPLENDID!”

ALL MY TRADING PARTNERS ARE DEAD.

ALL MY TRADING PARTNERS ARE DEAD.

Smell:

Regular Ass: This is kinda vegetal, deep roast, some kinda bell pepper and ancho thing going on with no cinnamon to speak of, or really any spices up in that moshpit of roast and char. Go dice up some onion and toss it into a Surly Darkness, boom, you have smelled regular Abraxas. Perfect beer to drink at a Quincinera.

Baller tits: This is like a bowl of fucking Cinnamon Toast Crunch, it is sweet with no real peppers going on, no real bourbon going on either. It smells like what I imagine that Bimbo factory smells like, you know that place that makes all the treats that our migrant workers eat? That place. It is sugar and cinnamon and there should be a cartoon Frog on the front of the bottle talking about whole grains. It is straight up cereal beer. Cut up some rails of State Fair churros and snort those bitches, you just smelled Baller Tits Abraxas.

Taste:

Pedestrian Ass: This carries that roast in a serious way and gives a deep char with some drying smoked malts, bakers chocolate, faint hints of clove in the middle and it finishes with this vegetable/pepper/mole sauce sort of thing that is interesting, but not especially inviting. I mean, most escorts can probably tell some crazy stories about trips to the clinic, but you dont want to spend more than an hour with them.

Rainmaker Version: Again, this is like a completely different beer. This is not like the Baldwins where one is kinda good and the other is totally shitty, it’s like Ron Howard and his weird ass brother, you can’t even believe these two beers are related. There is no real bourbon presence on this beer, but the cinnamon and sweet brown sugar comes raging in, there is a crackle to the spices and maybe that is the peppers in the subterfuge, it is hard to say. If you like Horchata and use a prepaid cell phone, you will probably like drinking this. The perfect beer to drink while standing in line for your EBT benefits.

Just sit in waiting, be patient, they will make more, if people have sense next year's release will not be like this. PATIENCE MY PREDATORS.

Just sit in waiting, be patient, they will make more, if people have sense next year’s release will not be like this. PATIENCE MY PREDATORS.

Mouthfeelings:

Approachable Version: This is a pretty standard affair with the exception of a tingly heat on the backend from the peppers that gives the beer a sort of deadening sensation to the gumline and bottom lip, but nothing too insane across the board. This beer seriously reminds me of a Darkness variant, like if they gave it a spoiler or packed in some breadsticks to jazz it up. Ultimately, this is nothing too earth shattering and I would not trade for this again, not as long as Parabola is sitting on a shelf for way less urethra stretching.

Juicy J version: The mouthfeel has none of that peppery complexity and just keeps it hard in the paint with cinnabon stickiness, girl from the mall kiosk be peeping on your palate and your khaki stained teeth, wanting to flatiron your hair. There is no alcoholic heat on this, but there’s also no bourbon either. Maybe they adhere to the Foothill Brewing school of barrel aging where 16 weeks is PLENTY of time for that beer to get those complex nuances. At any rate, it made the cinnamon more pronounced. Some assholes will probably come in here like “THAT WAS THE VANILLA AND OAK INTEGRATION THAT MADE THE CINNAMON POSSIBLE-” or some shit, don’t care, it tastes like a bear claw. Fucking donut beer, Rogue eat your buttholes out.

Overall/Drinkability:

EBT Version: This is certainly more drinkable than the cinnamon monster, but at what cost? SimCity is a more “playable” game than Assassin’s Creed 3, but spending 8 hours of my life doing menial shit isn’t exactly a mark of greatness. Sure I could drink more of the regular version, but the BA version is interesting for the limited time I would want to have it. Crazy Parking Lot Sex versus Latter Day Saint Stability. Which do you want out of your bell pepper beer?

Gucci Mane Stacks: This version is heavier, stickier, has this inertia of spices and Big Red gum, and is overall not as approachable but if I had to take a pour of either, I would go for the BA version simply because I would be able to remember it more, point it out in a lineup, tell the jury where on the doll that it touched me. That sorta shit.

WINRAR: Barrel Aged Version is the overall winner.

You look at these bottles and think you are on some epic Golem shit, then you realize it was just steam the midwest blew into your lower colon

You look at these bottles and think you are on some epic Golem shit, then you realize it was just steam the midwest blew into your lower colon

You know who the overall losers are? The people giving up shit like Norma, Churchills Finest Hour, and Nooner for bottles of BA Abraxas. If you have had Mexican Cake or Huna, you seriously don’t need to chase this one down, and def. dont give up any Loonz for it. It is my suspicion that the people who OMG FUCKING LOVED THIS BEEER!!1!! are the ones who had a 2oz pour while standing in line, checking into Untappd, or some other shit. If you sit down and drink a solid 10+oz of this beer, you will not want more. I LIVED THROUGH THIS.

7

Oh Great, Another Fucking Ancient Recipe Beer.

|

Hey guize, guess what, they found another ancient example of a beer, and sure enough, they are going to recreate this shit found at the bottom of some Finnish ocean.

More stupid fucking rebrews of ancient ales

It seems like every 3 or 4 months the beer world gets another stupid ass release from an established brewery predicated on an ANCIENT RECIPE. These stories always get picked up by dumbass mainstream news outlets like Huffington post and the rest of the hardcore beer nerds have to suffer through questions about these shitty beers. I am all for innovation, but innovation and recreation for sheer marketing’s sake are usually done at the expense of taste. Have you ever read some of the recipes for these beers? It is always like “cardamom, jasmine, muddled figs, muscat grapes, saffron, annatto and pottery fragments.”

The worst part of these bottled gimmicks isn’t that they taste like complete afterbirth, it is the pull that it enacts on the “normal” beer drinking world. They will stumble into a Whole Foods and “TRY SOEMTHING NEW FOR A CHANEG!” and invariably hate it. Then the beer nerds are left to reap the spoils of their shitty releases. I can’t tell you how many times I have been at NAMBLA fundraisers and someone will always chime in with “OH I HAD THAT REMAKE OF THE EGYPTIAN BEER, IT TASTED LIKE I TONGUE FUCKED A WASP’S NEST” and suddenly I have to defend Dogfish Head Midas Touch for its innovation or whatever else.

God.

God.

Fucking.

Fucking.

Damnit.

Damnit.

You know why people brewed these bizarre beers in the first place? It wasn’t because they tasted so fucking amazing, they brewed them because:

1) Their water was fucking poisonous
2) Their local ingredients were the only fermentable sugars available
3) Their lives under slavery/serfdom/fealty/feudalism were completely shitty and
4) Drinking anything to get drunk in those days was probably pretty legit.

Just because something DID EXIST doesn’t mean it needs to continue to exist. Furthermore, most of these recipes are bastardized versions of the ancient beers anyway. If you want to go hard fucking core, brew that in Phoenician pottery casks in Damascus and leave that shit in the sun to contact ferment. None of this pussy Whitelabs or House cultures, go balls deep in the ancient world.

They don’t do this with any other artisanal products, no one except people at Lilith Fair are weaving clothing with rough hemp, no one is trying to nail that delicious Hard Tack recipe from the French Enlightenment. This garbage is unnecessary.

You want people to know how it felt to get feided during the Third Crusade under Richard I straight plundering Acre? Then brew the beer exactly as shitty as it was back then. Don’t drop these esoteric ingredients into weak base beers and expect people to have their shafts pumping at your innovation. You are the fucking Pontiac Aztek of the beer world. No one asked for you, and it is the stretchmarked mantitted beer nerds that suffer the effects.

2

GUEST REVIEW: Three Floyds Topless Wytch, Pagan worshippers straight stacked

|

HOW CAN I BE ANY FUCKING LAZIER? This site is already the post-bike ride taint of the beer world, but now I am farming out my own shitty beer reviews to legitimately talented writers? You get what you pay for on this site OKAY. Today’s guest review is the same contributor from the Lawsons Kiwi Double IPA Review aka Hevvymetalhippie. Thank you for your work, now I can chase down diabetes in peace. I will give him the floor:

How apropos to be reviewing this beer during one of the last snowfalls of the winter, it doesn’t get more metal than this beer. Not only are there a pentagram, an inverted cross, and an axe on the “death metal band font” label, but…titties! Besides, what is best in life? Answer: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women. I’ve been waiting to drink this beer for months; this Wytch isn’t topless, say the titties is out.

Tatties straight blasting harder than the Four Play label. NSFW beer.

Tatties straight blasting harder than the Four Play label. NSFW beer.

Three Floyds Brewing
Munster, IN
Baltic Porter || 9.00%

Appearance: Even a hard pour couldn’t get a head to form on this godless harlot. If anything there’s a thin and tight ring of bubbles, that quickly vanish to a scant ring around a mysterious coffee black body. Why you gotta be so triflin’! When I set a burning bible behind the glass, looking through the darkness to the other side, deep shades of burgundy and garnet reflect from the glass…robey tones braj…robey tones. And for the record, no lacing, this wytch is topless remember
guise!? CWUTIDIDTHAR?

I looked closer at that label and wuz all lyke-

I looked closer at that label and wuz all lyke-

Smell: On the initial pour bakers chocolate, bitter coffee and sweet malt are as
obvious, but much like the letter art on the label, not all is what it seems. To qualify
as a Baltic Porter, a higher ABV must be created to withstand travel to the “Baltic”
regions, as well as being bottom fermented at lower temperatures. A slight vinous
character emerges from the briny deep as well, perhaps an unholy note of satanic
raisns.

Taste: If it smells like a wytch, looks like a wytch, then its PROBABLY A FUCKING
WITCH! This beer is awesome, straight up. A lot translates over from the nose,
but richer and sweeter as it warms. It’s probably sucking my soul out Dementor
style like a golf ball through a garden hose…yeah think about that. If 3 Floyds ever
decided to barrel age these, or better yet do barrel aged variants of this, they’d have
a line down the street of beer geeks willing to sell their souls for this potential insta-
Whale. I see bourbon barrel, port, or even cognac going over very well.

This beer might be deemed sexually offensive and offputting to women, but ladies be loving dem imperial porters tho.

This beer might be deemed sexually offensive and offputting to women, but ladies be loving dem imperial porters tho.

Mouthfeel: While thinking of how to make a joke about doing body shots of Topless
Wytch off a topless witch and how hedonistically aristocratic I felt sitting amongst
a pile of recently traded beers, I couldn’t help but notice how badly I wanted this
to be a thick witch. If only it had gone further down the road into stoutsville; well
I guess it’d just be a barrel aged imperial stout; fuck me right? Some people like
their women like they like their stouts: thick and fudgy. AMIRITE? Hey where’s
everybody going?

Drinkability/Overall: I accidently a whole Topless Wytch…is this bad? Over a
prolonged and more civilized drinking session; like a respectable adult would have,
not some college frat bro drink-a-thon shit show, where I’m sucking down beer like
a man-titted bridge troll whose life depended on it; I realize that my beer nerd rage
wants, and rash judgments might be a tad hasty. This is an excellent beer, another
world-class offering from 3 Floyds. I have come to the realization that drinking
amazing beer regularly has clouded my judgment on what is actually a good beer
and what is a phenomenal beer. It’s tough isn’t it? #firstworldproblems. It could
be enhanced if they bumped the ABV up, tossed that topless bitch in a barrel like
she deserves and let her out some months later, but it’s also excellent all on its
own. Satanic imagery, evil letter art, tits, a Norwegian Black Metal album, and one
amazing beer later, I’m ready to sign my name into the black book of death, if this is
any predicator of things to come.

Ultimately it is a porter, it is a non-imperial stout, black ale, fuck if I can explain what this is.

Ultimately it is a porter, it is a non-imperial stout, black ale, fuck if I can explain what this is.

Narrative: It had been three weeks since Lydia had seen the sun. Her skin, pallid and
milky had been untouched by the light of day, her purple blue veins read like a map,
roads down her arms and into her hands. Inside the cemetery catacombs, the need
for clothes had become moot; the temperature often soared leaving the mausoleum
sweltering in the mid-day Louisiana sun, causing her to venture deeper into the
dark vaults, bereft of clothes. Further she walked, blindly and topless into the earth,
hand upon the wall, beyond the oldest portions of the grave until she reached the
terminus of the pit. There upon the roughly hewn ledge lay her prize, the Black
Book! It had taken her years to find its final resting place, but here it was and here
she was. Warm to the touch, the book was waiting for her, to inscribe her name into
it, and cast it from the book of life. Perhaps now she would feel the satisfaction, the
comeuppance in unlife that she so desperately desired in life. Lydia was becoming a
witch.

2

@tiredhandsbeer Hophands, for when you done working at the dispensery and your hands be smelling all like sticky cones

|

Tired Hands week is wrapping up and we have seen all kinds of things in the interim, oyster stouts, saisons, pale ales, so how do we close this one out? We go to the old hoppy wheelhouse and consult a draft only classic: NOW TOGETHER IN ONE CONVENIENT PACKAGE. Some naysayers hate on the hoppy saison genre and say that it betrays the musk and nuanced Belgian profile. Other hop heads feel that the base of a saison is too substantial and interferes with the hop oil experience. FUCK BOTH OF THOSE GUYS. Today we are going cones deep into some fertile soil with a straight up hoppy American Pale Ale.

EDIT TO MY PRIOR POST: I did not review this shit previously, I am a drunk pre-diabetic idiot. The cage match was between Singel Hop and Regular FARMHANDS.

Oh shit, picking all these juniper berries and then wiping petrulli oil on myself, hands be all hoppy.

Oh shit, picking all these juniper berries and then wiping petrulli oil on myself, hands be all hoppy.

Tired Hands Brewing Company
Pennsylvania, United States
American Pale Ale (APA) | 5.20% ABV

A: The beer pours with nice carbonation albeit very little lacing, a turbid deep orange and almost amber color. The beer has generous big bubbles and eschews the microfine carbonation that you might anticipate in a bottle conditioned beer. It kinda reminds me of a mix of pineapple and orange juice with the yellow and orange blend look to it.

The interplay between the resin and the citrus aspects of this beer shows some serious fucking hop team work.

The interplay between the resin and the citrus aspects of this beer shows some serious fucking hop team work.

S: Holy hell, if Entropic was the gentle APA brother who spends time in his room working on interpretive dance, this is the jock asshole hop brother who rolls in an IROC Camaro and socks nerds. This is incredibly resinous and hits the familiar APA zones of pine, lupulin, orange zest i.e. the white part, there is a Jamba Juice wheatgrass aspect to this and closes with a citrus tangelo REREREREREEEEMIXXXX on the backend. There is a ton of feels packed into the smell, if you know what I mean.

T: This imparts more of the citrus than I was expecting from the nose but carries itself confidently through the halls of lupus gaiety. You get a pineapple and tangerine sweetness at the front which fades into a deeper pinecone and dry finish with the oils leaving you both satisfied but wanting another sip because that sweet citrus opener is a hard act to follow. It’s like when AFI opened for Blink 182 in the late 90’s and you were all like “what, how did this. wait.”

At a certain point, taking a simple beer like a pale ale to these heights is borderline obsessive.

At a certain point, taking a simple beer like a pale ale to these heights is borderline obsessive.

M: This is incredibly light and shines as an APA and does not toe that questionable ass genre crossing line like Zombie Dust does. This is hoppy to def with fishtanks in the Civic because Tired Hands pimped their ride with hop cones in the rims. I love the interplay between straight up water and intense hops, the malts are like an abused child getting transferred back and forth in custody battles. The real victim is your bitter zones, you can smoke one of these growlers with a quickness and wonder why your Fedex bills are so high. If that is a drawback, THEN SIGN ME UP.

D: This is not quite as drinkable as Entropic, but strong in different ways. I wouldn’t say this is one of the crowning achievements of the APA realm like Hoppy Birthday or Zombie Dust, but it maintains an exceptional character of residual hops, drinkability, and just straight up vibrant citrus tones that I have not had in any bottle pale ale, to say the absolute least. This is incredibly drinkable and makes me have so many sads that I can’t just go drain this on the regular like Beachwood Alphamaster or something local and amazing. This APA fills an amazing void in the world of resctum stretching stouts and acidic sours always raping your mouthhole. This APA is like a gentle hand holding sessions, blowing dandelions in a field, a light hoppy kiss on the cheek that anyone would be down for.

Drink pale ales once in a while, you dont need to be a tiny dicked bad ass all the time.

Drink pale ales once in a while, you dont need to be a tiny dicked bad ass all the time.

Narrative: Trent Kim had a problem that not many could associate with: his banter was too damn pleasant. He had seen several sociolinguists as a child and, during the testing phases he had affected them in such a genial way that they simply dismissed him as playful. It was a clear disability though, Trent had inadvertently coasted through elementary school accidentally coaxing all of his teachers and beguiling all officials with his Godlike gift of bonhomie. Once, when he was 14 Trent came home after driving his parents car to a liquor store, to purchase crack cocaine. He lowered his head in shame when his mother asked “TRENT WHERE DID YOU-” “I know mother, I know exactly what I did wrong, I can’t justify my actions and-” suddenly his mom began peeling a ripe orange and bit into it and exclaimed “oh WHATS A LITTLE CRACK COCAINE FOR A GROWING BOY! I can’t stay mad at you Trent!” The haggard companion in a vinyl skirt was both in awe, and clearly a cheap prostitute that Trent had plied into giving him a handjob for free. Being this likable would be his downfall someday, but for now Trent bit into an orange slice and tossed his back of crack on the kitchen counter.