0

Lost Abbey Veritas 010, It Just Grips Your Peaches and Smashes Them.

|

Whale wale whael. What do we have here? This is another in the inimitable Veritas series (insert V009 qualifier.) So this beer came FREE with some bourgeois dinner and you could even buy a second bottle at this F Scott Fitzgerald ass event. i think the bottle count is something like 200ish on this so, haters gonna hate.

Forget this impossible to find beer, is that Stop Loss on in the background?

V010
The Lost Abbey
California, United States
Style | ABV
American Wild Ale | 8.00% ABV

A: This has that classic Duck Duck murky turbid hay yellow aspect to it like a hateful saison full of acidic rage. This has great carbonation and foamy carbonation that clings lightly.

Time to settle in for a gentle lil wild ale like biting into a fresh peach on papa snuggles pedio farm.

S: lots of funk, apricot, tannins and peach acidity. There’s a mild leather note, and a deep oakiness that compliments the acidic profile. There’s a lot going on, but the Peach just gets pushed under the bed like worn old Hustler issues.

T: This goes incredibly sour out of the gates and almost neglects the fruit notes in a Cascade sort of way. Things are very lactic and push out granny smith apples, peaches, pluots, kumquots and other uots. The sweetness lingers for a fleeting second, but more sourness comes in to beat its ass right away.

Who the fuck lands a Veritas 10
and then complains about it?

M: the mouthfeel is drier than anticipated, light and crisp like biting into an anjou pear, that has been dipped in lemon juice. It is the “Bowser” in the Kart Racer sense, huge acidity top speed and no cornering. This is not an entry level drug into pediococcus, you couldn’t just slip it in without her knowing, assuming that is your modus operandi, clandestine bacteria provisions on the reg.

D: With the acidity and tart brackish finish pulling this overhyped sled, i dont feel that it is exceptionally drinkable. I dont finish a 750ml and wish for another. Let me clarify, I want plenty of these in my cellar because they are amazing, but drinking them backtobacktoback like racksonracksonracks is not what I am looking for. Certainly not an Aladdin’s lamp, just an intense acidic fruit packing factory that has been overrun by barnyard animals. If you are a jamba juice crank fiend or enjoy musky lemonade, here is your apricot jam.

Trading for walez. Stahp.

Narrative: “Heeeyyyyy kids, welcome to Papa Crispy’s funtime hayride! Best farm ride in th-” “No, please, we have already been through this, we just want to relax.” For the love of God, another rustic hayride, I didn’t think that these would wear heavy on the nerves but, how many times can you ride in the bed of a flatbed truck. “NOOOOO THIS ONE IS SPECIAL IT HAS LOTS OF INTERESTING ANIMALS AND FUNKY THINGS TO SEE WHY I BET THAT-” My eyes begin to glaze over as we visit the same tired goat exhibit, remniscient of Aunt’s past, the same tired geese aviary, their bleating calls metronomic and underscoring the adventure. “WHY AND IF YOU LOOK OVER THERE, SOME LEPRECHAUNS ARE HAVING SEXUAL INTERCOURSE!” wait what, what did he just say? I am frantically searching for the advertised amazing spectacle that was promised, where are these leprechauns? Oh, I get it, another gimmicky hayride with some imaginary funk to it. That’s pretty low to offer leprechaun orgies knowing you can’t deliver that filthy pot of gold. At least I have this pile of hay to lay upon until this stupid ride is over. Farmhouse funk indeed.

0

Midnight Sun Brewing Berserker, For Those Times When You Go Berkskerk

|

Midnight Sun beers are so damn good, so damn far away, so expensive, and not the easiest beers to lock down. Let’s be honest. We haven’t harassed our Alaskan neighbors since that barfly review. Well this is an analog to that beer in many ways, while not as .rar, I actually enjoy this coffee beast more. This is bourbon, coffee, maple, red wine and everything fine all rolled into one. Let’s start drilling for imperial oil in today’s review.

So many words up on that label, so many flavors all up in my face.

Midnight Sun Brewing Co.
Alaska, United States
American Double / Imperial Stout | 12.70% ABV

The label rages on:

“Vicious and viscous, this menacing brew pours opaque black with a creamy maduro-colored head. Its aroma offers seductive whiskey, chewy red wine, dark fruit and lavish tobacco. Berserker Imperial Stout invades your taste buds with in-your-face flavor. Weighing in at almost 13% alcohol by volume, Berserker is completely out-of-control. Give it a good fight. Berserker Imperial Stout was aged in both red wine and whiskey barrels.”

A: This is to the numbers an imperial stout through and though. Just look at that, it looks like press pot coffee mixed with triple brownie batter ice cream. The mocha head lets you know that the malts went through some serious dark ended shit in that 120 minute boil. The lacing is tremendous and the carbonation rises to the top despite thick sticky adversaries holding it back like a bunch of bubble haters.

This comes across like a progressive spin on something that you feel like you’ve experienced before. The result is a refreshing new experience.

S: This imparts a deep coffee, merlot, leather, oak, sweet milk chocolate, there is some char and roastiness but at least this beer has the decency to hide it and doesn’t just wave it around like Barfly sees it fit to do. The whole affair is welcoming but incredibly complex. This is an amazing beer and all I am doing it snorting rails of carbonation.

T: This goes overboard in every area like on Diddy Kong Racing when you unlock Drumstick. You get deep caramel and vanilla from the bourbon, then milk chocolate starts slapping titties, tobacco puts a cigar out in your vodka soda and red wine strides in looking like Prince in mink coat. The whole entourage is menacing but welcome, like those Thing 1 and 2’s that break all your shit, but rhyme the entire time.

uniting bourbon, red wine, and coffee is like discovering the triforce of imperial stouts.

M: This is incredibly viscous and shoulders the ranks of Abyss and Huna with that deep oily murkiness that only the most hardened BP workers can be cajoled into talking about. You take a sip of this, might as well just call in sick to work, you will look like a boozy asshole. Why are you drinking this in the morning anyway? After a full bomber of this, you can just listen to Purity Ring and stare at some shitty Z Gallerie artwork because nothing else is going to seem relevant after what your mind and palate just went through.

D: This is exceptionally drinkable, without qualifier. I know it is huge, boozy, chocolatey, chewy, and almost 13%. You can finger your own dick hole if you disagree, this stout just goes HAM and doesn’t care who knows it. I would advise seeking out a ton of this, but the trading curve has already taken off sky high, so good luck with that one.

This beer is huge, brash, but endlessly entertaining.

Narrative: The bubbles danced menacingly in front of your face as you watched the others propel themselves effortlessly through the water. Your cephalopoda eyes glow red with rage at the sight of their white, thin streamlined bodies. you were born this way, to harbor the maddening palour of a quadruple sized ink pouch. It is your scarlet, jet black A in your inner bladder. The most irksome, blackest squid in the sea, reviled by your contemporaries you lazily chug through the molasses emitting from your pores. Your beak grits haughtily in their wake, knowing their fortune, a grim death in indonesian nets. Alaskan squid are the most relentless indeed. Your wring your tentacles, obsidian in pigment, thinking of their light flesh reflecting the rays of angled sunlight from above. You could follow them in their trivial, fleeting existence, but you weren’t suited for that life. you were suited for the depths, the cold darkness, colder than your metabolic slowdown, colder than the oppressive atmospheric pressure. In a blast of thick enveloping ink you become one with the darkness and embrace your pure nature, a creature of the depths, all 8 legs propelling towards your destiny.

0

Hair of the Dog Adam from the Wood, Fred was Nice, BUT NOW WE ARE TALKING SERIOUS WOOD

|

Adam from the motherfucking Wood. Not regular Adam. Not Cherry Adam, just gangster ass AftW. This is one of those long standing top 100 beers than I had been meaning to trade for off and on for over 9 months, but now shit is getting real and it is time to see if this little 12 ounce heater from Oregon is going to bring the pain in today’s review.

Adam gives beer nerds wood as well. Poplar and pine.

AftW
Hair of the Dog Brewing Company / Brewery and Tasting Room
Oregon, United States
Old Ale | 12.00% ABV

This is Adam aged in American Oak barrels. First released in 2000, and released again in November 2011 in 12oz bottles. This 12% beer has lots of the typical HOTD aromas: Caramel, brown sugar, tons of raisin and tobacco. Fig, date, and plum fruitiness in that order. This has a fairly strong earthy vinousness as well as oak vanilla. Alcohol: 12% by volume.

This is a complex beer that satisfies your basest desires. Wood, bourbon, fast food.

A: This is not a particularly beautiful beer; let’s just get that out of the way right from the top. I mean look at it. It is murky like melted fudge, there’s hardly any carbonation and the sheeting just coats like sticky caramel. I remember when I opened Matt and I was like “wait. What is hapen.” This is the same thing here. I can safely say that Hair of the Dog has slayed beer nerds on the quality of the aroma and taste of their beers, engaging in the Kuhnhenn style of guerilla warfare with regards to appearance. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

S: This is incredible and the olfactory is pumping out siege tanks. This beer opens up with caramel, marshmallow, Zero bar, light chocolate, a lil campfire roastiness in there and closes with a HUGE bourbon kick like kisses from your aunt on Flag day.

T: This is incredibly complex and changes from one beer to a completely different beer as it warms. I feel redundant listing all the terms that HotD themselves listed but, for reals, you get dark fruits like an imperial quad, dates, plums, just fucking read up there. I will add that the oak and bourbon is overwhelming, like Donkey Kong smashing you in the head with a barrel. Kong so hard.

My face be all like dis when I opened this beer. Lemon knows what is up.

M: This is both hugely sticky like a foam party and incredibly boozy, like a foam party. I enjoy this beer at almost room temperature because it suddenly imparts this complex bouquet like a caramel liqueur. You ever get a girl’s number and then there’s a lingering sense of guilt because you know that you aren’t attracted to Albanian women at all? Well that is how this beer operates, you get that bourbon and then it just overstays its welcome, eating up all your Bugles, changing your DVR settings and shit.

D: This is not drinkable. I will just say it. I will not say that this is not something i did not enjoy, read above, I really liked it. I don’t think Hair of the Dog will get their jimmies rustled when I say that I don’t need any larger formats of this beer. I get it. This isn’t some Ayn Rand novel where you need the notes drilled at you over and over in larger than life representations. Caramel, figs, plums, sleep. That’s how Adam rolls when he is swinging wood.

This is a big, complex beer. People fear complex things.

Narrative: “we should do this more ofTEN!” you open up your posture and lean hesitantly back “oh yeah…i know why dont we, yeah we should!” a slight wavering in your voice. This was all going so well, but God does she grate on your nerves relentlessly. “I’ve got this thing next month and you know, the week is always hectic” you look down at your shoes, the lies in the air palpable in a thick mist that she seems impervious to. The bourbon smells impart a cloud like a Eugene O’Neill novel. “well totally, I will work around you, I will call you tomorrow ok? 2 pm?” You can’t believe you are still standing in the entryway of this apartment complex, this could not end soon enough, yet it started so pleasantly. Maybe it was the way she smacked her food, told the same story 6 times with slight variations, smacked her gum, or asked you prying personal questions. “Yeah no 2pm is rough, pretty much all times are tough, so hey I gotta do this thing but…keep in touch k?…” You lick your gumline and taste her caramel lip gloss. What a strange choice. You rock back on your heels and slink towards your car. “Sure, well I will touch back and we’ll work something out” For all your will, for all her shortcomings, you know in 6 months, your curiousity will return and you will inevitably come back to her. The exotic sweetness, with all its lack of grace, beckons.

0

The Brew Kettle Taproom White Rajah IPA, All Hail this Indian Master

|

Time to swing the old geography around to show Ohio some love for something other than eating competitions and the award for most Big Dog t-shirts sold per capita. This beer pops up every once in a while on the top 100 and I figured I would give the midwest a shrift to see how their big guns stack up against California IPAs.

White Rajah is within the same lineage as Maharaja from beers that just toss around Indian terms with careless abandon.

White Rajah IPA
The Brew Kettle Taproom & Smokehouse / Production Works
Ohio, United States

Style | ABV
American IPA | 6.80% ABV

A: Deep orange with amber hues in the center, 1/2 finger carbonation, moderate lacing, a bit darker than most ipas, but a bit cloudier. Single IPAs are kinda like telling your friends about the hot Korean girl that you met, all adjectives make it end up seeming more pedestrian and unimpressive as a result.

IPA cant be walez, hurr derrr.

S: There is a bright aggressive hop profile, cirtusy and bitter to the nose. Not quite overbearing in the juniper/herbal notes, but still that pesky pine pokes its head in like an uncircumsized penis, all conspicuous and out of place.

T: This beer has a very balanced hop profile, not overbearing, not entirely cirtusy either, very light with a quick bitter finish, a profile that transfers from lemon to grassy and are similar to those other poorly done imperial/double IPAs, without a long standing lingering hop profile. Those god. damn. pinecones round things out and just overstay their welcome. This is pretty robust for a single IPA, but not my favorite offering when Sculpin and some other stellar IPAs are available on the reg.

When you have a nice, sessionable IPA, you get this warm hoppy feeling like snugs from a baby sloth.

M: The mouthfeel is exactly where it should be for the style, light finish with a biscuity middle to it that lingers for a bit, doesnt overcoat the mouth so that you welcome the next sip, almost to the point of drinking it too fast. I prefer this to many other jankier double IPAs because I feel like I can drink this without so much of a traumatic profile and continue to keep ruining people’s shit on Puzzle Quest.

D: I dont usually throw this around, but its an incredibly drinkable beer, it feels like a bolder pale ale simply due to its Trojan horse character that sends the abv and aggressive fast moving hops right into the Troy of your mouth. I am certainly able to drink well beyond the 12oz bottle and I think 3 would be perfect to get ready for a custody hearing. It’s an even more dangerous candidate given the relatively afforable price. Good luck finding a series of bottles to support that endeavor. I enjoy this beer but in LA its not too simple to find this beer, or even at all, so slap the Fedex guy on the ass and tell him to move bricks in the trap.

Too many IPAs will put your liver on swole, knock you down like a Goldberg spear.

Narrative: They said that after the nuclear war, there would be no vegetation, no life, just nuclear winter. How ironic, those shortsigted botanists, if they only knew. The hop plant thrives on depleted uranium. The nuclear war didn’t produce endless expanses of rubble, it created a lush verdant world covered in hop flowers. It stings my eyes to go outside with all the hop oils in the air and I leave the communal well smelling like Burning Man. I guess this is God’s sick joke, cover the earth in a beautiful, fragrant, unusable flower, what with all the malt and barley dead. Talk about peanut butter with no jam. Hopmageddon affected us all, but it affected Chardonnay drinkers worst of all.

0

Russian River Toronado 25th Anniversary, Don’t Tell Me You Forgot Our Anniversary, Baby

|

I feel like Toronados is the golden baby of the beer bar world. I swear that anytime that this place has an anniversary, bris, or restructuring of their corporate board, breweries find some damn reason to shower them with .rar walez. Alpine made a double batch of Nelson to celebrate and I MISSED OUT ON IT. But oh well, let’s see what Russian River has up their sleeve in today’s review.

Throw some 25’s on the whip, barrel blend is so sick.

T25
Russian River Brewing Company
California, United States
American Wild Ale | 8.75% ABV

Toronado 25th Anniversary Ale started out as six individual brews, each with their own personality, and all incorporating Brettanomyces and or micro-organisms. Once the barrel aging was complete, Russian River’s Vinnie Cilurzo and Toronado’s David Keene got together to create the final blend. To create its fine carbonation, we re fermented the Toronado 25th Anniversary Ale in this bottle. Spent yeast cells from a thin layer of sediment in the bottom of the bottle. Pour slowly, allowing the natural yeast sediment to remain in the bottle.

Blend:
4% Sonambic (barrel aged for 15 months)
16% Blonde Ale (barrel aged for 8 months)
36% Strong Pale Ale (barrel aged 12 months)
28% Ale Aged with Currants (barrel aged for 8 months)
12% Strong Dark Ale (barrel aged for 12 months)
4% Baltic Porter (barrel aged for 10 months)

A: See all that going on up there? The result is a translucent orange hue with mild wispy carbonation that crackles and disappears slowly. This isn’t a particularly BEAUTIFUL beer like say, Ithaca Brute, but it has its own subtle charms, like that snaggletoothed woman in accounts receivable who always holds the elevator for you.

This blend got mad swag, gangnam steeze to the fullest.

S: This has a fantastic lactic smell to it that reminds me of Hill Farmstead Norma, since almost none of my readers have had that I GUESS I HAVE TO SAY MORE. There are aspects of cherries, orange rind, currants, fuji apples, and grapefruit juice. I don’t think that the Baltic Porter is pulling mad weight in the barrel as it seems to be incredibly acidic.

T: This is incredibly tart with a sort of refined Red Bull sort of sweetness to it that works well with the acidic profile. While cold, this beer is kinda one dimensional in the way that Beatification is just a 2D sour, but once it hits around 60 degrees the 3D glasses come on in a real way and you get a huge crisp and bright panoply of tart fruits.

This beer will get you rolling so hard.

M: This is puckering and very dry similar to an aged Temptation, let’s say b4. You get the oak and some lingering harshness but it welcomes another sip. The carbonation crackles and hits that gumline hard like Kimbo Slice, and the barrel be wood like a baseball bat.

D: This is insouciantly dry and doesn’t give a fuck if you can’t handle the puckering profile but ultimately, like a 14 year old girl I keep returning for this beer’s affection. It has a car. Ultimately, I wish this was a regular release amongst the other regular “-tions” but given how complex it is, I UNDERSTAND. Taking this beer to a bar with beer nerds present is kinda like getting your clit pierced at Claire’s, no one is exactly mad, but everyone is curious as fuck what you are up to.

This beer is daunting but completely satisfying.

Narrative: I dont quite understand Jacob, why is it that everyone wants to fight you?” You roll your eyes and offer this explanation once again “Alright fine, I got the same name as 5 other though kids in school and my dad is an MMA fighter and my mom is a WNBA player, those two people got beat up nonstop.” A sour taste fills your mouth knowing the struggle that you have faced on a daily basis. He looks puzzled and you stare at the principal’s snowglobe of Alberta and try to form a different explanation. “Alright, it’s like this see, if you wanna define yourself, sometimes you gotta be the bad guy, do things no one else does, like fight the girls softball team all at once…you see….no? Ok, so I got the same name and two bad as-” “LANGUAGE JACOB” “ok so I got two tough parents, so to prove my dominance, I go around trying things no one else does, milk enemas, eating lightbulbs, you know guy stuff, trying to prove my worth.” The tightness in your neck turns into a light acidity in your stomach. You have something to prove. It became clear that your laundry list of exploits was not exactly carrying the day for Principal Schlegel. “Alright to prove I am the baddest kid in school with the two roughest parents, I am gonna have sex with that Alberta snowglobe, see?” “That’s not necessary, you are suspended, get out of my office Jacob.”