Most bottle shops have largely opposed the dreaded 2017 Bookers price hike, either because blue gill and prior dumps are dumping it up on shelves, or pure cask strength zfg. As a result I usually don’t see the”new” Bookers releases until well after they roll out, so one thing we def need to sit next to the other heretofore unsold $120 knob creek single barrel expressions, is another $80 Beamium product. Please read the foregoing with a touch of fusel heat because I love Noe and the Bookers canon, but this is an odd decision. Instead of the 127 pf 6-7 year cask of Bookers we get this odd merger of four casks. A few pearly precum droplets of 13 year-old corn whiskey (aged in used barrels), 4 year-old bourbon, and rye and malt whiskey each aged about 6 years. On paper sounds like a merger of oddball PHC casks, but it somehow works. This is essentially Bookers with leather interior that warrants the extra $20. It is sweeter, stickier, candy corn and molasses on the nose, smells much younger than even regular ass bakers, but the mallow tempers the heat and the 120pf is entirely manageable like the accounting department during Xmas layoffs. The taste is less dry and more drinkable than the sum of its casks and imparts a faint sugar daddy and werthers closing with a long ass drag of hot tamales and red hots. If you enjoyed oven buster from a couple years ago, this is similar to that but with a Frosted Flakes milk swallow to it. I took this to a family gathering and those savages drank half the bottle. Everyone learned the true meaning of Kentucky xmas.

First @crookedstave tosses St. Bretta in cans and shattered the pre-2013 beer timeline then even more incredible, complex beers continue to enter the fold. 2017 saw fucking HF and now Katy in cans. It’s never a better time to enter craft beer and be completely blind to the advances in the past half decade. Intensely clean and drinkable brett saisons you can take to a fucking preschool holiday recital. Light creamy wheat, lemon and slight brett L musk “BECASE THE BRETT MAKES SOUR” type of shit. The mouthfeel and carb needs some tinkering but I’m assuming out of the can it wouldn’t be an issue. Five years ago people were still entering raffles for a non ba stout aged on port spirals, now we have god tier ba beers just turding it up joosebois are drinking melted popsicles. What a time to be alive.

Oakier and less sweet than prior iterations with a tempered heat and mild bitter heat on the finish. Consistently a god tier barleywine every year for going on a decade.

Eight. Parts. Per million: UNACCEPTABLE. One part per trillium: UNACCEPTABLE. Eight lbs per barrel: danky kang. This is absolutely bizarre and perhaps I should have altered my expectations but @sevenstills a spot I know as predominately a distillery just dropped this high quality eggdrop soup. It is legit delicious and creamy and the 8lbs must have went all whirlpool and dry hopping because it is intensely aromatic and has this fantastic peach and mandarin orange with very low pine or zested bark tonez. Maybe I should have given them the benefit of the doubt but this is far better than expected and starts throwing Floribama haymakers against the more well known entries in this segment. I particularly enjoyed the weird peach jolly rancher meets arugula to the swallow. Wowza. 🍑 🐛

Man, I never thought we would get to the point where those top notch fermentation fingerers, @2ndshiftbrewing was just putting that musky lil Katy in cans Zfg. Haze cans and other Danky treats without lines or raffles or Bed and Breakfast trips, what even is this? They better wax some of these cans and make them onsite only to attract StL profit lords, husky dipshits with green visors and adding machines predicting the arc of Cat Spit cans like some malty bit coins. We are in a blessed time when the shadow from a monolith attracting rapacious fucks provides the most fertile soil for incredible beers silently bubbling under the water table. Subterranean and pure, salt rings on a well worn Cardinals new era hat preventing hype blindness. I fuxx w 2nd.

Nice xmas package from those old swell fellas at @sevenstills Kinda crazy to see their shit not only in bevmo but this plucky little upstart is pumping out haze and barrel aged beers and fucking whiskey aged in casks that one held @bottlelogicbrewing dark star November which once held bourbon which once was a tree. My staves are full curve 🌲

Last night I blended 2017 and 2012 @gooseisland bourbon county coffee and set it up on an 8 hour kyoto drip through @heartroasters Ethiopian halo. This morning my wife, not knowing, put it in a travel mug, added cream, and was not happy with that barrel aged breakfast surprise.

“No Vonck no care” is the classic refrain of end game lambic lootboiz, and huge props to @beersnobbin for popping this with me. This is truly New Game+ level ticks easily more rare than DonQ at this point and with what appears to be incredible provenance to match.

This is essentially a nascent proto Lou Pepe Gueuze, an essentially uncarbed 2 year lambic with oddball BGC roots, and trappings of the gueuze lineage as well. It pours cadaver carb, a full brassy antique quality to it, not long in the tooth but it would be absurd to demand a 26 year old bottle to look great when human counterparts have stretch marks and crushing student loans at that age. The nose is record store inserts, dusty garage, zested tangerine, lightly acetic, construction paper, mandarin oranges and smattering of balsamic.

The taste is faintly acidic at the outset, drying along the gumline, orange Fanta Randalled through nautical burlap, a Darjeeling tea and grapefruit zest. The mouthfeel is runny and thin, the dead fish carb opens up slowly, taking atmospheric massaging to get past blunt brackish aspects when cold. Again this is a weird nexus between extreme age, the vibrant sweetness of an unblended lambic, the body and structure of A grand cru, but this depth and sustaining musk of a goozie. More a soul edifying experience that a palate driven endeavor. It’s like platinuming a game well after you beat the final boss, there’s an odd sense of completionism to consumption. Certainly a once in a lifetime tick and an experience worthy of slow contemplation.

Ddb collab with @horusagedales and @mumfordbrewing dropping today. Despite the caramel additions this beast closed out at 6 Plato with an abv to help you tolerate your Flat Earth believer uncle over the holiday season. People are gonna do some irresponsible shit with these and, that’s pretty okay. Daddy just gonna wrap gifts in Glad bags, dripping in fusel malts.

Let’s just get this out of the way at the outset: these Hudson Valley cans are polarizing and completely apeshit, and I really enjoyed them.  On paper it looks like I should recoil from these Umbrella Corp monstrosities: “sour DIPA with oat, wheat, cardamom, vanilla, lactose, citra powder and white chocolate.”  The description sounds like a mean parody or some beer casual dipshit on UPROXX trying to do a mocking impression of a beer nerd. Yet somehow, these are just crazy enough to work.

These do suffer a touch from Monkishitis in that they all are very similar with little ebbs and flows. This one has passionfruit, this one has grapefruit.  I enjoyed Halcyon the “best” but they are all within 15% of flavor profiles of one another. The “sour” is a bit of a canard since these are not exactly sour, in the way that pineapple juice isn’t exactly tart.  It is more like a gestalt for what they accomplish.  These taste like lemon gelato with fernet branca added on the front end.  It is creamy and bizarre arugula and Flintsones push pop.  Others have a bit more lime and blood orange zest but you are firmly in this herbal rocket pop zone that even my casual friends really loved.

Like extensive CG additives, it can get a bit draining after the first can.  I opened all of these in one day and was beleaguered by the end. If you like lemon meringue with shallots and sherbert added, then here you go.  Science has finally gone far enough to provide your insane palate demands with this ultra specific thing you never knew you wanted.  Part of this feels like a wheelie and another part is “pregnancy craving” satiation. Pickles and ice cream, that old yarn. Suffice it to say, everyone loved these, even dudes who cant evn convert platos to specific gravity, filthy betas.