Tag Archives: pappy van winkle

1

EVIL TWIN PAPPY ROUNDUP: Jesus Takes Even More Biscotti Breaks

|

Well if you have been peeping the trade boards recently, you may have heard about these “Torst only bottles” of Pappy Barrel Evil Twin offerings.  A few of them escaped to distro and subsequently have been fetching hilarious sums, so let’s see if the BALs are more than the sum of their staves in today’s review:

jesus1

“DDB thank you for putting the hot sauce bottles in focus, follow up question, which mid-day strip club was this taken at?”

Let’s start with a base beer of which I have had consistent “meh” reactions regardless of treatment.  My biggest complaint about this beer, pappy or otherwise, is that it has that Mikkeller/continental European love of black patent malt that runs unchecked so often.  The base beer as a result leans dangerous close in the realm of roast, charcoal briquette, burnt toast, and borderline sharpie.

This barrel treatment however, is phenomenal.  It takes a buttery power sander and smooths all of the nubs and unsightly aspects of the base beer and applies a vanilla and creme brulee lacquer that is outstanding.  The real issue is that it can’t tame what this Eliza Doolittle is at heart: a cockneyed skoal dip cup spitting ruffian.  In sum, it is a very good beer that is a hilarious merger of transatlanticism not unlike Death Cab for Cutie.

So the verdict: accept a pour but don’t get soaked for a Flora Coovie for this one, let your more adventurous trade partners get jumped behind the Arby’s for this BAL treatment.

jesus2

This however, holy fuck: a complete masterpiece. This is not only the best beer that Evil Twin has ever made, but it enters the canon of best ba stouts ever/top DDB beers for 2015.  This takes the already awesome base beer, in conjunction with the mindblowing good BA IBB, and then somehow ekes FURTHER improvement on that model.

While the standard bearer for this experience is usually BA speedway and BCBCS, this goes beyond both of those in several aspects.  First, the coffee is not so dominant as to bruise the barrel character.  You get mocha and the frap, with a clean roasty dryness from the treatment.  The coffee melds seamlessly like spot rivets on the side of this coffee battleship.

This is something absolutely worthy of being put inside of you.  The lengths are immaterial for something of this caliber, and I don’t care whether this is Westbrook or “flavor technician” Jeppemaster Flex, this is undeniably world class.

jesus3

Sure, you could probably open up a Bourbon County Coffee and look out the rain-streaked window and dream of what could have been.  Is that how you want to live your life: settling for the first bean to flick that came along, grinding the same predicable two plate experience ad infinitum?  I didn’t think so.  Buy yourself a hitachi massager and you do you.

I cringe when I see impressionable dumbfucks go apeshit over magic PERPY VERN WERNKLER BERRELS.  It usually means some amorphous Buffalo Trace sourcing, or it could be third use, or the old North Carolina special: aged 7 weeks.  However, in this instance, the treatment is undeniable in the notable improvement.

1

@TGbrews Toppling Goliath Kentucky Brunch Brand Stout, The World’s Highest Rated Imperial Stout Comes to DDB

|

What manner of cetacean sorcery do we have on our hands here, folks? This is that barrel aged coffee THOT you usually only see .5oz pours of that is usually with some attendant braggadocio shit on Untappd. Well I figured since there was a shit storm of controversy surrounding this coveted gem, might as well pop mine and get them authentic counterfeit feels.

Lamentably, mine was an actual bottle.  I didn’t get the privilege of receiving one of the ultra rare refill solara blended second use vessels from EdwardFortyHands, but I am sure those .rar Iowa Uli blends command a much higher premium than this boring old 400 bottle release.  Say what you want about them Iowa hucksters, those bootleg waxing jobs were MWAH, tre magnifique!

Enough about neckbeard politics, let’s hit the AOL chat rooms and start cybering with Kibbibbis hard before my parents walk in.

51% shareholder pours, slightly larger than boss pours. Most of the time you see mail room pours, nothing wrong with that. The world runs on mail room pours.

51% shareholder pours, slightly larger than boss pours.
Most of the time you see mail room pours, nothing wrong with that. The world runs on mail room pours.

Imperial Stout, Decorah Iowa, 13% abv

300 bottles first release, 400 bottles second release.  Who gives a shit.

A:  Well tap my swamplands and call me David Lynch, this is dark as fuqqqq.  It has an impressive viscosity to the look and slurps out like that shit from the Pirates of Dark Water.  The carb is spot on, not excessive, leaving sheeting and clear legs but also lacing behind in fanciful archipelagos of spotty mocha, islands each a John Donne paradise of coffee merriment and pitch black seclusion.

20

Dont try to tell me that you don’t remember these assholes.

S:  Usually I would tighten up my butthole and issue some blanket complaints about the roast, single origin coffee, eastern shade grown soil contents, v60 vs Chemex applications, and Williamsburg mustache implications: BUT I SIMPLY CANNOT.  The nose is roasty with a warm Peet’s meets 49th Parallel for you west coast bean flickers.  I continue to flick this bean savagely and without respite. This gives way to molten chocolate fondue, christmas fudge, Ihop cunnilingus, maple syrup, Baskin Robbins make out sessions, and closes with a fantastic almond rocha aspect.  It’s like how Boyz II Men has 4 layers of depth and that one dude who just talks during the bridge to unify things.  Outrageously good on both accounts within the parallel.

T:  This parlays the prior nose hole gangbang into real decadent facetouch bliss.  You know how when China was divided up into spheres of influence shit just WORKED SO WELL? It’s like Toppling Goliath divided up the palate wheel into gerrymandered sections of discrete pleasure and doled out a district for brownie batter and vanilla to reside, supported by a proletariat class of bourbon/toffee underlings, all managed by a plutocratic coffee roast that employed maple scab workers to fill in the gaps in employment.  The entire operation is overseen by a partiarchal figurehead that is King Pancakington IV, a stern but fair ruler imparting sweetness and stickiness upon the masses; yet stern in a wafty alcoholism to which he is disposed to imbibe.  It just works harder than a Korean grocer and puts numbers on the board in ever singly category.  It is lamentably tasty, jaw grindingly well done and WHERE IS THE LOLZ IN THAT HUH? Pass me some Half Acre, then we can make some yukyuks.

Sometimes in the darkest trades, I see myself, a disgusting beast of indefatigable want, the malts unceasingly ground in my maw

Sometimes in the darkest trades, I see myself, a disgusting beast of indefatigable want, the malts unceasingly ground in my maw

M:  This is syrupy and expands with a touch of fusel waft that is ratcheted back by a lingering sweetness along the gumline and a magnificent low body carb that sizzles like chocolate pop rocks.  I need to move on, can’t keep doling out praise, next section, maybe I can rip on this beer there-

D:  Drinkability? ah god damnit.  I mean, sure your 12 ounce, impossible to find, $300 on secondary markets coffee stout is drinkable in the manner that Charlize Theron is entirely wifeable.  Who would dispute this? The real discussion, as usual, comes down to diminishing returns.  This beer, while a paradigm of stout greatness does not extend an accessibility beyond existing as the figurehead of a toppling revolution.  The goliath being toppled is the exchange market itself as an implosion of rapacious highway bandits seeking these items out.  This is amazing, but for a fraction of the entry fee you could trade for BA Speedway, or better yet, BA Vietnamese speedway and be marginally less well off.  I am talking like “oh it didn’t have the Lambourghini logo embroidered on the seats” level of distress.  This beer exists more as a benchmark for people who need these types of highs.  It is the $4,000 call girl of the stout world, fun for a simple romp but you inevitably are left worse off.  Sure, someone fucked you while wearing a Bart Simpson mask while you had Thundercats on, YOU PAID $4000, but that just makes every other stout at the bar seem somehow less impressive by contrast and there is a steep delcine in pleasure to worth it units at this level.

Pop this at a beer festival and all them startupkit tickers come flocking, popping shots like TMZ

Pop this at a beer festival and all them startupkit tickers come flocking, popping shots like TMZ

Narrative:   Pierre Goliat moved gracefully amongst the attendees at the debutante ball, supple mahogany calfskin shoes gliding across the italian marble floor of the foyer. “WHY AS I LIVE AND BREATHE IF THAT IS NOT MR. GOLIAT!” Madame Cremetu exclaimed jubilantly.  Pierre nodded knowingly and dipped a marshmallow into the gawdy chocolate fountain large enough to succor a village of Dickensian youth.  He surveyed the crowd of elite magnates, administrative officials, and heiresses free from burden or duty.  With a calm sip of single barrel aged 17 year cask strength bourbon he thought upon the precarious nature of his position.  A meteoric rise to aristocracy as a result of a new coffee roasting procedure had placed him in ranks with these vile examples of emotionally bankrupt phillistines.  The logical conclusion for any system is the crema to sit in wispy dots among the downtrodden supporting darkness below.  Pierre returned a wave of a fan from a countess across the room and shook his head balefully.  The smell of his own coffee filled the ballroom with a knowing stench of absurd profiteering, upon the backs of the humble are the mightiest trades built.  A goliath he must now embrace, for the chocolate fountain remains ever-flowing.

1

Goose Island Rare Bourbon County Stout, Time to Confront RARity Itself

|

Well look at what we have finally come to, the grand dragon of most beer nerds’ collections and/or nocturnal alemissions: GI RARE. You see forums flooded with requests for this damn bottle and it sits proudly on a litany of top 100 lists. There were about 13,xxx (?) of these made, but ask any kid from the midwest and they will act like it was a 1 day, brewery only release, 25 bottles made. They were pricey back in 2010, around $50, so in modern day currency, your anus is gonna get some fissures. This is the regular old amazing BCBS aged in Pappy Van Winkle 23 year old barrels for a whopping 2 years. It doesn’t get much more ridiculous than that. Oh and as a trivia point, the barrels later house King Henry that stupid beer nerds love to obsess over. AND THEY WILL NEVAR BE MAED AGAIN.

On other beer blogs, pours of this are usually 1 molar unit in a baby asprin eye dropper just to say they had it. Fuck that, I slay whales alone and cry myself to sleep at night while gripping a banana clip: the way proper beer reviews are done.

Goose Island Beer Co.
Illinois, United States
American Double / Imperial Stout | 13.00% ABV

A: This looks literally identical to regular old Bourbon County Stout, did you seriously expect it to have some magic Pappy Properties (Paperties) to make it glow radiant black? It looks like a sheet of hateful obsidian, like lava that had freshly cooled into dark sheets of igneous glass. The lacing is minimal at first and then erupts from below like gastritis in the lower colon. The mocha foam dances like a whirling dervish and makes a proud obeslisk to stout craftsmanship. This beer is really nice looking, but smells even better. OH SHIT I JUST SEGUED SO HARD RIGHT NOW-

If you want to land Rare, you have to pull something huge. Try using “harden” on it.

S: This is a complex but incredibly balanced beast. This is a melange of toffee, caramel, toasted marshmellow, bourbon, oak, chocolate, light char, some bakers chocolate and a cookie batter that just blends together seamlessly. The whole thing just makes you feel sad about most all other stouts, pricetag notwithstanding. It’s like in the late 90’s when everyone had tongue rings, we had it so good, now it is just a series of crestfallen resignations. There are certainly cheaper beers within this ambit, Parabola comes to mind, but this has a certain incredible joie de vivre that keeps midwest traders up at night, unable to enter REM.

T: This just soars in every aspect of the stout world. It is the platonic paradigm of malt and bourbon integration. The heat is there, but it is restrained, like a patient mage with plenty of mana. You get chocolate, sweet bourbon, a nice roastiness like a s’more, It was incredible to just sit on this beer and wait for it to warm, at almost room temperature, it hits its zenith and ranks among the top 5 stouts that I have ever tasted. I cant belabor this point any further, it is absolutely incredible.

Every stupid jackass on the beer trade forums wants this beer, disregard donkeys, acquire currency.

M: Despite the other PERFECT aspects of this beer, this is hands down my favorite element of this beer. There is this intense fudge and bourbon crackle that sizzles with microbubbles along the gumline that have this bubbly heft to them that is both energetic and sticky like a drunk Delta Gamma. If they made bourbon Pop Rocks, this is what it would taste like, and everyone would be twisted like a bag of ropes.

D: It is strange to say that a $50(+) bottle of 13% stout is drinkable…but it is. It is incredibly drinkable. It is like how those Star Ocean games are 100+ hours and ruin your life, but you would still call them “playable.” I just want more of this but, let’s be honest, the asking price simply isn’t worth it at this point and by my calculations, it should be on the downhill slope any time now. These are the realities of the beer world, but like those ball busters gripping their Depurations so tightly, reason and actual quality is often not a factor in the beer trading world. Also, I still need a 2007 Kaggen and I will give my left kidney for it. ISO.

If you want more Rare, build more Supply Depots.

Narrative: The users on the CraftWorld forums could not take it anymore. Raven Darkriven had consumed their arts and crafts website and entirely denatured their entire endeavor. “Raven, your bezzled grimoir viewing portal is lovely, but you are taking all of the server space, none of the other crafters can offer their items.” Raven spun a handcrafted garnet ring on his index finger and rubbed his slender fingers together. “You see JANET, when I began crafting in the dark arts of beading and bedazzling, I invoked liche spirits of the highest order to ensure that MY CRAFT WAS SUPREME AND DEVOID OF ALL IMPURITIES. Your server space is host to the macaroni art that is evil incarnate, and the masses clamor for it.” Janet adjusted the waistband of her Lane Bryant elastic sweatpants. “Right, I mean, that pasta mosaic you made was nice, but all this evil stuff is making some of the other ladies uncomfortable. Don’t get me wrong, it is amazing, but everyone pretty much wants to quit at this point. Felisha hasn’t made a single dream catcher since your products started being listed on the CraftWorld website.” Raven drew small triangles on his alabaster skin and replied coldly “If other inferior manufacturers quit, then so be it. That is the will of the obfuscated embroiderer. I will make this product but once, to fade into the blue flame of obscurity to leave my dark legacy on this niche industry. I will ruin it all with my greatness. I will leave them all wanting and hating their own glueguns in my wake. This is the will of the skeletrix, carved into the throne of bon-” Tracy had heard enough of this and she had to check on her dried roses.