What a time to be a goat

Guys listen, I realize this @rusticales content isn’t fun to read, it’s usually just soup to nuts praise for some fucking club only 600 bottle shit: I GET IT. They aren’t fun to write either, it’s a certain calculated vulnerability where I have to maintain some modicum of journalistic beertegrity but somehow provide levity. The two poles work against one another and as a result Sara beer reviews are the least hilarious simply because tipping my cap to phenomenal, complex, nuanced eucalyptus and meringue bangers isn’t fun to read. The counterpoint to that is that tiresome cringey DDB knockoff shit that leverages disingenuous hyperbole. That’s worse.

So let’s get to it: this beer is absolutely phenomenal and marries the intense depth of gin massaging that only @uprightbrewing can seem to nail but pair it with a radiant Zomer Clover that @hillfarmstead peddles. It’s herbal and jasmine, Meyer lemon, pineapple chobani and crushed velour mouthfeel. Vicks vapor rub and fume blanc rubbed all over my stretch marks. I don’t see how SARA can improve upon this but jesus if people would shut the fuck up about Recency Effect, then we shall see. I love it when breweries are compelled to only fight within their own canon, that Michael Haneke shit,

@rusticales has this pension for releasing incredible, subtle gems and then dropping them silently on the SARA cellar members. It’s brett L Powerade, with a slightly brackish underpinning like they balanced the tangelo and the electrolytes. Tangerine zest and an almost grisette type of structure make this bottle not long for this world, terminated without appeal like a domestic auto assembly worker. Invariably someone will open this lightly Briney creamy delight and then LOL at the prospect of trading it away for a non barrel aged Coldstone stout. What then happens is this feedback loop of silence where this musky, balanced, Orval meets @jesterkingbrewery Snorkel just gets decimated by the same fortunate people who are in the SARA club in the first place. It’s the clearest example of furtive consumption over maxxx profitzzz that you can imagine and it happens over and over, ask anyone about Mf Choom, or To the Choir, or Stenciled Pages. More recently the Recency Effect, these Sara assholes are actually drinking these beers and they are way out of step with the times. Pretty disappointing tbh, they could be drinking a Henna and they don’t even realize it.

Why even seek out a beer that you yourself can finish and drill without elaborate fanfare and pics of your meniscal pours? Who then can validate your personal experience? Beers like this are half broken because if no one else can validate you the whole social media component of beer enjoyment is gone. That’s like at least half of what tasting beer should be.

Further problematic SARA has expressed their disapproval at secondary sales and raffles. That just means now there is no hard dollar figure that you can throw in people’s faces when you talk about this beer. I want my step uncle feeling PRIVILEGED that I would open a “$223 secondary sale beer” with him so he can quantify at the outset how much he should appreciate me even letting him try it. But no, thanks to stupid ass Sante Adairius this beer has to stand on its own merits on like, how it tastes. Thanks for nothing now I have to drink all these by myself.

Five SARA CELLAR quarters to the dome piece

Drinking a @beachwoodbrewing double dry hopped melrose on a warm day outside is such a simple pleasure that’s a throwback to remind you that there are still Nextel phone carrying stepdads who line up in Santa Rosa for a triple IPA. Things change and evolve in beer but oddly remain constant. There’s no vanilla lactose flour cardamom mase or bay leaves in this IPA, but it exists in a timeless canon of Orvalesque staples that don’t need improvement or innovation, the 2row body lines of a rhizome911.

Was not prepared to become the barleywine heavyweight champion

The veritas V0XX iterations of peach were good but a touch too acidic for me in the long pitted make out sessions, veritas peach goes more Haribo peach ring and fruit leather, less side project and more casey in execution and the end result is very good. I am steadily taking down the entire 750ml and that usually happens with like maybe HF or Sara offerings, so the gerd and esophageal reflux tones are on lock. I would love to fibrous tones or that musky brett B profile to offset the sweetness but it’s damn good and pushes back hard at it’s notable cost of entry. The base reminds of me phunky duck or that grapefruit pith of spontaneous cheer. Actually fuck this tastes a lot like SC, and maybe it’s that nostalgia for the Compunction era ticks but I want to believe that this is a heel turn for the blending program towards restraint and softer mouthfeel. It grabs at the hem of Persica 750ml b1, but fails to establish that god tier balance. Notwithstanding, easily one of the best lost Abbey beers I have had in a very long time and a flash to the RAM for what my expectations were. [ Editors Note: @lostabbey didn’t sponsor this, they don’t give a fuck about some dude with an acorn penis and a WordPress site, I bought this like the rest of you Dickensian beer peasants. I’m relatable.]

The Lost Abbey Saints and Sinners club is real, and it is god damn ridiculous. I get a lot of mileage ribbing Tomme Arthur for Lost Abbey’s missteps: from the b2 ddb release, to the box set, to authenticating joel66’s yellow bus, to their price point: but this I simply cannot rip on. A few months ago I received the secret link noting that the long defunct saints and sinners society was back. I thought it was a ruse to soak old ddb for four bills but this is something else. I almost didn’t do it because, Jesus do I need another beer society? But wow. The purchasing, delivery system, communication, quality of merch: every aspect of it was seamless and not a smoldering plastic baby doll inferno. Also having BB serpents stout and peach veritas just dropped off in these jazzy Coheed boxes made my Saturday morning. So thanks @lostabbey for not banning me, I guess.

Rumors about the death of the King seem to persist despite any monarch exhumation. It’s getting older, sure, perhaps not spry enough to secure the throne against the Revolutions or Anchorages, but it is still commanding in scope and stature. The light oxy is a knit blankie draped over the knees and the creaking wood of the FDR stavechair is giving way to a vintage comic book but the respect is still there. It’s tough to drop $200 on something like this when the likes of b2000 has deep throbby caramel vascularity and toffee grip. It’s akin to laying down a grand to see the AC/DC in their current form, which is still rocking, when a vibrant $12 post hardcore show will kick the malty piss out of you just as efficiently. This is still absolutely world class and a genre defining and perhaps stylistic changing entry in the canon that should be savored like a red wax @eastendbrewing Crow sliding in death and obscurity to the new citizens gaining new life every day. To fight valiantly and remain this exceptional for six years is wildly impressive. In life there is never death, only a cardboard rest.

PAST THE POINT OF NO RETURN.

On 1/20 I couldn’t even rustle up any one hundred and twenty tones

I engaged in life instead and this unknown $8 shelf gem was incredible. Zero expectations and then it engaged the core and started in on some deep raisinette deadlifts. The lean mass on this thing did not indicate it’s latent power, it’s nimble enough to eschew residual sugars albeit without feeling insubstantial. @halfmoonbaybrewing killed it with this one. I heard some murmuring that Clark of @jackieosbrewery fame had some involvement with this beer and it shows. It has that attenuative thumbprint of intense barrel character and figs with a dusting of bakers chocolate and sugar daddies. The price to quality ratio is sky high, arguably some of the greatest disparity I have recently encountered this side of the $4 @thebruery White Oak fire sale. The next day I drove down to @gorillabbqmeat and saw this brewery that I had previously never even heard of. It’s nestled in this verdant outer realm of coastal fog and beautiful Oregon/new hampshire hybrid landscape. If they can do other styles even remotely as well as this, my staves are fully saturated.