Lambourghini Merci, St. Louis Tickers Be So Thirsty, Side Project in that 2 seat Lambo, fanboys tryna jerk them

September 30, 2015 | dontdrinkbeer

Oh great another one of those “WINE AND CHEESE SHOP” instant whales. Just what we needed for this site, more inaccessible 50 bottle releases, because that’s surely what the average beer consumer is tryna read about.

The average beer consumer is still putting up double digit daily blog page views with some myopic post about recent mergers. OH FUCK NO WAY HOT BUTTON ISSUES. You come to DDB for this type of shit:

toaster looks like its about to drop the hottest mixtape of 2015

So this is blend1 and, to be honest, it sounds preeeeeetty fucking similar to SIDE PROJECT PULLING NAILS BLEND THREE

“Blend #1 – 75% 2yr old Missouri Spontaneous Blond, 25% Saison du Ble Batch 2. Bottle conditioned for 5 months with our house Brett strain before release.” Merci1

““Blend of: Oude du Ble that was aged in French Oak for 1 year & then aged on Apricots + 14-Month-Old Foedre Beer + 2-year-old Missouri Spontaneous Blonde.” PN3

ALRIGHT FINE, maybe they only SEEMED similar after drinking them. Alright if Pulling Nails 3 was the ultra bright radiant acidic Duck Duck Goozey clone, then Merci is more akin to the grist and funky bitter execution of Cable Car 2008 or 2010. Think 3F OGV vs. Doesjel (except with carb.)

The beer looks awesome, a slight hint of brassy copper belies the slightly oxy profile and musky undercarriage to this monistat adventure. It is fitting that this was sold at a cheese shop, but some of the funky cheesiness was TOO excessive and some chunky floaters were present in the bottle:

PROTEIN SUPPLEMENTS

Seriously, dafuq is going on here? Mad chunks in the lacing looking like beige crunchberries.

The nose is a nice blend of kumquat, mandarin oranges, clementines, cut brie, honeydew, cave aged cheddar, and a long musky waft like wet laundry. It really is a great funky balance between acidity and funky old components, like switching between Match.com and Tinder, to achieve balance in your unbalanced life.

Beat steady knockin, an I aint talkin ATIFICATION

The taste swings wildly and almost dislocates its rotator cuff trying to connect at a variety of targets. You get slice navel oranges, wet bicycle seat, some leather and plywood, a bright lemon hip gyration from the Du Ble, but it is all tempered with this stale Thrift Store waft. This is the funkiest Side Project offering this side of Oude Fermier and if you love that Brett C profile, whittling and twine, this is your perfect attic chugger.

Overall, this massive waley waley comes across as more novel but less delicious in sum than Pulling Nails b3 which I enjoyed more. If you absolutely need something in this vein you can land some Belgian analogue, LOLYARITE who am I even addressing, or seek out some of the more bretty Lost Abbey offerings like Veritas 13 or Cable Car 2010. Not a lot of fucking help there, I know. Some of the Prairie strains do weird shit over time and if you held onto something like Puncheon for 6 months it would likely be comparable, or better yet, snag a bottle of Jester King’s earthier offerings like El Cedro and sit on it for half a year.

Do all them pushups to pump up your chest, I got a .50cal and a 750 that can light up yo chest

Do all them pushups to pump up your chest, I got a .50cal and a 750ml that can light up yo chest

You certainly don’t need to trade for this, but it is exceptional. The only American offering with this much gueuzey cheesiness and funk would be one of those equally whaley Funk Factory bottles like Dweller on the Threshold. Or a bottle of Beatification with a couple years on it. So go get that then, FUCK, there’s a reason these beers aren’t falling off the shelves. Go do your own due diligence or open a Sculpin and make the same tired ass post about “MY LOCALS RULE TRADING IS STUPID SEE THATS WHY I DONT TRADE SEE I CAN GET GOOD BEER HERE SEE THATS WHY THATS WHY TRADE TRADE NOT WORTH TO ME TO ME TO ME TRADE ISNT I MEAN ITS GOOD BUT NOT TRADE WHY WORTH VALUE LOCAL TO LOCAL TO ME” and just read it at a 160bpm pace.

Same tiring shit, all day, EDM high-handed condescension.

Everything You Need to Know About Highland Park Brewing BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK!

September 10, 2015 | dontdrinkbeer

I have been deferring on talking about this year old brewery for a multitude of reasons: first and foremost, the second I say anything even moderately favorable about any beer made south of Fresno, people have a shit conniption and accuse old DDB of favoritism despite ripping on the innumerable shitty California beers being pumped out.

Second, as a new brewery who seems to have a heavy emphasis on saisons, I wanted to tread lightly and get a wider idea of their offerings beyond the first couple non-BA forays into the realm. When I first had Nebraska, I was like “myeh, that’s pretty legit.” And it tasted essentially like Tank 7 and Saison Brett mixed. Nothing to scoff at or go apeshit over.

But in the past four months they keep pushing into the interstices of “wait, damn” to “ok, this is really fucking good.” So I have to say SOMETHING, even if it means a cadre of dipshits accuse me of favoritism from a brewery that couldn’t give a fuck less about an irrelevant beer blog. So let’s get into the anal fisting already:

Horn rimmed glasses galore, Portlandia sticky hot edition

The brewery itself is housed in this neo-hipster mecca, a faux divey bar that happens to have awesome food. If Silverlake is LA’s mission/Williamsburg, then Highland Park is the next hipster spawning pool for the budding fixie riding asshole carrying a Drive Like Jehu vinyl. That’s who you will be drinking saisons with.

PTSD every time i see an overhead projector.

So what is this, fucking ZillowAdvocate.com? Let’s talk about the beers. At the outset: you want their saisons, you will want all of them. However, this brewery has a sort of Sante Adairitis that makes them a spectacular one trick pony, for reasons that will become clear shortly.

The proud FG 1.000000002 lineup

The first thing you will notice is that every beer has been attenuated into decimation. This makes their saisons intensely refreshing, dry, crisp like an anjou pear, but really fucks with every other style. Refresh is just that, but dialed down so far that it is insubstantial and if they used pilsner malt it has been drilled into the fucking primary pavement. Greyhound Vacation has similar Kallista Flockhart thin body, but for a Belgian Pale it almost doesn’t have enough floorspace to demonstrate esters or a hop profile, the ultra svelte body is TOO lean.

I want you to ruminate on how highly attenuated a hoppy beer has to be for DDB to complain about a lack of malt underpinning. They are still crushable and delicious, albeit lacking complexity. I would certainly rather have this problem than flabby midwest crystal malt “clean” offerings.

What about discernible problems?

More like singed eyebrows.

With a brewery that has highly effective yeast that dismantles fucking everything, there’s gonna be some issues with packaging. Raised eyebrows was tasty, clean and basically a less demanding Cuddlebug on draft. The bottles were a 4th of July sparklers and sulphur massacre. Your drunk uncle gripping his palms coughing up smoke. The taste was tasty, saharan, stone fruity goodness but the nose was straight bottleshock and clearly needed time to metabolize either the secondary refermentation going on, or just to rest to get its shit together.

Let’s Talk About Their Other AMAZING SHIT

That’s not to say that all of their bottles are deficient in any way. If you enjoyed Cellarman, this multistrain puncheon fermented beer has all the makings of a phenomenal saison classic. It is creamy, orangey, juicy with tangerine and cut cardboard paper, a certain fabrics store musk. If this is not the best thing they have made to date, I would be shocked. This is absolutely incredible and your tradebuxxxx cannot find a better power to weight ratio.

Yeast infections are amazing when it is 6 at a time.

So we have seen the worst, heard the stroke session about the best, what about those middle times? Those times when you are just watching Bachelor in Paradise because GOD BREWERY ARE WE SUPPOSED TO BE GOING ON AMAZING DATES EVERY SINGLE NIGHT? Those times.

Time for some certified whiptixxx in the SubbyDooBaru

Uncultured is in that realm of component blended/recent batches of Arthur. It has a great grassiness, some rope and twine must to the nose, a long fernet meets clementines finish to the brett C and L profile. Their “normal” shit is head and shoulders above most of the things that come across the desk inside of my liver. These trade for nothing right now, you are wasting time reading this and not ISOing.

Did you enjoy Sante Adairius Fruit Punch 1? Well this is a 10% worse version, which is to say it is really juicy, fantastic, bursting with life and acidity. It’s like when diet Dr. Pepper is actually better than regular Dr. Pepper, because it is.

Pushin Carts, collabo with Monkish

This is another spritzer farmhouse table beer meets a sort of Biere Du Pays, fucking drillable with lemon and lime zest, like a sort of zero calorie Printempts with a few years on it. This type of spectacular beer is just sitting on draft, no one giving a fuck about top tier barrel aged, puncheon fermented saisons. For every Texas dipshit peddling JK 750mls hard, there are uncelebrated kegs like these being secretly enjoyed.

Posts like there ruin the fuck our of a brewery for a consumer base gentrifying the tits off of a proud Hispanic neighborhood. The circle unbroken, you want artisan donut shops? That’s fine, prepare to enjoy them near entry level BeerAdvocate tier dumbfucks talking about how “brett makes the beer sour.”

Dishonorable mention: this grainy, boring, estery gem just kept throwing rocks in the lake while you are trying to fish for real saison tastes.

JOUNRALSLETIC ENTEGRITY

I don’t feel like breaking down each and every one of their bigger and hoppier beers but let me state is succinctly this way: saisons and pales are their clear wheelhouse. This is not some dynamic Prairie that rolls out adjunct stouts and weird farmhouse beers in tandem. Their IPA/DIPA core is so so attenuated that they are intensely refreshing at the expense of complexity. If you have had hoppy beers from Sante Adairius you know how something like a hard as fuck water recipe makes some styles great and other neglected. They are like that, and I am totally fine with that. If these guys joined forces with Beachwood, the voltron of LA catalogs would be complete.

It’s totally acceptable to shamelessly order 15 tasters from a bartender. They love that, you shouldn’t feel like a self indulgent asshole at all.

So what is the takeaway? Get every single bottled saison possible from this brewery. You will not be disappointed, and I would be shocked if you weren’t outright impressed from a brand new upstart. Their farmhouse game is just what the doctor ordered and they are lying silently in the 323 weeds sniping customers from comely Los Angeles terrain.

Knowing CA dipshits you will be getting extra-ed these 900 bottle brewery only runs, so buckle in, and be sure to send them some Daisy Cutter cans as a thank you.

Is Cantillon Blabaer 2013 the Head-on Berry Collision that Complainers Like to Make it Out to Be?

June 30, 2015 | dontdrinkbeer

Ddb reviewed Blabby back like four years ago or some shit so we aren’t going to retread that ground in full at this juncture.

Here knock yourself out:

https://dontdrinkbeer.com/2012/02/08/cantillon-blabaer-after-an-entire-year-of-searching-i-finally-land-my-white-whale/

LOL TUMS BC ACID GUIZE GET IT #firstjokes

But what about those infamous “off” vintages? Every three years, meatsweatted cicerones will capriciously decide OH NO FUCK BRO THAT YEAR SUCKS MY HOME BREW CLUB AGREED TOO.

This happened with Flora b6, it happened with Fantasia b2, the NOTORIOUSLY SHITTY Cable Car 2010: none of this makes any sense. Nine times out of ten, the complaints hover around “BRUH it wasn’t even like as sour as I remember, making something more sour is a demonstration of true breW skillz.”

Flora b6 was a touch less sour sure, but posting ISOs specifically like “ANY FLORA BATCH EXCEPT THAT HORRIBLE BATCH FIVE THAT I KNOW IS TERRIBLE” makes no sense. Flora is still fucking delicious.

The glass upskirt is second only to placing the bottle ontop of the glass in stupid beer photography

The greatest victim of this paradigm is tattered old Blabaer 2013. Somewhere along the line people ruled that blabaer must be X2OMG sour and intensely Smuckers and if it isn’t, then JVR really shit the bed on this one.

Blabby already exists as a trade anomaly on so many levels. It often exists as a crown jewel for a first or second year trader to “accomplish” a badge of blueberry merit, to validate their face hole. These same people toss up 8:1 offers and covetous hoarders tear them down.

Those same stupid dipshits who hoard blabaer are actively trying to trade them upwards for Pikku or an M or some shit. This will never happen for the simple reason that: everyone only needs to try Blabaer once.

That isn’t to say it isn’t good, but traders of a certain experience know to never actually drink a Blabaer when St. Lam is far easier to land and tastes better. Therefore bottles of blabaer never move downward, but they can never move upward either. They sit and malinger until someone wants to stunt hard as fuck at some brewery event and live on in infamy in UNTAPPD reviews. WOW Herbert Spencer, such legacy achieved, sociological immortality.

“BRO IF NO ONE LIKES THEM SEND TO ME 4 PROPAR DISPOSALS LOL AMIRITE”

So within this climate you have two poles of raters: 1) bitter assholes who traded a ton for it and were “forced” to open it and share it with ignorant cretins and 2) unappreciative shitlords who failed time and time again to land it and now want to engage in some growing pains of iconoclasm and take poor blabby down a peg,

So yeah, if you pour 2013 Blabaer amongst 15 people it won’t be as aggro sour, it won’t be as fruity, but it is even more interesting in its musky tannic vibe. So within the scope of 1 ounce within bitter BJCP turd hammers, it will become the “bad” vintage. It is still a phenomenal beer and one should look at groupmind “consensus” with a grain of gose.

Fire up a dare form tab and get over it. Beer itself and beer people get worse with every passing day, fading away in cellars and basements, respectively.

DUAL WHALE SHOOTOUT: New Belgium Twisted Spoke and 2009 C&C La Folie, Lats Flexing Hard on that AWA Shred

March 2, 2014 | dontdrinkbeer

If you are a bottleshop baller, that truck chasing pimp who knows every collaboration New Belgium has ever done, an adjunct loving asshole who can decry the subtle nuances of the Peach Porch Lounger relative to the vastly inferior Brett Beer, maybe you should get the fuck out of here. This clearly is not for you. This is the deep subrectum of the New Belgium catalogue that most tickers dare not tread. This is that NB C&C Game, swag to the fullest. If I wasn’t such a punk pussy, maybe I could have landed Falling Rock and actually presented you with a legitimate whale review as originally planned. I guess we have TacosNBeer to thank for that one, as he backed out of a trade due to the fact that old Subbydoo was banned from BA. I suppose that is another exclamatory tale for another day.

Let’s get deep in these wild ale guts and hit that oaky back cervix.

Back lit, oversaturated photos with sickening aperture. That’s how I treat bottles that I hold onto for years.

New Belgium Brewing
Twisted Spoke:
Colorado, United States
Style | ABV
American Wild Ale | 7.00% ABV

“65% Ale aged in a wood barrel, 14% ale with cherries added and ale, 21% ale brewed with Coriander and 100% Aged in apple flavored whiskey barrels.” The beer was hand-bottled August 26, 2010.”

La Folie, Caged and Corked 2009
New Belgium Brewing
Colorado, United States
Style | ABV
Flanders Oud Bruin | 6.00% ABV
“Flemish Sour Brown Ale fermented in stainless then transferred to barrels for 1-4 years of aging then blended to taste.”

Please note, I used the 2009 caged and corked version, not your Hi-V pasteurized start up kit shit. It was to my own detriment, as you will soon see.

A: The Twisted Spoke has held its carb beautifully and has a billowy frothy head that pops and snaps not unlike a baller ass rice cereal. The garnet underpinnings are beautiful and provide a Rodenbach nod of elegance and ruby meets jasper, the hem of regal oriental garments shimmering in crimson regalia. La Folie looks like shit. It lays there completely still like an unmotivated Craigslist encounter. It is darker than its pasteurized counterparts, a deep almost brownish purple that is uninviting and comes across like flat grape soda attempting to muster up a single fuck to give. It is a valuable portent of things to come.

“I reviewed La Folie on my beer blog and it got 95 hits” Pasteurized: beta as fuck. Step up your whalegame.

S: The smell of Twisted Spoke is phenomenal and doesnt approach a hint of oxy or age at this point. I was thinking right around 4 years, AWA hit their sexual peak and start to taper off to autoeroticism, NOT TWISTED SPOKE. I can see this holding up for another couple of years before reducing to vinegar strokes. There is a bright cherry, jazz apple, white grape, intense raspberry farmers market makeout sesh, brandy, port sherry oak like those mahogany rooms Nana used to work in. There is a touch of acetic red wine vinegar but it is in light of the foregoing and more a throwback to the flanders red style as a whole than an implicit flaw. Still bangable for sure. La Folie just can’t get its shit together. It is vinegar, just straight acetic flaws, the burn of salad dressing from Sizzler, tart acidity, some currants, the brown ale just waving its sloppy dark cock all on the sink. You get vintage nail polish remover and some Aquanet, which might give you a chub if you piped down hard in the 80s. Not me tho, this shit sucks.

T: The Twisted Spoke follows through with full completion of the olfactory elements. No ticktease here. It delivers a complex tartness, tannic cherry skin, a touch of brandy sweetness which is like caramelized apples in a Home Run pie, and closes with a drying kiss of that flanders smooch. Delicious. One again La Folie is zipping its nutsack up in its footie pajamas. It’s like for fucks sake La Folie, you have the grace of Daniel Day Lewis in My Left Foot and the collected poise of The Elephant Man, at least taste good. It cannot, if you thought that chemical acetone was gonna taste better, I guess it doesn’t taste WORSE than it smells, so: victory? This is worse than the offshelf version. Past its prime, dip a baguette in it or serve it over kale salad.

With Flanders reds and wilds in general, balance and reasonable execution beat speed and Robotnik banging

M: The Twisted Spoke is a touch too drying for my tastes and rips along the gumline like that coward Shaun White, afraid to hit those deep pockets for fear of injury. The fruit flavors balance it out and this aspect has probably gotten more aggressive over the past 4 years, but here we are. La Folie just sloppily hits the bitter and the sour zones, trying to bang anything it can like a drunk bisexual Peruivan. It is a confused mess that is not only more tart, less fulfilling, but just facepalm worthy in general. As long as Duchess exists, you can avoid 2009 C&C La Folie without losing any sleep.

D: Twisted Spoke is delicious and complex, however, it is not exceptionally drinkable in light of its intense acidity, highly layered presentation, and lingering dryness. You get that GERD pretty early in, but its a fulfilling pain, like paying a high end stripper to work you over with a pack of twizzlers. La Folie, oh man, I don’t really have much more to say about this borderline condiment. I hazarded a 5 ounce pour, welcoming the shit talking from the anonymous contingency that is my degenerate fan base. The joke was on me throughout because it sucked shit throughout all 5 ounces, like when you look at a Brendan Frazier DVD and you see that 81 minute run time and you are like “oh well, that cant be too bad.” It is fucking horrible. La Folie in this format is a huge disappointment. Did you even see Crash? Fucking Ludacris.

This will get up in your grill hard. Mayor McCheese will have the leather couch and the tripod.

Narrative: Just take all the foregoing La Folie sentences above and add a paper thin proper noun monicre and personify it in some blatant overstatement. DDB 101.

@terrapinbeerco Depth Charge, 2009 Coffee Stouts Aging As Gracefully As CBS (Stout and Network)

November 15, 2013 | dontdrinkbeer

Aw shit, time to alienate some 2013ers for the umpteenth time on old DDB. If you were around back when Bruery was first banging out BT, back when Dark Lord was a relevant product, back when people still used Blackberry’s and shit: you know this beer. This is an old whale from days past, 2009 Terrapin Depth charge. “What a fantastic idea, reviewing a 6.5% abv milk stout made with coffee” yes. It is a fantastic idea, about as good an idea as reviewing a vanilla stout 3 years after bottling, holleratchaBCBVS.

Midwest pour detected: 22oz into straight crystal. Decadent as a MyFreecams premium account.

Formerly brewed at Terrapin Beer Company
Style: Sweet Stout
Athens, Georgia USA
6.5% Abv

Terrapin Midnight Project Brew Two 2009. Sometime around midnight in a city nobody can agree on, the idea for Terrapin and Left Hand to brew a collaboration beer was born. Depth Charge is the second in the series of one-time releases between the two breweries. Be wary of the calm before the storm. This creamy, deeply delicious milk stout will seduce you into submission while the explosion of hand roasted gourmet espresso will blow you into next week. We Shall Drink in the breweries. We Shall Drink in the pubs, We Shall Drink the the comfort of our homes. We Shall Never Surrender.

A: This is still a beautiful lil mocha beauty out of the gates, sea biscuiting that foam all over the place. I had to be careful, using a $200 glass and all, so maybe I didn’t go as aggro on the pour as I should have. The carb is substantial and the residual malts lace the glass with sticky webbing like your keyboard after an 8th grade sick day. The thin mocha brown texture spills out like the guts of a Magic 8 Ball after you smash it on a misbehaving chlid’s forehead, but darker and inkier, deep black in execution but a shimmering lake at night pallor to it. Jason Voorhees is about to pop up out this bitch in the final 3 minutes.

Sometimes you must seek the future to understand the past. Drinking old coffee stouts is not one such time.

S: The coffee, shockingly, seems to have faded over the 4 years in captivity. There is still this pleasant residual sweetness in the waft that reminds me of a halfway house between boring ass/refreshing irish dry and a full on oatmeal stout. It isn’t quite as sweet as the framework for a milk/sweet stout would make you reach for, and this is a good thing given the fact that the coffee is no longer around to keep things in check. There’s a certain lactose aspect and a saccharine waft to it, and this faded roastiness like a lingering receipt from a strip club; memories of boners past.

T: This is exceedingly thin and sticky sweet in execution. There is an initial taste of light acidic roast that gets your hopes up, then the mochafrap team rolls in with a watery milky whip to close out your dreams. If you have ever had those thin espresso drinks from Illy, you know exactly what this tastes like. This is a light affair, you can sip it casually while being read your rights, nodding in calm repose, morning beverage in hand while they execute the search warrant. There is a lingering sweetness that is like stevia mixed with Hershey’s syrup that is actually more refreshing than it is complex, like basically any Channing Tatum movie.

“COFFEE STOUTS IMPROVE WITH AGE” “CBS IS DRINKING GREAT” “HAVE YOU HAD A 2008 KBS LATELY? MMM”

M: This is incredibly thin and washes the inside of your mouth with a limp wristed mocha sweetness and then ducks out. You can smash this and chain combo these bitches up into the 2 bomber range no problem. KKKKKKILLER COMBO straight Glacius style on the coffee mocha tip. This isn’t free trade shade grown cold brew 49th parallel shit. This is just thin, normal, espresso from a gas station in a nice part of town with a splash of smashed up kit kats mixed in, for the discerning trucker. It is good if not a bit too sweet. I get it, the coffee faded, it’s different now. We all need to move on. I will never be your ex boyfriend and this beer cant be uncoffeed ok. The past is the past, I know how he satisfied you, let’s just drink this stout and not talk about his girth.

D: This is exceptionally drinkable and loses a bit on the complexity as a result. No 6.5% stout is really gonna be some Dostoyevsky affair of introspection anyway, unless its a Funky Buddha offering that has been adjuncted into the fucking ground. Should you give up massive whales for this limited/extinct beer? I don’t know, how much do you care about ticks? I gave up 5 bottles for faded ass RUSSIAN RIVER DEPURATION so maybe you aren’t asking the right fucking person. Open this up at Magic City and watch them red bottoms clack clack in Georgian opulence.

Soometimes you must revisit the past, to taste something again, FOR THE FIRST TIME

Narrative: South Dakota was not a bustling hub of progressive gourmands. The State Fair usually offered the newest innovations in deep frying and small plating, most recently deep fried Squeezits, a commodity still on the shelves in old S to the D. A bold enterprise took form in Pierre in the form of small batch single pourovers blended with Macadamia milk. The populace with tucked in flannel shirts and gun racks was not accustomed to seeing $7.00 craft coffee beverages, but the future approached them with a startling alacrity. Pierre Jieusseps cared not for the local plebs and their affinity for Monster energy drinks, his was a plan of purpose aimed at touching the rural hearts and minds of South Dakotans. “Right, but I jes want like, coffee, like, in a pot you know, not these drink made for fa-” one local resident complained as the steam gushed and the hopper tilled beans at $22.00/half pound. Pierre served the decadent 4oz beverage and read the order ticket “KOOTER! Your single press, 2 minute, slow grind, cold brew is now ready!” A sunburned man in a Godsmack t-shirt bewilderedly grabbed his tiny beverage and headed to his child custody hearing.

SHITSTORM ABATED: Homebrew Review – Kyle Matlack/Kmatlack Apricot Lambic

August 30, 2013 | dontdrinkbeer

Holy hell people had so many feels when I posted a pic of this bottle a couple days ago. A guy tries to enjoy a simple homebrew and beer nerds start fucking lactating over the idea that maybe someone got something they are entitled to. Fear not, this is just an excellent homebrew, not some unreleased shit from a brewery that you feel that you should be getting free shit from. All is right in the world.

Tagging on bottles for maximum jelly

You are probably like “oh, a homebrew from someone I don’t know and can’t get, why the fuck should I care?” I don’t know. BM him if you want some, go beat off, eat some expired Dunkaroos I could give a fuck less. Anyway:

A: This has a sort of turbid look to it and has the charm of what appears to be a witbier base, or maybe a saison taken way off the rails. Nice carb, the cork was a motherfuck of an operation. This is a note to C&C homebrews at large: fucking stop it. NO one is laying down homebrews for a decade, caps are fine. This one had a cage that broke as I was opening it and a cork that just would not fucking come loose. I had to saw it in half and then use a wine opener to get it out. It was not unlike this stupid ass shit

Oh you don’t like a review of a non-whale homebrew? That’s a nice opinion.

S: This is incredibly acidic and lactic right from the jump off, the apricot is largely subsumed by a crazy lemon/kumquat/lime acidic presence. This is well inside the realm of Cascade Apricot/Batch 50 GFAR/Veritas 010 in this regard. You want more of the fruit but those tannins are probably under a bed somewhere fucking terrorized from that PH3 just stomping the yard. If you took Fou Foune, took out the musk/cheesy complexity and amped up the acid, this is the result.

T: This is incredibly tart and borders on Shocktarts/Warheads/Lemon Lucas (if you are Hispanic and/or lived in a shitty neighborhood.) The fruit is present but more as an after thought to the incredibly lactic apricot and pluot aspects. Again, very similar to Veritas 010 through and through even down to the way your teeth feel raw and those tum tum gurgles that follow.

reviewing random homebrews now? This site is fucking lazy.

M: This is crazy dry, like drier than Rosie O’ Donnell’s cooze at a Channing Tatum movie. This his your gumline and starts rolling up the carpet just scorching with a deep satisfying burn. Ask him for a bottle, you’ll see.

D: This is not exceptionally drinkable due to the sky high acidity, but if you aren’t a raging pussy it is one of the best homebrew sours I have had since Upright’s Sole Comp series ::badumtish:: But seriously, fucking great beer, glad I got to try it, maybe if I wasn’t so bitchmade the acid wouldn’t hurt my babymouth so much. Someday.

Narke 2007 Kaggen! Stormaktsporter AND Konjaks! Stormaktsporter, Two Wales; One Liver.

August 19, 2013 | dontdrinkbeer

Back when the world was at peace, before the Nanomachines, before Skynet went global and the purity crystal was shattered into 8 fragments each guarded by an Eidolon guardian, there was something called the top 100.

In this top 100, were a series of sacred and profane images scrawled for admiration and cool reverence by the awkward prototypical beer nerd masses. Back when RB/BT/BA/TBS/RBT were orange groves sown by the tillage of honest serfs, there were walez. One of the most elusive in those provincial days was Kaggen and its wayward brethren, KONJAKS. To say that these beers are rare or sought out would be like saying that Sasha Grey has inspired a few erections on middle school sick days. Notwithstanding, if you feel like being nostalgic, go read my review of REGULAR ASS STORMAKTSPORTER HERE

Alright, enough pageantry, let’s get down to fucking business and find out which whale gots the most blubberers.

Swedish waels don’t deserve Midwest pours.

Regular Ass Kaggen!

Närke Kulturbryggeri
Sweden
Russian Imperial Stout | 10.00% ABV
The cask matured version of Stormaktsporter.

Narke Konjaks! (Cognac Barrel Aged)
Russian Imperial Stout | 9.50% ABV
Cognac Barrel Aged Stormy (no shit)

Appearance:

Kaggen: This pours a splish splashy cola brown that is black at the center. It is not an inky affair but carries that dark profile with a frothy khaki head that is impressive for 6 years of small format repression. The cling is nothing too intense and the lacing is gentle with a tiny clear sheet like when you strike a child with a book and watch the tears cascade gently.

Konjaxxxx: This looks almost identical, for obvious reasons but put forth a little bit more liveliness to the lacing and carbonation. If Kaggen is the reluctant friend, this is the drunk girl who at the moment is excited to go back to your studio apartment. These interactions are fleeting, savor them.

Winrar: Tie, they seriously look fucking identical. What the fuck is wrong with you?

At a certain point, when you slay two WW ticks at the same damn time, the butthurt becomes infinite to other sad pandas

SMELLINGS:

Kaggen: This might be one of the best olfactory stouts that I have come across in my entire life. There is a light coffee aspect with molasses, toasted almonds, honey, brown sugar, an oaky resonance that fades into a nice roast. This reminds me of a sweeter Parabola b1 with a higher emphasis on honey legs with zero abv. I hate loading on adjectives like a fucking asshole but they are seriously there. I guess I can just staple my nutsack to the sides of my thighs like a sugar glider if you don’t believe me.

Konjakson jackson: This is a whole different bag, in an insane NeoGeo 16bit port to console sort of way. This is unquestionably more ambitious and sets forth everything that Kaggen does but THEN FUCKING PILES ON MORE. You ever go to a frozen yogurt place and just go way overboard on toppings and find yourself plowing through all this conflicting shit like Peanut Butter cups with raspberries, brownie bites with Lychee, its a complete clusterfuck. You get smoke first and foremost, like a Duraflame log dipped in brownie batter then lit on fire with Cognac. The wood is present and the sweetness comes around like a scorched Nestle Tollhouse cookie. Sweet and smoke and indian burns on your dick all at once. It is just too much.

WINRAR Smell: Kaggen, times a billion, since forever until always.

When I popped both bottles, shit got real, things became tumescent.

TASTES NOTINGS:

Kaggen: God damn it, those efficient ass Swedes just made a compact deadly weapon of stout destruction. It is clean and pure in execution, extending the cola, almond, bakers chocolate, truffle, tootsie roll but imparting a subtle barrel character and absolutely zero abv. The sweetness makes this drink like Edmund Fitzgerald, and it only gets better at higher temps. Worth the hype completely and frustratingly so.

Konjacksing off: This is actually a really phenomenal beer to drink, despite the fucking menagerie on the nose. This reminds me of Bar Fly went and fucked Czar Jack and their little spawn baby was left in the nordic plain to develop. It is lightly smokey but lacking that red wine character from Bar Fly. The sweetness is unquestionably European in execution and sets forth this soft sticky caramel and mallowfoam all set against this toasty campfire backdrop. If you feel like having a great campout beer while being molested by your youth pastor, this would be it. Whales and psyche treatment bills, hand in hand.

Winner: This one is actually really tough because Konjacking off felt so good, but a little wrong. I still have to give it to the OG Kaggen, it’s like Rosie O’ Donnell at a bisexual bridal shower. It deeeeeeeeeeeed it.

“You alienate normal beer drinkers and make fun of people who get excited to drink Woot stout-“

Mouthfeelings:

Kaggen: This is the Yoshi of the Mariokart stout world in that it is innoculous, gentle, precise, hits the marks you want, doesn’t go overboard and keeps things ratchet enough to be trill throughout. The sweetness lingers but not like something from Southern Tier/DerkLerd. The roast is gentle but doesnt dry you the fuck out like Darkness. The barrel is restrained and doesn’t pound your face like BBpt5. It is tough to write notes on a beer that is so elegant and reined in execution. The 8oz bottle is such a kick in the dick because I only want more. Of this beer, not kicks to the dick.

Kernjerks: This is actually more interesting on this front than Kaggen because it is so damn sticky and sweet. The smokiness leaves a little bit of drying but the real show it the sweet toffee brittle and oak that lingers for days on your gumline, just making you wish you had dental insurance you poor fuck. The finish of caramel with tobacco sounds gross but it is delicious as fuck if only because I can’t think of anything similar to this.

WINZIPRAR: Konjaks! For reals, the mouthfeel was slick and sticky, smokey and sweet; fucking awesome.

Slay two white whales, only 1 pint drunk, now who we fuckin?

OVERALLS (OSHKOSH DRINKABILITY)

Kaggen: This is easily one of the three best stouts that I have ever had in my life. I cannot honestly think of valid areas of improvement because it just Limit Breaks the fuck out of my mouth, omnislashing all the flavor zones. The balance and robust flavor is irreproachable and well worth the hunt and tick, if your anus is down for that 5:1 sort of shit it will no doubt take. Godspeed you ugly tickers.

Konjaks!: Despite all my nitpicking above, this is still a fantastic beer. This should be viewed on its own and not held to the glaring standards set forth by Kaggen! It is better than Barfly and I have a serious aversion to smoke. It is as complex and fascinating as the cycle of poverty, and equally dark. I would have a tough time recommending going apeshit to lock down this one-off/rare/retired variant, but if you have already beat all the level masters and are going for completionist shit like DDB is all about: IT IS A MUST TICK.

1239 words about two rare ass Swedish beers? BRB cleaning all the cream out of my jeans.

Hill Farmstead Ann, …………………Her.

November 14, 2012 | dontdrinkbeer

THE SAISON MARATHON HAS BEGUN, GOD HELP US ALL.

This is the infamous wine barrel aged saison that I have received no fewer than 4058230985 requests to review. As the grand opening to the saison marathon, I will finally review not only the highest rated saison in the world, but also one of the best beers that I have ever had in my entire beer drinking life. For the uninitiated, this has been heralded as a revelation for the saison style and is an exemplary demonstration of the raw talent seeping out of Hill Farmstead like open prodigious sores. This was a 180 bottle, 1 per person release and if that alone was not enough, shockingly, no one wanted to trade a beer that is damn near perfect. No amount of Daisy Cutter would make it happen. Let’s approach perfection in today’s inherently flawed review.

Let’s get these jokes out of the way: mayonegg, way to place Ann, her? bland, egg, ann hog, is she funny or something? etc.

Hill Farmstead Brewery
Vermont, United States
Saison / Farmhouse Ale | 6.50% ABV

A: This is almost dead on to the style and presents a milky yellow discountenance with incredibly fine microbubbles that present a huge amount of cling. The carbo looks like tiny beds of golden Roe and lace the glass for almost an instant before crackling away. Ann is turbid and has a sort of watery golden hay look to the body with eggshell white bubbles. The bottle gushed a bit upon opening, but that happened with Norma as well and she was damn near perfect as well so, hard to really fault it on that front. A very beautiful beer, and while not at radiant as say, Ithaca Brute, it has this dirty radioactive property to it, just how you like your women.

Respect Ann.

S: This is incredibly complex and I took my time to let this open up to its full bouquet. If you drink this cold, you are 1) an asshole and 2) doing the saison world a disseervice. I would heartily recommend that you let this breathe up to the low 60’s, and it will offer up a deep upside down Spoderman kiss of honey, lightly lactic lemon zest, a faint wheat profile, a gentle amount of funk like sorting through old Marvel trading cards, and finally closes with a fantastic white grape element. At the outset, this beer strays dangerously far from the typical non-BA saison genre, but is better for it. If the outstretched hand from saison to AWA makes you uncomfortable, go drink a Sanctification and think about what could have been, ain’t no one asking you to the Beer Sadie Hawkins Dance anyway.

T: This is lightly tart at the outset with ripe canteloupe and lemon notes that leave a bit of a drying aspect, this gives way to the malt profile which is creamy and reminds me of a fresh grands biscuits, albeit with honey and light pear up in the mix, if that wasn’t enough, the final sharp chardonnay aspect comes in and starts power sanding down the bitter zones with a sand blaster. The crisp finish makes your palate all pissed and wanting another hit of that sweet saison methadone.

After Ann, whenever someone tries to offer me any other beer, I be like-

M: This imparts a huge white grape and pear skin note that is a bit creamy and brackish almost at the same time, which might be confusing for those who don’t have their sea legs in saison/american wild ale territory, notwithstanding, it is beyond excellent in this respect. The mouthfeel has a milky froth that immediately subsides into a drying chardonnay aspect. Like so many gilded age politicians, it gives and takes away with the same hand and your native american tastebuds are left reeling in its wake: discontent and wanting more.

D: This beer effectively will ruin not only the saison genre at large for you due to its complexity, but it will also in a lesser way ruin beer in general for you. It is kinda like how hooking up with 16 year olds is illegal because it makes hooking up too easy and denatures the value of making out in general. Landing this beer is so hard because it is a cautionary tale as to how drinkable and good beer can be at its apex. This doesn’t present a decadent profile like some complex gueuze or imperial stouts, but it imparts a staggering amount of drinkability and just outright uplifting citrus notes. The abv is not only perfectly masked, it comes across as though this beer is actually somehow good for you. The panacea effect is substantial with a beer that is this approachable. You could give this to a teething infant and it would recognize it as a potent elixir, HP/MP fully restored like staying at an inn. I cannot say enough good things about this beer. It is unquestionably the best saison that I have ever had and amongst the beers that I have ever had.

This is how people usually look when they find out that you drank Ann without them.

Narrative: Ann Portinari has served as a seraphim figure for brewers and beer traders in general. Those tedious days of spraying out tanks and cleaning up spent grain were a silent appeal to power. There is a divine undercurrent to manipulating the properties of life, casting away life sustaining wheat to generate even simpler cultures, using them for an ontological purpose. It is in this fashion that each batch is a silent prayer to Ann, an appeal to immortality in a manner that only Herbert Spencer can truly identify. So much beer has been cast through livers and into drains in flailing attempts at benediction or salvation. Ann drapes her wings lovingly over those drunk assholes on a nightly basis, fumbling through their phones to text ex-girlfriends, she is life giver and destroyer. Some would opine that in malt liquors her presence is not felt. Why when Molson needed her most were there only one set of footprints in the mash? It was during those times that the sweet muse carried them. Ann was an overseer of more than beverages, for in alcoholic drinks, man seeks to abrogate reason and become a god by mashing out on 2 full samplers at Denny’s. No dick pic has been sent without her careful intervention and oversight. In brewing parlance, when one has sparged and sparged in endless toil, she lifts one up to beatific perfection, making all other endeavors seems trivial by contrast. In this respect she is both instructive and destructive, sure that cab is $42, but what are you going to do? Leave your car here and then pick it up before streetsweeping at 7 am? Fuck that, Ann has wrapped her golden shroud around you, do sick burnouts and show the world your value.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME. Cantillon Brabantiae, A Beer Born in 1989, Older Than Your Illegitimate Girlfriend.

September 13, 2012 | dontdrinkbeer

Well as if yesterday’s review didn’t push things to absurd new levels, today we have a Cantillon one-off from 1989. You read that right. This was brewed to commemorate a king of Brabant, or a governor, or maybe someone who bought a Chevy Nova in Belgium, I forget the story. Some epic shit happened and Jean Van Roy made this to commemorate that instance. Maybe someone beat Metroid without using the freeze beam and Jean was like “Well fuck all that, I am making a gueuze to make sure everyone knows this went down.” The problem is, not many people were getting their jimmies rustled in 1989 for this style of beer, relative to today. So let’s drink it now, and see what the fuck the business is.

The label has that Walking Dead sort of gothic charm to it, like you know it went through some shit just to be opened on a random weeknight in America.

BroBrah
Brasserie Cantillon
Gueuze | 5.00% ABV

A: This beer needed the ginger touch of a latter day saint and had the fickle cork like the hymen of a finicky prom date. It took a solid 10 minutes to ease that thing out and guess what, 23 years later, a slight hiss emitted and CARBONATION was present. I was seriously surprised. I mean, not enough to pull some Tony Stewart victory spraying all over some white trash people in the south, but admirable. My glass had tons of strange residue and floaties, oak, yeast, cork, god knows what. No lacing, no head, no stems no seeds no sticks.

A blast from the past, that is surprisingly modern.

S: This is hands down the most amazing part of this beer. This reminds me of summer nights walking through musky warm orchards in Fresno, the humidity and tool shed dankness just palpable in the air. You get leather, musk, worn bicycle seat, weightlifting gloves, and crushed leaves. That shit all sounds horrible but in tandem, it is like liquid nostalgia that puts you on your ass with reverence. Go right now, open your old comics or Magic the Gathering ca- oh, you played sports? Well why the fuck are you reading this website? Go do some sports shit, you’re still in shape right?

T: I guess everything in this review needs to be qualified by the fact that this beer is old enough to drink itself. HOW META IS THAT. Anyway, you get a nice sharp acidity that lingers for a moment and subsides into a massive funk like old laundry that imparts this tangelo zest and yearbook paper. It is like being sublimated INTO a piece of the past. It isn’t the best or brightest gueuze ever, but it seriously delivers on that haunting aspect of the past note. I didn’t get any oxidation or dead hand control on this beer, it was still very drinkable and delicious, but it did remind me of dancing to Tony Rich Project in 7th grade.

This is old, musky, and you know some tawdry things went down up in this mix. So much AIM cybering.

M: This was dry and extremely dirty, if that is an apt adjective. There was this entire memory lane aspect to this beer that could not be denied. You ever get caught cleaning your room and you suddenly are looking through all your old Wizards and Nintendo Powers and- oh no? WELL THEN GO DO SOME SPORTS SHIT. This site isn’t for you.

D: This is not drinkable on long sessions. Go to a lake and think about the hottest person you ever kissed, think about the worst, take a picture in sepia, watch a grainy VHS tape of yourself as a paradigm of vanity and try and reconcile that self interested mess with the current person that you have become. Look the past in the face and embrace the Hegelian historical dialectic.

Can you ever really make a 21 year old gueuze relevant to anyone? Only on this site.

Narrative: “ALLLLLRIGHT! We need to ramp up production ten fold for the next fiscal quarter!” The Belgian overlord boomed into the loudspeaker. The Belgian factory workers, sticky with pulp and apple skins could scarcely understand the need for this. Much. Produce. One thin worker began to sob into the sorting machine as he pulled defective granny smiths from the line. “Adelbrecht! Show fortitude! For how else will those who have mild vitamin C needs get their apples? Will they be supplicated with your tears my dear Adelbrecht?” He nodded and thrust his jaw forward and wiped the acidic juice from his face. Little did they know, all of these apples were not for eating, but fermenting. Their hours of tedious labor would be pureed into a slurry of wasted dreams for the swill of mass communication and sociology majors. The grist of their labor would be ground, not unlike their dreams, into a putrid mash to be consumed near rivers by reluctant underaged girls. Adelbrecht’s efforts would be in vain. The past had come full circle, the punishment of the future would be realized on a daily basis, unending, with disaffected prejudice.

dontdrinkbeer

Drinking beer, so you don't have to.

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