Tag Archives: raves

1

Veritas 015 is Big Willey Style, Got @LostAbbey on that I Am Legend Tip

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Lost Abbey has around a 40% kill/death ration with the Veritas line, more than enough to keep you in the majors.  For every whaley V004 we receive, there’s always some oddball V009 stuttering and playing with a Leapfrog book.  By now people just treat the Veritas series like dropping a hot acid round in the revolver and spinning the chamber, because when it pays off it pays off hard.  This is one such instance where you not only don’t get lit up like Veritas 011, but this enters the ranks of the best Veritaseses ever created.

Let’s cut up this fruit AWA and get our Rachel Ray on in today’s review. Knife work gettin you promoted up from line.

Rolling up Big Willie Style of the Sour Game V15 I AM LEGEND

Rolling up Big Willie Style of the Sour Game V15 I AM LEGEND

Lost Abbey, San Marcos, North County Toolboxland Churchillsburg, CA

6.5% abv, American Lambic Wild Ale with Fruit, AmeriFoune

This beer showcases exactly what Lost Abbey does best: making the best fucking sour blonde ales in the game.  Whenever you hear them shutting the club down with some DDG or Cable Car joints, it is never centered around some sour dark ale or barrel aged barleywine. Lost Abbey blonde sours pay fat dividends like that unsplit Berkshire Hathaway stock.

When I heard the specs on this beer it sounded like an even more fruited version of Spontaneous Cheer, my micropeen was primed for a tart road trip.  The beer pours more radiant and bright than Spontaneous Cheer and looks outright radioactive in the glass, frothy carb bursting forth lacing the glass with intense pop rocks crackles, an appearance strangely similar to Duck Duck in many ways, or Cable Car 2013.  You get the jist, I dont need to draw it out for you like the plot of Sense8.

This beer get funky just like D.O.C. do

This beer get funky just like D.O.C. do

The nose is cut kumquats, highly acidic, unripe tangerines, honeydew, there’s a wheaty sort of grist to it that almost reminds me of a mineral character, with a fully lacto finisher to it that is almost too sour for my gentle nose holes. This isn’t as apeshit as Veritas 10 in acidic fruit, but this is def a serious american wild Desert Eagle with that oaky kickback.

The taste is straight sub-saharan dryness, the cankersores about to be budding if you dont have some water on hand from those receding cells getting bombed on with dehydrating goodness.  The only thing keeping this from being some insane ph-bomb is the presence of fruit as it warms.  The magnetic tangerine and clementine are buttressed by peach and apricot, it’s every shade of citrus Life Saver in the roll, oaky, puckering and intensely satisfying. There’s a sort of cheesy marmalade aspect that gives a bit back from the armed tastebud robbery that it commits in the process.  It’s like a roguish bandit that puts a carnation in a girl’s lapel after robbing the tongue stagecoach. THANKS FOR THE FRUIT VERITAS UR A GOOD GUY.

Overall, this doesn’t have the stumbling blocks of other american sours that attempt to hazard this level of intensity and has a certain degree of panache that keeps it from being a one dimensional acidic asthma attack. This should be well up on the top of your want list despite the cost of entry because unlike most stupid ass DDB reviews, this is one time where I can’t be like “JUST BUY DERP D’OR FROM CROOKED STAVE” or pointing to some Belgian analogue.  I had this the same day as Fou and both are stellar and completely different.

OH WE ON THAT PAGANI VERITAS SWERVE? Hode up, lemmie get to a save point.

OH WE ON THAT PAGANI VERITAS SWERVE? Hode up, lemmie get to a save point.

Before you ask, yes, this is way different from Stone Bu, Imperial Peach Bu, Bu Banger, Bu Bae, Jew Bu, or whatever 47 different stonefruit berliners are released this month. While those might be easier to land, this doesn’t have much in common with many of the De Garde fruited offerings, and no it doesn’t taste similar to Fen Tao, due to the ratcheted up acidity. No disrespect to any of the foregoing, this just isn’t quite on the same scene, blowing seaweed green out that Pagani sunroof, cutting up them pitted bricks on the passenger side.

Seek it out, and be sure to offer up X-Mas Bomb or some shit so we can have some LULz in the process.

Here’s a handy Veritas chart of jankrank scaled from most trifling to next level shit:

V009 – most jank

V001- second most jank

V002- trifling

V011- moderately trifling 

V013- pretty deece

V008 – pretty legit with time sans tea

V010- tasty fun times

V014- damn I’m sweating 

V007- Shit is getting real

V0012- no jank, all body high

V006- it’s kickin in, I feel it

V004- can’t handle the club right now

9

LOL at the butthurt regarding Bruery’s full disclosure about these infected porters.

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So the Bruery announced today that their imperial porter collaboration with 3 Floyd’s might be infected, and basements shook with rage as sausage fingers pounded on their COMPAQ keyboards.

Some would call this entitlement, people being pissed about not getting their money’s worth out of a $300 – $700 club, and that’s fine, but you also joined a $700 club for beer, so I am pretty sure you lost your 14th amendment privileges at that point.

Others might think that this boils down to some crazy profiteering, from a brewery openly acknowledging flaws with their product…and warning their customers…before it is released for sale. I can’t really address that without colorful pie charts and clips from Yo Gabba Gabba, so I will move on.

I like the fact that, were this released the other way around, 3 floyds would have tossed it into their generic 750mls, hand numbered it, charged $50, used a lottery system, then later not used any lottery system and just sold it at the brewpub, and then ignored patron’s complaints after the fact when it was discovered that they sold a clearly infected beer at a huge markup.

oh and Indiana traders would ask for V012, etc.

Thank God we avoided that result.

I guess you could try and have a field day complaining about QC, but the Bruery was upfront about it, like a classy escort that lets you know she has HSVII but she is not currently shedding. And like a classy escort, knocks a few bucks off the fees.

If you don’t feel like doming a 15% porter within a couple of months, maybe you are a raging pussy? Maybe let the real drinkers pass through while you as picking up scattered Midols all over the ground.

sometimes i ask, "WHY WOULD I WANT TO SEE THIS SHIT?"

sometimes i ask, “WHY WOULD I WANT TO SEE THIS SHIT?”

I think we can all agree: yes it is shitty that the porters became infected. Here are a few solutions used by other breweries:

1) “we pasteurize the beer, sell it online in a fire sale, don’t make enough for even half of our reserve members” – Cigar City rocked this amazing strategy and people were still drinking their cum off of glass plates. It sold out instantly.

2) “Don’t tell them, maybe they wont know, we cant be responsible for beer held over time” this is the usual whipping post for smaller breweries that have zero fucks to spare. Dark Horse rocks this shit all the time, changes a label a bit here and calls it a day. SOUR OLD ALE YOU SAY? SIGN ME UP.

3) “We are gonna sell this beer, if people don’t like it, allow them to potentially abuse our marketing department and do a full refund across the board.” This is classy as fuck, but not really realistic. Bruery did this for Cacaonut and the other beers and people not only rocked full refunds, but then still bitched about how they could spend their refunds for beers they may have enjoyed or traded away. CCB pulled this white knight move for Huna day and you can basically do anything short of lighting pug puppies on fire as long as you have an apology like this. Noble, but expensive as fuck.

4) “OUR BEERS ARE NOT INFECTED, that BA Stout is supposed to taste like merlot and have a 5 finger head.” This is a classic move from the smallest of breweries, it essentially shifts the onus onto the customer for buying them in the first place. I love this one the most. YOU DONT LIKE THAT FUNKY BUDDHA BOTTLE WELL MAYBE BEERS ARENT MEANT TO BE DRANK OVER 5 WEEKS AFTER RELEASE? Basically shaming people for not drinking things immediately is dope as fuck. A certain East County San Diego brewery might be implicated in this cadre as well.

5) “This is potentially infected, sorry in advance, no refunds but at least we are dealing it straight.” I remember this going down with Hellshire II and we had the same bowlegged sore nutsacks complaining. I prefer this approach the most: you wanna spin the black circle? God ahead, we warned you.

you could complain about shit, or you can look at this pic of baby otters. choice is yours.

you could complain about shit, or you can look at this pic of baby otters. choice is yours.

So is a brewery to do? For every million they make, more complaints ensue. I guess the underlying moral is that complaints from husky beer nerds are kinda like hearing sobbing from attendees at the Farscape/Babylon 5 convention: literally no one gives a fuck about them. This is the razor edge of 1 percenters in a hobby predicated on consumables. Until there is craft ice, this is the absolute nadir of hobbies and I will continue to treat them as such.