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Stillwater Barrel Aged Stateside Saison, Still Waters Run Deep, So Deep, Put the Ale’s Barrel to Sleep

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Stillwater has this reputation, at least in beer print media that is untouchable. Maybe the brewer is just a PR master but I constantly see articles about this brewery and the wunderkind owner. This beer is a testament to their ability. Let’s get this out of the way, this beer is awesome, and the fact that it was commercially distributed is incredible, as is the fact the a 330ml bottle was $13.99, but let’s couch that discussion, GRAB YOUR -BALS FOR TODAY’S REVIEW.

The separate of church and Stateside involves a barrel.

Stillwater, Barrel Aged Stateside Saison, 6.7% abv

A: This has a nice yellow haziness with great apple juice notes at the edges. The carbonation is present but not oppressive as the time spent in the carbonation mines, we all remember those days bleakly. Kiss my illegitimate lacing child for me, for her wispy eyes wont remember my dissipate nature.

Call all your friends, tell them barrel aged saisons are happening, watch the crazy shit go down.

S: There’s a Belgian funk to it, with some oakiness, lemon, clove, and tannic esters. This has a slight chardonnay aspect to it and nice vinuous aspect to it, so far so good, like most RPG games.

T: Holy hell, this was not what I expected in an awesome way. This dries like chardonnay and just gives the gumline the business immediately. It is incredibly tart, almost gueuze tart at the outset and gets all peppery and chills out for a second, smashes your Virtual Boy and takes off leaving an intense dryness like you used Lubriderm CQ. That kinda dry.

Smell legit…taste is…WHAT THE FUUUUUU-

M: The mouthfeel is incredibly crisp like biting into fresh Fuji apples that aren’t ready just yet. It is really acidic but oaky at the same time. This is a phenomenal beer and a welcome surprise when I was expecting a by the numbers saison. The barrel made this thing into a crazy beast, like the last seasons of TMNT when they are all mutating and shit. Only me? Ok cool.

D: This is fantastic and almost belongs in a Berliner Weiss or wild ale category the way that this guy went all Temptation on us. It is rough to call it supremely dirnkable because of the $13.50 for a 12oz bottle price and just the dryness. I wont be immature and go for the vaginal joke but, ipso facto, I just did. Buy this, it is a weird but amazing hybrid. Might just give Fantome Saison a run for its ghostly butt hole.

You remember on Garbage Pail Kids where you thought you were approaching some hackneyed premise but then it ended up being one of the best things ever? Well that’s like this beer, Barrel PALE Kids: THE MOVIE.

Narrative: “IF YOU DON’T LEVEL THE GATHERING GOURD, then the souls will escape!” Plestinya pleaded with the sour Ivinicus. “Please, I want to see you make your way to becoming an arch-summoner, but, if we cannot gather souls in this area, replete with drought and death, we have failed as necrophytes.” Ivinicus hung his head ruefully and kicked a scrap of a tumbleweed in front of him. “It makes you think doesn’t it?” Ivinicus began, “I mean, here we are, searching for ourselves, while simultaneously harvesting souls.” “Sir?” “I am just saying, the piercing blue light from the interior of stage coaches loses its luster, slowly but surely, and look at what we have here.” He gestured to the soul gourd, a powerful mage barrel crafted in the Magi epoch of Nev’Naih. “Sometimes I, I just want to see. . .” he thumbed the tab of the tiny barrel, “Ivinicus NO!” Pelstinya cried out as he removed the tab from the gourd and let the souls spill out in a white hot azure light. Each figure presented themselves, changed, for the better. “LOOK! That local grifter has attained a degree in economics! And that failed cattle rustler has developed a Keynsian economic theory DECADES PRIOR TO ITS INCEPTION!” A tacit survey of every soul revealed that they had matured in the barrel and become something greater than the sum of their flaws. “We are basically the shittiest necrophytes ever,” Plestinya noted somberly.

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Blueberry madness

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In addition to being a generally acrimonious beer curmudgeon, I also home brew. I know, I know, that’s like the sweaty neckbeard pushing his Babylon 5 fan fiction on the masses, stay with me now. Anyway, I am brewing a blueberry lambic that I just racked to the secondary, check it:

Purple Drank.

Inb4 “What vintage is that Jello Biafra CD” or other hiarious background comments.

More reviews to come, still loading slugs up in that Chiquita banana.

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Cigar City Jai Alai, A Game of High Speed Balls and Super Alpha Hops

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Here’s something that always seems to poke its hoppy head into beer boxes that I receive as extras. Either this is falling all off of shelves in Florida or someone loves me. I would assume the former. Enough jibber jabber about states with electoral issues, let’s open this hop IED in today’s Hop Locker.

A game of precision, balls, and severe injury, IPA DRINKING.

Cigar City, Jai Alai, IPA, 7.5% abv

A: This beer seemed pretty tame out of the glass, no radiant Marcelous Wallace glow, no Ark of the Covenant face melting hops, just a nice gentle IPA, here to stay a moment and spin some yarns. It is a mild orange with yellowing. Nice carbonation and some haunted house webbing on the glass. Only, no one touches your no no.

Sure, I have seen some amazing IPAs in my day but, my jimmies are in a default state upon seeing and smelling this offering, they arent unrustled, I guess.

S: Strangely, I don’t get a huge acidity, sure there’s some obligatory mild orange zest but mostly it smells sweet and crackery like a warm cornbread. Not par for the course in IPAs at all. Not bad, just like a watered down version of Hop Slam with more honey.

T: This doesn’t have a huge citrus profile to it, it goes a route of middle ground non-offensiveness. It begins with a nice hop bite that retreats like an abused terrier, giving you a bit of pine and grassiness and, that’s about it. The honey notes provide a solid maltiness that washes away quickly.

This beer flexes hard in the club and lets you know that is shit gets cutty, it has your back like Warrior hops.

M: The mouthfeel is crisp and light and lends to the session ability of this beer. It isn’t as filling as a Tim Allen stand up special, but unlike that, you aren’t bloated afterwards. No hop resins set up shop and it is like that tame worker who comes in, does his 9-5 and doesn’t ask any questions.

D: This is where this beer shines. Maybe it just isn’t hot enough in LA but, this beer seems like it would be great to drink while putting some sick flame decals from Pep Boys on my 93 Monte Carlo, you know, Florida shit. I’d love to knock a few of these back and then enter a voting booth, maybe build a home in the way of recurrent storms; we’ve all been there. But in all seriousness, this is a solid IPA, not bad in any respect just not that citrus bomb that I love to rub along my gumline.

It is incredibly familiar, maybe a little too familiers.

Narrative: Roger Bellows had a serious dilemma. Did he abandon his lifelong dream of owning an apiary farm and propose to the girl of his dreams? Or follow his dreams and hope that, amongst those bees he would find true love. “ROGER! I said just pick one, come on!” Kaitlynn called to him down the halogen white aisle. He picked the highest grade honey he could find and shuddered at the agave nectar section, “but how will I explain this to her?” he ruminated, glancing furtively to the bee set in amber on his ring. “I JUST….I LOVE FUCKING BEES!” he cried to her in the frozen foods section. “Ex- excuse me?” she stammered. “Well, not fucking bees, I love, I just love them. I need you to know that.” Kaitlynn rocked heel to toe and furled her brow like a worn button box. “Ok? And, I love you HONEY!” her writhing index finger left something to be wanted of a stinger as her pantomime fell flat. “Oh great, puns, my DREAM IS A PUN TO HER!” “Yeah, I’m all buzzed about, it,” he trailed off looking at the many varieties of Cool Whip. “God, you are such a bitter, forgettable drone, WHY CANT YOU STAND UP FOR YOURSELF!?” His amber bee ring dug into his palm when Kaitlynn cried “ROGER! Three things of honey? Come on!”

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Re-up the flows

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Alright I have been slacking, I will pump out some hot new yeastbeats soon, in the interim peep out what I have been sippin on lately, don’t worry, unlike Judy Winslow in season 3 of Family Matters, I won’t abruptly disappear.

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Barrel aged partridge with the Louis Vuitton belt buckle when it is keeping all the heat strapped.

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Bourbon barrel hunaphu, for when you want that cinnamon ancho to rock some BALs.

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Hill Farmstead Norma, next level lactic maneuver.

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Stone QM Virgin Oak El Camino Unreal, No peppercorn stems no fig seeds no sticks. Put your BALs on the 78 freeway for an Unreal experience.

Enough beer porn, reviews will be back soon, cancel that Welbutrin prescription and flip that to some Valtrex instead because DDB is about to make it nasty.

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Green Flash Double Stout, When a Single Stout Isn’t Enough, Double That Shit Down.

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Green Flash, ah, just the name feels like the deal of the century. They nestle shoulders with Lagunitas warmly and provide amazing beers are incredibly affordable prices. I love this brewery and they consistently roll out great gems for everyone to enjoy, not just elitist aleholes with boxes littering their homes. So let’s double down some stouts in today’s review.

This beer is stunning and this shit didn’t even go into a barrel. . .that one is coming soon. . .FORESHADOWING TO THE MAXIMUM.

Green Flash Double Stout
8.8% abv

A: This is a welcoming blackness with some deep brown hues. There is a fantastic huge carbonation and lingering forestry of lacing that webs over itself and sticks with aggression. The entire beer is incredibly well done and surprising, not in an elitist way, but come on for the price this beer delivers more than some of the overhyped brewery only releases. I am super serial.

I need MORE OF THIS STOUT. All the time.

S: This is incredible for a beer that is not barrel aged. It presents a huge drying coffee, burnt wood, and 85% cocoa chocolate profile. But with a smoothness like a Feist sustained note. Deep, dark, but entreating. There’s a dryness and a crispy brownie batter aspect to it.

T: The taste is very simple. It imparts a huge burnt dryness that tastes like the dregs of a great espresso that melts into a chocolate profile with that bitterness that is common to very dark chocolate and then a splash of water, and it is over. It is a chocolate splash mountain of flavor and Brier Rabbit barely has time to say anything, edgewise or otherwise.

With something this dark and powerful, shit gets dangerous real quickly.

M: This is swift with a medium coating but a solid coating for about 2 seconds and then it scurries off. It is almost like they want you to drink the entire 4 pack in a single sitting. WELL GREEN FLASH, I see your challenge and respectfully decline, I have other matters to attend to. The end taste of the coating has a sort of a burned black licorice that is interesting, but fleeting. This is a swift little stout but even the most capricious Clipper spies a Galeon on the horizon. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

D: This is incredibly drinkable if, and only if 1) you enjoy coffee, a lot or 2) you cannot wait for baked good to be done and you like baker’s chocolate, a lot. If you want a huge filling stout, this isn’t the one. This is a deep dark oaky coffee ninja that imparts and retreats. Toffee shurikens are likely involved.

Smootheness coupled with an integrated alcohol profile makes me not know what the hell is going on before I knew it.

Narrative: “Another one, this is a series, to be sure.” Detective Branning spit angrily upon the ground and clenched his jaw. “Another chocolate store robbed blind, in an instant, with the insides gutted and replaced with…shitty coffee.” “Yes sir, it just doesn’t add up.” his assistant, Detective Willoughby added. Willoughby’s glasses slide down the bridge of his nose as he chewed on the end of his pen contemplatively. “You know, if someone wants chocolate that bad, why go through the trouble of replacing it with all this shitty coffee? Just don’t add up boss.” Branning nodded and looked into the bag’s of Seattle’s Best, then into a barrel of Yuban. “Someone is fucking with us, it’s a calling card, he’s letting us know that he can get away with it.” Branning ejaculated and flipped his notebook shut. Meanwhile, in the alley adjacent to the knocked off candy store, a lone Peruvian man garbed in all black shook his head morosely. “No detective Branning, this is far from a game, and it has only just begun,” he chortled as his diminutive 5’2” frame chortled with menacing laughter. “IN THE LAND OF SURPLUS CROPS, THE MAN WITH THE CHOCOLATE IS KING.” Branning took one long look at the crime scene and said, “well Willougby, whoever did this is either really sick, or was raised in a place that doesn’t understand relative product value, OR BOTH.” He kicked a lone coffee bean and watched it slide into a pool of melted chocolate.

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Cigar City, Either/Or Black Ale, EITHER This Beer is Awesome, OR Kierkegaard is Wrong.

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Cigar City either blindsides me with a gem, or you open something like Vuja De and don’t know what the fuck to make of it. This beer falls in the former category and my only complaint is the old amorphous “black ale” title that initially put me off to this. Let’s call this what it is: an awesome imperial stout er…maybe a triple imperial porter…fuck. I don’t know it is EITHER a stout OR this is a shitty pun.

Oh, ok. Either and Or are the same beer. Ba dum tish. Dichotomies about.

Cigar City, Either/Or,
Black Ale, 11.5% Abv

A: What a novel gimmick, two beers, the same beer. Sounds like an expensive bottle labeling maneuver. I was expecting some earth shattering Soren Kierkegaard business, but this wasn’t particularly mind blowing…AT FIRST. This has a kinda watery look to it of freshly pressed ink from a baby squid. Murky but shiny. Mild lacing and medium carbonation. It’s like a halfway home for abused porters and baby stouts.

You can enjoy huge black ales and get super dreeze, heck, enjoy nature, just don’t be a dbag when you take it to the 11% abv dangerzone.

S: There is a Huge hop profile, wood, oak, nice black licorice, and a toasted maltiness. It is like a low-cal version of Hunaphu’s. Low is relative, I GUESS. Actually it is more like a more svelte blacker Huna with some smoothe cocoa swagger.

T: This has a great chocolate/anise taste to it that it sweet but with a nice bitterness to it, without being medicinal. It’s like when you were a kid and had too many delicious Flintstones vitamins, only chocolate and tobacco flavored, and no diarrhea. Not yet at least. WE SHALL SEE.

Discover an amazing black ale, realize it is sold 3000 miles away. Shed manly tears.

M: This has a nice coating and mild stickiness to it that washes away but leaves a little something behind, like a crafty clingy first date that wants you to think about her again. YOUR TRICKS WONT WORK ON ME. Ok well I sought it out again so maybe those tricks worked, who knows? I would gladly go after this again.

D: This has a cool hybrid drink ability to it and is very delicious. Overall the complexity isn’t overwhelming but it makes it all the more appealing. Plus in the 12oz format you can come and go as you please, no need to be a deatbeat dad about your black ales, leaving them all around town. You can gently nurse them and pick up another at your leisure.

I don’t know, what the fuck, is going on.

Narrative: “And that’s how you fit 22 slavs in a phone booth!” Yurgis exclaimed with his own eastern European sort of aplomb. “Yes, er uh, thank you for that Yurgis, Mr. Chalmers, Yurgis is our exchange student and he sure does have an INTERESTING SENSE of humor, pass the peas please sweetie.” Walter succinctly stated to his supervisor. This family dinner would decide the fate of his career for the next half decade, if only his disheveled ukranian house guest would keep quiet. Mr. Chalmbers was the new CFO of Texodyne, a chemical manufacting plant whose operations were largely based out of Uzbekistan, apparently a locale that Yurgis had plenty to say about. “And when the streets run red with the blood of the nonbeliev-” “ok ok ok, thank you Yurgis.” It wasn’t that he was particularly bad or dark, he was actually kinda sweet in his own third world sort of way. Most people just had a tough time looking past his penetrating darkness. “Good and bye Mr. Chalm-bers, I want for to make love to your daughter in soon time, we will be good friends!” The family hung their heads at the prospect of another 5 years without a raise.

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Lost Abbey Cable Car, Ring a Ding Ding, The San (Diego) Francisco Treat.

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What else can we way about this amazing sour that hasn’t been etched in the stalls of homosexual nightclubs already? This is an amazing beer. I have only had this beer three times and each time I nodded contemplatively at spending a pretty penny to try it, not even mad tho. This beer sweeps the leg and makes me want another, not unlike giving a mouse a cookie, he is going to want a vert.

This beer is only for sale at Torona- WAIT WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE?

Lost Abbey, Cable Car, 7.0% wild ale

Oh wait, let’s not forget about the Cable Car Kriek, not even fucking around on this review:

Take an amazing sour and then take it to the kriekzone. Feeling like a cherry popping daddy.

A: Light pilsner color, mellow gold, a refined golden ambiance. The kriek technically deserves its own review but I will just ad lib this shit, the kriek has a bright radiant hue like cherry afterbirth. Amazing beers on both aspects.

GOD DAMNIT I need moar of this beer. You must understand my frustration.

S: Strong sour geuze smell, crushed sweettarts and a melted fruitloops wafting. There is a mild funk of wet hay and a deep crisp granny smith apple note going on that is super cutty.

T: This beer is intimidating at first, strong smells and notes, but ultimately this is a calf that you can wrangle without oppression. It is akin to mutton busting, something that seems difficult until you tackle the sheep, and pull its majestic fur to the ground. At its core, it is temptation with milder souring, lighter drying effects, less tanins in the grape aftertaste, and finally champagne crisp apple notes in the finish. Nothing you can’t handle but an exceptional balance. It is the lovechild of gueuze and champagnes of the mild brut variety. I love the dryness even if it slows me from enjoying the white grape and fuji apple notes.

This beer is unique, yet respectable, strange, yet friendly.

M: Fantastic, crisp and light, the entire experience has lemon zest and feels like a Hootie and the Blowfish Album. You can dispense this pellmell and no one will look askance. If not for the oppressive Toronado’s standards, this could be something everyone could enjoy, if not for proprietary despotism. This is well worth bootlegging, well worth epic trades. Just really good, but if you want to tread this road, there are more refined paths as smoothe as marble for your wanting cart, should you not have epic cellar gems to take down this beast.

D: Again, fantastic but competing in a league of legends. I would drink this all day, fixing my carburetor, prepartying for the charity gala, snuff film exposition, you know, guy stuff. I find myself in a love hate resolution with this beer because I love what it is but I hate the air surrounding it. It feels like seeing a person with a TOOL shirt on. you love the syncopated rhythms and complex melodies, but you dislike the fanbase in general. The faux highbrow ruins what would be a fantastic experience.

I need more of this sour gem, I cannot stop thrusting.

Narrative: Sir Fredrick Willingsly is repossessing your car. You can’t hate him for doing his job, but, without a 1998 civic DX, these pizzas arent going to deliver themselves. You hate him, with his cliche antagonistic handlebar moustache and fogged up monocle. However, his wry quips relating to Howards’ End and class struggle made it all the sweeter. “And thence upon from which one has had, none shall take without” he declares with a cloud of aplomb that almost makes you lighthearted in his usurpation of your chief economic asset. He is akin to the Mr. peanut of recurring vengeance. your pocket despises him, yet you respect him for his casuistic enforcement of the law. “God speed Willingsly, dont scratch my sick mugen exhaust on the dip. Godspeed.”

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Funky Buddha No Crusts, Pack This in Your Child’s Lunch, Crazy Trading Power At Recess

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Do you like peanut butter? How about sticky jelly? You like being drunk? Well here is the solution for you, drunken PB and J explosion. I had this beer on two occassions, last June it was amazing, last January, it was like peanut butter Consecration and half the bottle erupted. In the interests of fairness, I will review the amazing first foray. Drink those Funky Buddha bottles early, guize, srsly.

Who knows, maybe your shining face will appear on this very illustrious beer website as an alecreeper. One can only dream.

The Funky Buddha Lounge & Brewery
Florida, United States
American Brown Ale | 6.00% ABV

A: This beer had a nice fluffy appearance and great transparency to it with lucid brown hues throughout with amber at the edges. There’s a tame stickiness to it like a turbid glass of sticky chocolate milk.

PB and J beer? Next level ale maneuver. Fucking smart.

S: This is bizarre through and through. It has a deep peanut smell to it. Seriously. It smells like a burnt peanut/walnut with some oiliness to it. There is a grape skin element to it as well. It smells like an uncrustable.

T: This will be incredible easy: this is a pureed peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That is all that needs to be said. A grape juiciness is imparted in the middle with a huge dry peanut finish. I cant believe that I just typed that but yes, it is a peanut and grape beer.

This beer reaches for new heights and scores hard in the paint. Peanut butter alegasm dunking on fools.

M: It is light and lingers gently with a peanut oils finish. There is a huge amount of sediment in the bottom of the glass. It washes away clean and tastes incredible. I have no style guidelines to base this on but its is just simply amazing.

D: I have no idea how that they did this but it is incredibly offbeat and amazing. This is my introduction to this bizarre brewery and I am incredibly impressed. I feel like I could drink a ton of this, in the same way that I weighed 120 lbs in 5th grade. I love PBnJ sammies. Hands down.

I am content, but I want this many more of these.

Narrative: The Ukraine Gulag was oppressive and cold. The winters were harsh and provided little reprieve to its prisoners. Fyodor broke granite slabs in the dry cold winds day in and day out. The prisoners would have no hope were it not for one thing: the smackerels. Sergeyevich, the local lifer had developed an incredible knack for taking the hard tack, provisions and crafting delicious peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from them. The prisoners bit delightfully into the sticky messes with careless abandon. “To the devil with the proletariat masses who keep us within these walls brother Sergey, for a single bit of your smackerels, I would brave the plains of the Gobi desert TWICE OVER!” An overseeing magistrate rapped his cane hatefully on the metal railing twice and the prisoners meekly demurred. “for your jelly…I will live on.” The prisoners nodded in concurrence. Sergey raised a single palm and sagely advised: “I don’t think you are ready for this jelly. No Alexey, you are not ready for this jelly.” He exhaled with indolence and continued to smash granite slabs, looking out upon the icy plains.

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Avery Maharaja Double IPA, Hoppy Kisses from a Stern Sultan

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In the days of hop bombs, this old warhead was a standard in my arms department. Back then, hop oils were a sticky libation and upping the pine was a sign of strength and endurance. Ah the late 2000’s were a crazy time. Anyway, here’s a throwback to hoppier times.

Ah those good old herbal gems from yesterdays before I was boiling Hill Farmstead on a spoon in an alley.

Brewing Company
Colorado, United States
American Double / Imperial IPA | 10.30% ABV

A: It has a pale amber look to it, or very dark yellow depending on the hue you see, similar to most imperials, but with a bit less carbonation, perhaps that was due to my pour. The lacing looks nice and has a pillowy lacing to the edge of the glass.

If you drink powerful, ultra hoppy beers, give up on girlfriend dreams and prepare to enjoy life in the friendzone. Skyrim still loves you.

S: I smelled this aroma from over 3 feet away, the hop profile is overwhelming. when you get into the mix of it its a cascade of various elements, sweetness, but with a lemony followup, a bit herbal, but nothing exceptionally bittering that makes you think of juniper or the ilk

T: Wow, where to start, first the warmth of the alcohol is nestled between a cacauphony of cascading tastes, it is present but takes a back seat like a patient master, waiting for his minions to dispatch until the final cleaning swallow. Mixed metaphors aside, the first taste is a sweet candy apple hop finish that quickly sets in to a deep bitter hoppiness, foresty, verdant, and kudzu? viney? it feels like a fresh camping trip is the best way to describe this. There’s almost a zucchini zest, a strange unifying element of herbal tastes on the finish that makes it a bit intimidating, but very satisfying.

If you don’t like hoppy beers, you are failing at the beer game. There’s more to life than lambics and sticky RIS action.

M: The mouthfeel is as expected, not too malty, with a crazy character for the alcohol and hops to duke it out in the thin canvas. The mouthfeel is nothing exceptional, but considering there is a complex battle for sweet and bitter being fought in the foreground, it hardly loses points in this area. I would like several, however, I dont feel that I would comfortably enjoy more than a bomber in a night without moving on to other pursuits, simply due to the overture of minor, major, and mixolydian notes playing in concert at the same time, it is fulfilling yet exhausting.

D: very drinkable. the finish is fast and ends abruptly, you ruminate on it a moment and you are left with a piney citrus taste wondering what happened to the various elements taking place moments before. I enjoy this beer, but it is certainly not a session beer and its abv 10.5% certainly precludes it (well depending on the demons you are escaping) from being so. Enjoyable, but not one to keep in the stable as a hackneyed coach.

I like juicy hops, what the fuck is this pine I don’t even-

Narrative: “Place my equipage on the center rug and take care not to scuff the well adorned mahogany sides” You work busily to comply with his requests but his bitter nature and biting commentary is almost too much. “A little something for your troubles.” he presses a crisp $100 bill into your hand, for what? Bringing some cumbersome trunk to the front foyer? This is treatment you can handle, and somehow welcome. He walks and surveys the split landing of the threadbare banister. “THIS WILL NOT DO.” running a finger lightly over the worn wood, he looks to you for approval, you somehow gain a sense of commoradery in his majesty, knowing the complexity in his thought and manner, here you just a vagrant chimney sweep moments ago, now bitterly at the receiving end of his jansenist nature. “What do you feel this is a vestibule for peregrine mendicants? obtain your composure and tend to the rest of my articles, as resolutely as I am sure you are capable.” That was his way, you saw him cooly surverying the premises in his ivory suit, casuistically wiping the sweat from his brow in a manner that showed poise and decisiveness. The drying extraction of his remarks place you in a humble yet hopeful state, not unlike a teeball coach whom you welcome the reprimand if only for a dose of the gratifying approval. “Also, you…you take care of yourself…” his eyes glint a flash of knowing understanding, as though he too had been one toiling with luggage and taking care not to scratch the italian marble, a harsh but culling master, your maharaja.

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Reinaert Flemish Wild Ale, Almost As Wild As Oscar Wilde, But Not Nearly As Sassy

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Time to start dredging the old reviews to see what the world used to be like when even a trip to the corner store was an exciting adventure before I was a Fedex dependent asshole. Anyway, let’s see what is shaking with today’s wild ale, a spicy lil belgian gem that is pretty widely available.

Wanna know what it looks like out of the bottle? Too bad, old me didn’t have that kinda foresight.

De Proefbrouwerij (bvba Andelot)
Belgium
Belgian Strong Pale Ale | 9.00% ABV

A: very light color, pilsner almost, golden to dark yellow, nice three finger head with moderate lacing, little crackling to it like when Johhny Five gets hit by lightning and is imbued with a sassy new life.

Hipster bunny approves of wild ales of all styles even HOPPY wild ales.

S: This has citrus, sour grapes, a lemon zest to it and a kiwi undertone. There’s a bit of fall and DMV musk to it, but overall, a pretty tame affair as far as “wild” ales go.

T: This wild is very mellow on the palate, imparts a sweetness similar to most belgian goldens with that biscuity maltiness, pillowy soft sweet finish, not exactly comparable to the American wild ale type, but still very well done, the sourness of the Bretanomyces is very restrained, the sour undertones come near the end and are almost hand in hand with the light hops. The untrained palate would almost mistake this for a more malty pilsner. I guess if you feel like a light challenge this is where to go. Then you don’t get the shit beat out of your mouth like playing Battletoads on single player.

I am not saying that wild ales should destroy your mouth but… aliens.


M: This has good coating for its light appearance, it takes a few seconds to absolve the taste, but then there’s some good coating and lingering aftertaste of mellow hops. I can polish my monocle and enjoy this lazily by the Seine river, or in Alabama, either way.

D: Overall, very drinkable, not exceptionally noteworthy, and rather cost prohibitive for the average wild ale consumer. For the same price you could drink damnations all day which I feel is superior in almost every category, alas that is comparing different classes of beers. One thing I will note is the exceptional covering of the 9% alcohol, it is imperceptibly hidden in a sweetness and the floury maltiness. Perfect for entry level beer drinkers with ABV interests. ABV-curious if you will.

My face when wild ales don’t bring the sour rage.

Narrative: “nah nah, just a couple days” he lazily smiled, “just until I get my things together.” How could you say no? He was such a close friend in high school, sweet, cloying, palpable, but now he’s dominating 2/3rds of your living room as his capricious abode. “See the plan is, I am getting my pilots licens-” you start to dreamily daze off while looking into his eyes, there’s something empty to him, yet intoxicating at the same time, “yeah so basically after I fought that guy I was out of Cici’s pizza and it was a shithole anyway” he continues. Why are you letting him stay here? there’s nothing exceptional about him but you just incurred signifcant expenses making him a nice dinner, it, wow his eyes look like poolwater, just a sweet discountenance that lures you in. “OH SHIT NETFLIX! ABOUT TO ADD SOME TITES! Thats what I call titles” ok at this point he’s getting a bit irritating, but the way his bicuspids fortuitously lean against his incisors, that smile, he could leave his ASICS gym bag on your Z Gallerie coffee table all week. “Sure..sure..” you meekly reply, knowing that this short stay will be fulfilling, yet deceptive.