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Tröegs has a series of experimental Scratch beers that are always interesting, sometimes confounding, and occasionally fantastic. Rare offerings have graduated into the standard lineup, like Flying Mouflan. Some have come and gone, and still others have made repeat appearances, but only in the limited Scratch series batches.

¿Impending Descent? was first made back in 2012 in honor of (or perhaps to spite) the (long since lapsed) Mayan apocalypse, and I absolutely loved that initial offering. Each subsequent year (on Black Friday), they've released another Scratch beer called Impending Descent, though each appears to have been a tweaked recipe. Last year's version, for instance, only clocked in at 9.3% ABV (while the original was 11.9%). Regardless, in accordance with my insatiable desire for local Bourbon Barrel Aged stouts, I've been pining after a BA version of this beer ever since that first taste. With the expansion of Tröegs' Splinter program, I've finally gotten my wish.

So we've got the standard Impending Descent base (which I'm assuming was the same batch as the 2015 Scratch release) with vanilla bean and cocoa added and then aged in Bourbon Barrels for a year. I didn't take notes, but I happened to have one of the regular 2015 Scratch beers on hand, so I tried that earlier in the week. It's held up well, with the major change being that the hops have gone piney and resinous, as they tend to do with age. This follows through on the barrel aged version, which is quite nice, but let's take a closer look, as this descent has been impending for quite some time:

Tröegs Bourbon Barrel Aged Impending Descent - Pours a very dark brown color, almost black, with a finger of light brown head. Smells quite nice, barrel aging apparent, plenty of bourbon, oak, and vanilla, some caramel, some roast, and some piney, resinous hops (which is definitely a result of aging - Impending Descent doesn't have that note when fresh). Taste hits some rich caramel notes, lots of roast and chocolate, with the barrel lending the typical boozy bourbon, oak, and vanilla character, and again you get those aged, piney, resinous bittering hops. Mouthfeel is full bodied, rich, well but appropriately carbonated, a good amount of booze. Overall yep, it's really good! Maybe tone down the hops a bit, but I like it a lot as is... Not going to be a BCBS killer, but would be curious to see how it develops. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 12% ABV bottled (375 ml caged and corked). Drank out of a snifter on 11/25/16.

Glad I made the trip out to Hershey to grab this stuff, though I'm pretty sure it will hit distribution. Worth seeking out, and the price is certainly right (especially compared to that other Black Friday release everyone goes bonkers over, even if I don't think this one quite defeats BCBS). Certainly looking forward to future iterations on this, and the continuing expansion of the Splinter series. Nothing on the immediate horizon, but I'm sure it won't be long before we're reviewing more Tröegs...

This is the second in a series of beers meant to highlight a young Belgian artist, Gaelle Boulanger. There are five planned bottlings, each featuring work from Gaelle. Once the bottles are gone, the art will be auctioned off for her benefit. I don't know any details about this particular piece of art, but it looks like a chart of some kind. I shall dub this piece "Stock Market". I'm sure Gaelle would be appalled, so let's move on.

The beer is, well, who the hell knows? (Serious knowers know!) Dany describes it as a "Strange beer". It's dark, it's funky, might as well just call it a saison because lol, style definitions don't matter. But hey, it's a great looking bottle, fancy foil too. Here goes nothing:

Fantôme Artist 2 - Pours a very dark amber color, almost brown, with several fingers of bubbly light tan head. Not a gusher, but hugely carbonated, and I poured very carefully so as to minimize head and still ended up with a lot. Smells beautiful, sweet, fruity funk, a little musty earth, spicy, maybe even some chocolate, like chocolate covered fruit. Taste hits those sweet and fruity funk notes up front before hitting spice and earthy funk in the middle along with some mitigated dark malt notes and returning to that fruit in the finish, which adds a nice tart note. Mouthfeel is highly carbonated, crisp, and effervescent, medium bodied, relatively dry, though the tart note keeps things sweet enough. Absolutely does not taste like a 10% ABV beer, alcohol hidden well. Overall, this is fabulous, one of the best dark saisons I've had. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 10% ABV bottled (750 ml). Drank out of a flute glass on 11/18/16.

As always, Fantôme is an experience. Maybe one more bottle in the pipeline. And hopefully more Artist bottles will show up soon...

After last year's Dark Wednesday introduction of Java Cask (a top tier bourbon barrel aged imperial coffee stout, at least when it's fresh - the coffee drops off a cliff after a few months or so, which is actually a welcome development for coffee ambivalents like myself, but I digress), they decided to let it ride with another batch this year... plus a variant! Alas, not the "non-coffee" variant I dream about, but rather a Rye barrel aged version.

At first glance, this seems like a pretty minor tweak. Rye whiskey can be very different than bourbon, but it's not that much of a leap, especially considering that it will have to stand up against strong adjuncts like coffee. It turns out that Victory used a different strand of One Village coffee for this one, and the use of Bulleit Rye casks does genuinely impart a distinct character. The resulting beer is almost 2% lower in ABV, but still fabulous. Just to signal my neckbeardedness, it's a brewpub exclusive, and limit of 4 bottles per person. Bill Covaleski was even signing bottles! Let's do this thing:

Victory Java Cask Rye - Pours a dense, very dark brown color, almost black, with almost no head. Smells of, yes, roasted coffee, but also chocolate, oak, and vanilla. Taste starts off sweet, caramel and dark malt, coffee comes out in the middle followed by a nice, spicy rye character that is actually distinct from regular Java Cask. Mouthfeel is full bodied, rich, and chewy (if perhaps a little less so than regular Java Cask), moderate carbonation, plenty of warming booze too. Overall, it's another winner... perhaps not quite at original Java Cask level, but close enough and a worthy variant. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 12.5% ABV bottled (750 ml caged and corked). Drank out of a snifter on 11/23/16. Enjoy By: 17 Nov 2017.

Supposedly, Java Cask original recipe is making the distribution rounds, so if coffee stouts are your thing, make the effort. I hold out hope that Victory will do a non-coffified version someday. As it was, they had a fabulous firkin of Java Cask with vanilla and cacao that was, well, fabulous. I believe I said that already. Jeeze guys. Anywho, Victory has also been teasing something called Victory Red, a Flanders Red style beer that's been in the works for three years. Color me interested. Stay tuned.

I'm not always great about aligning my drinking up to the occasion, but Halloween is one holiday where I try to make the extra effort. I embark upon a six week horror movie marathon and generally attempt to drink some seasonally appropriate beers (or, at least, rationalize completely irrelevant choices). Halloween night always begets something special. Last year, I watched a duo of Wes Craven movies and paired with beers inspired by his work.

One of those beers was Crooked Stave's Nightmare on Brett, a series of sour baltic porters (all of which clock in at the vaguely antichristian ABV of 9.666%) aged in barrels. There are tons of variants, but the one I had last year was aged in Leopold Bros. whiskey barrels with cherries. This year, we take on their newest variant, which is basically the same thing, but aged with blueberries instead of cherries. Sounds glorious, so let's grab our fedora and knife-glove-thingy and haunt the dreams of some beer:

Crooked Stave Nightmare On Brett with Blueberries (Leopold Bros. Whiskey Barrel-Aged) - Pours a very dark brown, almost black color with a finger of tan head. Smells great, hints of roast and chocolate, I don't know if I get blueberries specifically, but it's definitely got a nice chocolate covered berries sort of feel, maybe a note of whiskey and oak too. The blueberries actually do come out in the taste though, their distinct flavor inflecting the sourness, which is pretty substantial (I want to say moreso than the cherry version I had last year, but who knows?) Less in the way of roast or chocolate, as the balance has flown towards the blueberries, but this is still very clearly a sour stout and you kinda get that. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, crisp, medium bodied, with a sharp but pleasant acidity. Moderate richness from the barrels, and a bit of warming booze too. Overall, this is great, but I want to say that the one I had last year was better. I guess I need to do a taste test with both at some point. Woe is me. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 9.666% ABV bottled (375 ml). Drank out of a flute glass on 10/31/16. Batch: January 2016 (pretty sure it was only released in September though).

Crooked Stave does it right, as per usual. Will always be on the lookout for more of their wares. Many thanks to Kaedrin friend Danur for procuring this bottle and smuggling it back to PA for me.

When I was a kid, I collected coins. And not just those goofy books with slots for each year's penny, I went all out, grading them (XF-45 bro), putting them in fancy individual casings, and so on. Yes, I was a nerd, I believe we've already established that, quit screaming "NERD!" at the top of your lungs. Anyway, Buffalo nickels (aka Indian Head nickels) were interesting because the ill-advised design lead to normal wear and tear basically erasing the year from the coin (since it was on a raised area of the engraving, it was the first to fade). Still, it was a nice design, as you might expect when Teddy Roosevelt's administration started on a mission to "beautify" the nation's coinage. All our coin designs these days are boring old presidents. Those older coins were great, with a million variations on lady liberty, Mercury wings, buffalo, Native Americans, shields, and so on. These days we're stuck with a cavalcade of presidents. Nice, I guess, but it could use some updating, no?

Anywho! This is a pair of barrel aged beers from New Jersey's Double Nickel brewing company, both Buffalo Nickel inspired. Or at least named after them. I mean, nickel is a toxic transition metal and thus not a great ingredient in beer. But I digress. Again. Anyway, a friend had brought both of these to a bottle share a while back, and I was pretty impressed, but then, it's tricky to really evaluate beer at a share. Too many flavors, tiny pours, and so on. So during a recent sojourn into the Garden State, I saw these and jumped on them. I mean, I quickly purchased them. I didn't literally jump on them. That would have hurt. As expected, slightly different perception when drinking by themselves, though I still really enjoyed them. One of the most interesting things about them is that they're relatively low alcohol for bourbon barrel aged beers. 8-8.5% is reasonably high, but compared to the normal 13+% we see, these are pretty svelte. Let's see how they hold up:

Double Nickel Marbled Buffalo - Pours a clear dark brown color, amber highlights, with a finger of light tan head. Smells great, toffee, rye spice, hints of bourbon, oak, and vanilla. Taste hits those spicy rye notes hard, a little rich caramel and toffee, bourbon, oak, and vanilla. Really impressed by the rye character here. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, medium bodied, moderate richness, goes down pretty easy. Overall, this is a fascinating beer, nice barrel character, but the lower ABV makes it more approachable than your typical take. The rye comes through really well. Unique and complex. Borderline high B+ or low A-

Beer Nerd Details: 8% ABV bottled (22 ounce bomber). Drank out of a snifter on 10/28/16. Bottle No. 142 of 1800.

Double Nickel Buffalo Nickel - Pours a very dark brown, almost black color, with half a finger of light brown head. Smells of caramel and vanilla, with hints of bourbon and oak, and maybe some faint roast. Taste is rich caramel and vanilla, with some roast and maybe even a little hop character floating around in the middle, finishing on a bourbon and oak note. Mouthfeel is slightly less carbonated, rich, full bodied, but still pretty approachable. Overall, nowhere near as unique, but a solid little BBA imperial stout, all the more impressive because of the lowish ABV. Quite nice. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 8.5% ABV bottled (22 ounce bomber). Drank out of a snifter on 10/28/16. Bottle No. 1516 of 1800.

These beers made a pretty great first impression on me, and being located in Pennsauken, New Jersey, they might be closer than a lot of great PA breweries I visit on the regular, so you'll probably see more from them here at some point...

Schaerbeek is nicknamed "the city of donkeys" because they are ruled by a master race of giant, hyper-intelligent donkeys (and I, for one, welcome our new donkey overlords and would like to remind them that as a trusted blogging personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground cherry caves.) Or, you know, people of Schaerbeek, who were cultivators of sour cherries, would use donkeys to transport their precious cargo to its various destinations. One of those things. Anyway, the traditional cherries used in lambic krieks came from that region, but as lambic production has increased, the usage of authentic Schaarbeekse cherries has lessened due to obvious supply and demand pressures. Many breweries risk the "wrath of the donkeys" to do limited runs of their standard krieks with Schaarbeekse cherries, and the result is generally considered a step above the normal kriek offerings.

Hanssens tends to be known more for their Gueuze, which is very good, but when you take their standard kriek (a middle-of-the-road fruited lambic offering, quite nice but not a monster at all) and substitute those Schaarbeekse cherries, they manage to put out an interesting special release. Which, of course, is what we have here.

Hanssens Oude Kriek Handgeplutkte Schaarbeekse Krieken - Pours a deep, dark red color with a little fizzy head that is not long for this world. Smells great, tons of cherry character, but also some oaky aromas and a very nice earthy funk too. Taste has a nice and rich cherry flavor, plenty of oak, and a little earthy funk livening things up (or, er, grounding them?) Sourness peeks in towards the middle and intensifies through the finish. More acetic than usual, but not at all inappropriate and still well balanced. Mouthfeel is medium bodied, a bit low on the carbonation (but nowhere near still), a little sticky or syrupy, but still pleasantly so, moderate to high acidity. Overall, this is delicious. A slight increase in carbonation would make this one a classic. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 375 ml bottled(375 ml caged and corked). Drank out of a flute glass on 10/29/16. Bottled: March 2015.

So that's a nice offering from Hanssens, a mildly underrated lambic producer (I have not reviewed their Gueuze, but it's good and reliably available).

So we continue our tour through the swanky realm of Belgian style ales blended with a small proportion of lambic. In this case, Brouwerij Kerkom takes a less bitter version of their standard Belgian Pale Ale and blends in about 20% lambic. Sourcing details are sketchy, but rumor has it that the initial batch was from Drie Fonteinen (perhaps another consequence of the infamous thermostat incident), while subsequent batches vary. Some say Girardin, some say Boon, others say they are sworn to secrecy. The beer is named after the first beer brewed at Kerkom, way back in 1878.

Brouwerij Kerkom Reuss - Pours a bright golden yellow color with several fingers of fluffy, big bubbled head and lots of visible carbonation. Bottle wasn't quite a gusher, but that cork came out with authority and if I didn't pour quickly, it would have overflowed. Smells quite nice, musty Belgian yeast, spicy and fruity with an earthy component and that lambic twang. Taste hits those fruity esters pretty hard, lightly tart, but it's brought into check by the spicy Belgian yeast and a bit of earthiness in the middle, finishing again on that tart note. Mouthfeel is highly carbonated and effervescent, but crisp and refreshing, light to medium bodied, very approachable. Overall, this is fantastic and strikes a good balance with the blended lambic. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 6.5% ABV bottled (750 ml caged and corked). Drank out of a tulip glass on 10/22/16. Bottled 07 04 15 (from the cork).

Kerkom actually makes a beer called Bink Grand Cru which is one of my favorite Belgian Beer Roulette discoveries, even if I haven't seen it around in a while. I should seek out another bottle of that stuff, and might as well try out some of their other offerings. They're two for two so far, s

Richmond, Virginia's The Veil Brewing Co. opened it's doors around six months ago. Brewer Matt Tarpey spent some time at several Northeast breweries, including the likes of The Alchemist and Hill Farmstead, as well as completing an apprenticeship with Jean Van Roy at Cantillon in Belgium. That's a pretty impressive pedigree. Since they're just getting started, I imagine their spontaneous fermentation program will take some time to develop, but their IPA game is already turning heads amongst the beer dork community.

The name of the brewery comes from Tarpey's time in Belgium. He was discussing pellicles, the thin film that forms on top of the beer during spontaneous fermentation, and he noted that "Jean has a lot of friends in Italy that are natural winemakers and he told me that his friends in Italy call pellicles 'the veil.' That moment was very special and I just remembered it..."

I managed to get my grubby little biscuit snatchers on four different cans of relatively fresh stuff. No spontaneous fermentation here, but one great IPA, two interesting takes, and one that didn't work out. So a pretty decent batting average and a promising start. I'm really intrigued to see where these folks go next.

The Veil Crucial Crucial Aunt Aunt - Double Mango Double Dry Hopped Double IPA - Pours a cloudy, turbid yellow orange color (orange juice looking) with a finger of white, fluffy head, good retention, and some lacing. Smells of pure, unadulterated, juicy citrus hops. Taste starts off very sweet up front, hitting lots of those juicy citrus hops in the middle before heading to a balancing bitter hop town in the finish. Mouthfeel is well carbonated, fine, medium bodied, juicy up front but more dry in the finish. Overall, this is a rock solid Northeast IPA and it's delicious. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 8.4% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 10/7/16. Canned on 09/20/16.

The Veil Joooseee Boizzz - Triple IPA with Raspberries, a collaboration with Monkish (another brewery that I need to become more familiar with) - Pours a milky orange amber color with a couple fingers of off white, almost pink head. Smells of fruity, juicy hops, but also a sorta fruit roll ups or fruit by the foot aroma. Taste follows the nose, lots of citrus hops, ample malt backbone, and some more gummy fruity notes. Sometimes this came off as a sorta artificial feel, as befits fruit roll-ups, but it was still pretty darn tasty. Mouthfeel is full bodied and heavy, well carbed, but certainly a sipper. Overall it's an interesting and tasty beer, worth checking out. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 11% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 10/9/16. Canned on 09/20/16.

The Veil Boss Man - Sour Double IPA - Pours a golden orange color with a finger of white head that doesn't last too long. Smells of citrus and some sort of souring twang. Taste is quite sour right from the start, some resinous citrus hops, but mostly dominated by that sourness with a bitter hop note towards the finish. Mouthfeel is medium bodied, well carbonated, and quite acidic. Overall, the notion of sour IPAs always seems to disappoint me. It is well crafted, for sure, but not really my thing. B-

Beer Nerd Details: 8.7% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 10/14/16. Canned on 09/19/16.

The Veil That Part - Double IPA hopped exclusively with New Zealand Wai-iti hops - Pours a murky golden color with a couple fingers of fluffy head. Smells... odd, almost like bubble gum, but with some strange notes. Hop notes almost absent. Not bad, per say, but certainly not your traditional IPA. Taste is, ugh, not good. Something is wrong with this. Astringent, off flavors, weirdly spicy, and earthy (and not in a good, funky way). I'm guessing it's a yeast problem and I'm curious if it fared better when it was initially canned... but then, it's only been a little more than three weeks. Mouthfeel is again kinda weird, medium bodied, well carbed, but again with some sort of strange astringency. Overall, yeah, avoid this one. I may have gotten a bad can or something, but this is really awful. F

Beer Nerd Details: 8.5% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 10/14/16. Canned on 09/20/16.

Many thanks to fellow beer nerd Nick for making the trip down to Virginia and securing these cans for me. He's a great American, and I'll be discussing more of his generous acquisitions later this week as well.