The Floridian masters of pastry @3sonsbrewingco have set out to make new inroads in Life. This is a barrel aged English barleywine with no stems no seeds no adjuncts just pure malt to the flywheel power. We shall see if their pedigree crosses styles and if their barley prowess holds up without Game Genie Mostra vanilla leveraging.

Finally, the crow to unite them all: the OG 2005 white maltwhale. Some of my readers my be too young to remember when BA was still relevant and may have never seen the original top 100 white whale list but this beer changed the scope of what I knew was possible in the style of barleywine and vintage beer in general. This remains one of my favorite beers of all time and after seven discrete trades over 17 months I have assembled the full aviary, 2005 through 2018. The flock will blacken the sky and livers tomorrow as the masses are redolent of faded hops and toffee cardboard. Neckbeard will molt. Never before has such a beastiary been assembled and I can scarecrow imagine just an avian affair ever flocking again. From flockboys past to the cringeworthy floccboiz of present, no feather will remain unruffled.

Additional infinity stones click into the barley gauntlet, lord Maris summoned from the depths of an endless boil, the guardian of aviaries past and present, @eastendbrewing the celestial arbiter of non barrel aged barleywine standards with flapping casks deafening the masses bent on their FG 1.050+ confectionary hedonism. The reckoning is tomorrow and Woodshop will purge the world of black patent malt evils.

Taking time to revisit @kernriverbrewing Citra. While not as bad as the version from last November, this batch from the scaled up production still leaves much to be desired. It doesn’t have that gross crystal sweetness and dark AF srm that we were treated to when the new facility began turning it out, but it still lacks a lot of what made Citra so great and iconic in the early 2010s. The nose goes for more of s chard/arugula thing in lieu of the Kyle-era bouquet of cut melon and seated grapefruit. The mouthfeel is less substantial and doesn’t have that oily cling with round bitter swallow, it’s more watery and drinks akin to several other breweries who are now turning out incredible west coast ipas and have improved their own product in the interim. It’s still pretty good but no longer a genre defining entry or something one should actively trade for considering the likes of Arctic Panzer Wolf or even your best local spot might be better. I only hope @lengthwisebrewing has improved in leaps and bounds with Kyle coming onboard because while the beauty of Kern River itself is timeless, these recent releases have been disheartening to watch one of the old greats go full Alpine on us. Nothing gold can stay c:\winamp\newfoundglory.wav

Bud Light Lime. Coco Nut Rita. We are reaching the depths of complete depravity with this one. It’s like how you thought World War II couldn’t get much worse after Stalingrad, then they develop a Hawaiian Tropic nuclear bomb. This is basically a novelty store candy soda with the wacky label. SPF rice lager. It pangs of if you melted coconut lip balm into some Sierra Mist and vapid dumb fucks will crush these at REHAB, thinking about their life coaches. It’s not just thin, it’s non beer. I can’t criticize 7up for having a sucrose body because it just is. But ostensibly this is supposed to be something beyond a teen pregnancy enabler. If you want to recreate this experience, take the rag used to wipe down tanning beds, dunk it into some stale Natty Ice, then wring it out into your waiting mouth. The swallow underscores the gross off flavors with a waxy synthetic car freshener bit. If you tossed an Answer label on this it would be razzling for $80 in tomorrow’s Mega. We get the beer scene we deserve and this is pure tropical depravity. 🌴

Great Lakes excels at the oldest currency styles, those largely overlooked by the Diamond Supply co fucks who drive beat ass Scion tCs and shell out stacks for mega man tekus. Their dortmunder is incredible, the black out stout is iconic, I mean Edmund Fitzgerald god damn. But just look at this “barleywine” and your Helldorado bullshit meter should be blaring. This is lightly sweet with a ritz cracker meets wafer thin body, almost zero residual cling, and the barrel interplay is, er, we will get to that. The issue is this is so god damn thin but presents intense bitterness throughout in the form of oddly intense conifer hops and the swallow has this planed lumber dominating the rest of the proceedings. It’s like if you had a super frugal mom who added water to BA numbskull to stretch it out, then offset it with hanging pine 🌲 tree fresheners. I don’t know what segment this seeks to hit: it’s not traditional in either the English or even American sense, its insubstantial in body, isn’t juicy enough to play the hop flush or lead with a purely alpha acid aspect either. It’s a god damn anomaly that a brewery so steeped in classicism so badly stumbles addressing the romantic. Apollonian vs Dionysian constructs, this is just out of their malty ethical wheelhouse. The end result feels like when a film is bankrolled by too many studios or has five writing credits, fails to do what it sets out and is rushed out the door for…someone(?) to enjoy. Just buy their Xmas ale instead, limited/numbered bottle releases is not the segment that @greatlakesbeer thrives.

Athens and Athens, one is home to R.E.M., the other is home to dudes with multiple DUIs heavy into artisan chili. U DECIDE. I saw “smoked” on the label and my coin purse shriveled like a time lapse video of a plum in the hot sun. Thankfully, the massive barrel solitary confinement tempered the smoke and integrated it akin to faded hops. If you had Gratitude 2008a everyone had these doom and gloom projections but over time the two folded into one another like some raisin origami. There is a funky fig and tobacco thing going on in the swallow that adds depth but never oversteps it’s boundaries and asks to stay over when you know they could Uber home. The swallow is incredibly long and separates into an odd port tannic structure that I don’t love but there’s not many other beers that go that route. Maybe @tiogasequoia double barrel smoke jumper? I’m sure dudes will prefer the likes of Cellar 11 but this has enough going on that you just ride the wave like Into the Void and enjoy the pruney journey.

2006 @eastendbrewing Gratitude: another aviary infinity stone clicks into the barley gauntlet. On Saturday we will unleash the flock and summon the malt cosmic cube upon the unwashed and unlearned masses. The feathers will blacken the sky as the cobblestone pathways reek of succulent oxidized juices. Pastry philistines gripping their confectionary delights will be given no quarter and the occlusions in their dental profile will match the cavity of spirit as the drilling of the one true light exposes their obsidian fascinations. Woodshop will be the celestial reckoning for the nilla bean flickers, bathing in the sublime resplendence and ascension of the one true Otter.

So many RIPs in this box you might as well put it on a shirt and paint it on a handball court

Only needs our finest regards to look like the long forgotten lost along the way. Barley soldiers from days past.

Alright Lost Abbey is back to their old circumspect ways with this complete fucking liquid disaster. Call FEMA, north county San Diego is in a state of complete tragic raisiny disarray. This isn’t just like veritas009 not good, it actively seeks to prove its shittiness to such a degree that I question whether this blend was intentional or just a random bung drawing like a key party and they married infected 10 commandments with gift of the magi aged on raisinettes. It’s tart and intensely red wine vinegar but don’t worry they included this gristy phenolic balsamic as well and a sky high intensely Fusel swallow to round out this Madea movie in beer form. It has zero redeeming qualities beyond making you appreciate every other beer more by contrast, it’s like getting a massive terrible layover in Ohio and then praising the shit out of even Spirit airlines just for getting you anywhere. It buckles and tear ducts and offers up waves of black cola, salad dressing, Paul Newman marinade, and the raisin is even oversteeped like a disgusting aged Sherry. Just when I was all set to praise the massive turnaround for old TOMME they hit me with this withered orchard rot haymaker. Plus I’m sure this bottle was like $41 or something, for fucks sake. It’s a prune suppository a2m. @lostabbey absolutely crashed the wild ale Chevy Sonic headfirst into the wall on this one.

Holy fuck this beer was nightmarish in scope and execution. Passionfruit and guava, the culture of the barrel, you might have some fanciful ideation of a fruited Flora or some nuanced casey cut: until you open the ark of the covenant and are reduced to dissolved nothingness. There are times when I will need to goldpan through beers that are merely okay to find salient points to discuss. Then there are beers like this where I need to parse down my litany of complaints to address a fundamentally broken beer with any degree of laconic readability. This isn’t just a beer derived wholly from swimming pool adjustment chemicals, it is outright excoriating and transcends “beer” into “nautical hull solvent.” To say that this beer is merely unmanageable or sour is unfair to the likes of Bruery Motherfunker which are problematic merely due to intensity. This is that odd Mario Creator thwomp hellscape of brackish atomic warhead tartness with a gumline eviscerating bicuspid melting sadness. If I can’t complete a deadlift, I wonder if its form driven or if I am merely too weak. This beer made me question the limits of what I could endure under the ambit of “recreational liquids.” I can’t even address the oak because it’s an intense shot of alternatingly acidic and basic lemon pledge to the bitter zones. I set it down and came back to it, and the heat pushed this almost into butyric acid zones, orange juice burp, eye watering fermented black limes. I don’t have anything constructive to add to this, I legitimately just feel bad because given how many dudes are trying to peddle @barrelculture on the trade boards there must be something of value but this is squarely within the ddb worst beers of 2018 as my introduction to this innovative brewery. I hope I am wrong in the future.

Julian Buck sent me this, port Mexican cake and scotch cake

For fucks sake, Julian pls.