In the past four months the upstarts over at Casey have experienced seemingly overnight skyrocketing demand, and CO hoarders have been hitting the trade boards harder than Soda Popinkski. In what was previously the typical overly-generous, Subaru-driving bonhomie of the mountain people, Colorado traders are flexing hard on the recent releases. They are getting Cut in more ways than one.  When KBBS went 1:1 with Blackberry Cut last week it was like when Bane pumps that green shit into his skull and you know things are about to get completely out of pocket.

So it goes.

So what is the deal with this plum fruit stand? We all know cherry was legit as fuqqqq but them plums are tough to massage, that tenuous dance between pith, acidity and insoluble fiber, did Troy Casey bruise ur fruit brah? Let’s get pitted and find out

Casey Brewing, high altitude north of the wall, CO
Fruited barrel aged saison 5.5% abv

The pour comes out radiant and ruddy, slight glow of turbid tangerine tones and a whipped meringue to the carb that sits in a frothy cap like an orange creamsicle starbucks frap. The sheeting looks like the agitated gallons of juice at the Sunkist factory.

Other entries in the PLUM WATCH canon include:

https://dontdrinkbeer.com/2015/06/05/plum-watch-2015-hillfarmstead-flora-plum-cleaning-up-harmful-free-radicals-with-beer/

and

A review of Out of the Emptiness that I cannot find right now because this site is a pile of disorganized garbage.

Again, some assholes still believe that a plum sour should be purple, but then again I cant expect dudes who wear husky sized elastic waisted jeans from Lands End to know what the inside of a fruit looks like. The nose is far less sharp than Flora plum and has more of a refined acidity leaning towards skins, juicer dregs, Roebeks atmosphere, the late harvest of plums overripe in the sun, closing with a sort of cheesy puppy musk. Them up the nose tangerine tongue kisses.

The taste has this tenuous relationship where it wants to go balls out with the fruit but with that comes potentially overbearing acidity. IT IS LIKE UNCLE BEN SAID POWER AND RESPONSIBILITY IN BREWING, PETER. In a decidedly unamerican execution, the beer favors creamy drinkability in lieu of intense ph forward kicks to the taint. It feels a lot like the Tilquin plum ancienne but admittedly I enjoy this more because the mouthfeel isn’t nearly as excoriating. Yes I realize beer nerds rip their tutfy brillow pubes out if you suggest that an American sour is in any way superior to a Belgian iteration so I’ll allow you to go grab some Ben gay and cool the burn.

Overall, this is well worth your time and while not as complex as HF Flora plum, it is a marked improvement over the Almanac plum entries which are simply too sour in execution, by comparison. If you enjoyed the plum emptiness from Tired Hands, this is lock step just as good and incredibly similar, acidic but crushable, worthy of your reflection but doesn’t command your focus like some community college drama asshole who won’t give it a rest.
If you can land this 400 bottle banger for something in the realm of Vanilla Rye, absolutely jump on it. I can’t stop grippin my plums. Things are likely gonna get worse before they get better with regards to landing Casey bottles, might as well lay on this Semtex now and shatter your cellar before the next hot 3bbl brewery opens in the middle of nowhere Idaho and starts doing 130 bottle releases. High tide floats all boats.

As a corollary, I wanted to revisit my controversial review of Oak Theory. Colorado tickers were seed pissed about my prior impressions that oak theory was too sour so I decided to review another bottle to see if I was being a cranky crab that evening when I initially drank Oak Theory alone.

https://dontdrinkbeer.com/2015/04/06/caseybrewing-oak-theory-psh-not-even-advanced-oak-theory-i-didnt-even-get-any-ap-credits-for-this-review/

Upon another sampling, my initial review of oak theory was wildly different than my second bottle.  The second go round felt more like a gentle, more complex, more lactic version of East Bank.  Listen, I can’t do every iteration and every batch of every bottle and sometimes my shit is misguided based upon a limited sample size of A SINGLE BOTTLE. Nevertheless, if you previously decided NOT to seek out Oak Theory because I said it tasted like Planned Parenthood afterbirth (I didn’t) go get it now, the subsequent bottles are far different.