With that small defense of our absence, let me dive right in to our next brewery: Trvu Brewery! I don't remember the format I used before, but here it goes:
Brewery: Trve Brewery
Location: 227 Broadway #101, Denver, CO 80203
Price: $2/3 oz pour. Prices vary for larger glasses of beer. We just got samples, as we always do.
First Impressions:
This place is metal as fuck. Imagine the place Glenn Danzig would go to drink, then imagine Dimebag Darryl walking in and being like "Glenn, hook me up with a beer!" They would pour it from a tap that looked something like this:
You see that shit? It's all horns and candles and Tarot images. I feel like I should go to a park with a shotgun after going to this place. Too soon? Probably. Super metal? Definitely! The whole time we were there, they were playing some crazy heavy metal shit with double bass drums, growling vocals and...well, metal. METAL!!!!
This is seriously the second most metal thing I've experienced (number one is seeing Axl Rose smoking crack).
The beers
This is a pretty solid mild. Is it a strong mild? No. It's mild. What's wrong with you? Why would you expect a mild to be strong? Do you not own a dictionary? Why do you not own a dictionary? Heathen. I don't even know if I can associate with you any more. I'm sorry, baby. I didn't mean it. I baked you this cake.
Back to the beer. This mild, on first taste it feels like it will be bitter, an then draws back at just the right time. It approaches the precipice and then, what do we say to bitterness? Not today. Not today.
Rating: 7 demon hands out of 10.
Caleb: J took roughly 39 hours to compose that shit review of one beer. One beer. I will be much quicker, what with brevity being the soul of wit and all.
First, my impression of the brewery. It was fuckin metal as fuck. Like if Iron Man took a shit, that's how metal it was. The servers were both metal chicks and there were melted candles and goat horns as far as the eye could see. The servers were metal in that way where you could tell underneath their bad makeup and tattoos that they were hot. J and I did not get a tray with our beers and when someone else did, J called our servers out on it. I honestly thought she was going to punch J in the face. Here is how metal our servers were, in my journal I wanted to write that our server was kinda bitchy which was sooo metal. But I was afraid that she would see it so I wrote "Server is kinda ______, that's soooo metal." We asked for stickers and were given them. I think we asked for them in 1984 and finally got them open like 20 minutes ago. Apparently easy to open stickers are so not metal. While J used Demon hands to review his beers, I will go to the true source of Metal and use Ronnie James Dio as my benchmark. Ronnie James Dio is a perfect 10, everything else is how well the beer measures up to that standard.
Aura (British Mild, 4.7%):
Trve to it's name, this beer is mild. It tastes like it was briefly aged in a wine barrel but not long enough to give it a real flavor. There was almost no carbonation to this beer which I almost never like. I needs me some carbonation in my carbonated malt beverages. This beer is decent, I don't hate it by any means but I won't drink it again. This was my least favorite of the brewery and I am sorry J started out on this one because the others are far better. Out of a perfect Ronnie James Dio, this gets a 4 out of 10, or a Def Leopard out of Dio.
Tunnel of Trees IPA: 6.6% ABV
When our slightly rude waiter asked us what we wanted, I said that I was not a huge IPA fan. Being slightly rude, she immediately said that I should try their IPA. She said it was their most popular beer and when I asked he if it tasted like cat pee, she insisted it did not. As a bit of a side note, she had a necklace on that looked like a ladder that ended at her boobs. My eyes had already made that trip, I did not need the steps. After trying not to be obvious about where my eyes were looking, I tried the beer. As much as I hate to say the rude booby lady was right, she was right. The first taste was really heavy on hops and bitter but that very quickly went away and the rest of the beer was very floral and nicely balanced. In my notes I said "Bravo!", but I'm not sure that's what metal people say so I won't say that. I really liked this beer so i gave it a 8 out of 10, or a Judas Priest out of Dio.
J: Honestly, just read through the last four paragraphs and ask yourself, as I just did, why are the two of us not writing movies? The answer is, "Because we have ideas that fill five minutes, and no more." Regardless, welcome back to the cultured, measured, reasoned side of this bullshit. I really don't know why I even bother, sometimes.
IPA? You wanna guess how I felt about it? First, that sommabitch had a really fruity nose. It wasn't as "green" smelling as most IPAs I run across. It gave me some hope to start with. On the other hand, I could detect the use of Amarillo hops, which smell and taste like cat pee. That was not the greatest, unless you are a Toxco Plasmotic American and have bacteria controlling your thoughts and feelings. Brains are weird. Upon tasting, I felt that the cat pee aspect of the Amarillo was not actually necessary to the hop itself. It had
a deep complexity that I was surprised by. To be honest, I wasn't UNhappy with this beer, but it didn't do much for me. I would give it a 6, or, using a much better scale, a "Use Your Illusion"
Wunderlust (Belgio-American Pale Ale, 5.8% ABV):
This was a terribly confusing beer for me. There are some floral characteristics in the nose, but I couldn't decide if it came from the hops or from the spices (orange peel and coriander). This beer was quite spicy and floral, but I cannot say if it's hoppy or not. It's fairly sweet and has some interesting flavor undertones, but it is entirely possible that the menudo I had for lunch is masking a lot of the subtly here. To be generous, I gave it a 6, or an "Appetite for Destruction" out of Dio.
Vunderlust! (Belgio-American Pale Ale, 5.8% ABV)
My notes are fairly positive on this beer, though right now I don't remember it at all. I noted that it was a solid beer with a malty finish that was not overwhelming. It would go great with food, bar food in particular. I am eating pizza right now, so maybe I could have it now. I put that it was consistently drinkable and the one I would go back to again if I drank there. I kinda wish I remembered it, cause it sounds awesome. I ranked it an 8 out of 10 which I already had with a Judas Priest out of Dio, so I will change it up and make this a Iron Maiden out of Dio. Run to the Hills to get this beer.
Stout O))) 5.8% ABV
First off, I have no fuckin clue why there are the three ")'s" after the O. Is that another metal thing that I don't understand? Since I am a fuckin genius, I am gonna go ahead and assume that they are just idiots. That being said, this was a solid stout. Nothing terribly remarkable, but enjoyable and I would have it again. The more porters and stouts I have, the more I realize that they are fairly similar in taste. That is not a bad thing as I enjoy them both, but it's hard to find a remarkable one. This had a smooth taste with chocolate overtones and strong vanilla flavoring. i gave it a 6 out of 10, so in my books, that a Metallica, For Whom The Bell Tolls out of Dio.
Back to J.
Anyone who doesn't realize that the parentheticals on Stout O))) represent sound waves coming out of a speaker should be taken out into the street and be beaten within an inch of their lives. Any doubts should be met with fierce resistance and, frankly, righteous anger. It's boggling how someone could not understand that. What am I even doing with this uncultured heathen? Please, Neptune, come rescue me.
As for the beer, it was OK. It had the right flavor profile of a stout, but not the body to back it up, much like an aging wrestler, who can walk the walk, but remains sad and flabby.
This beer was really the Rick Flair of stouts. Good flavor, unattractive body. I would give it a 7.5, or
a Dave Mustaine out of Dio.
This beer was a lot like the stout, but just a little lighter, as I would expect out of a porter. To fully appreciate it, I should probably have drunk it before the stout, but I drank the beers in the order they were delivered. I may not have a lot, but I have the law, dammit. What do you want from a porter? Where does it lie in the pantheon of beers? It's a tough question. This one was a typical porter, in that it was a light stout. It was a little less dark in flavor, and had the same thin body. I would rate it slightly lower than the stout, and give it a 7 or a Jethro Tull out of Dio.
Caleb: First off, Jethro fucking Tull is a 7? Dio is rolling over in his tiny, tiny grave about that one. Second, I would have guessed that if anyone was going to make a lame wrestling analogy, it was clearly gonna be me. I was wrong.
Dunwich (Porter, 5.4% ABV)
My notes say this is a "robust' porter. Be a lamb and hold tight whilst I look up the definition of robust. OK, the lovely people at Google say that robust means "strong and healthy; vigorous.". I am not sure anyone could call any beer "healthy" no matter what those fucks at Michelob Ultra would have you believe. No one is running a goddamn marathon on beer. I have never really felt vigorous after a beer either. I have felt tired, drunk, fighty, willing to sleep with random people, etc. after beers, but not vigorous. So right off the bat, this beer loses 2 points for the stupid name. I did enjoy this beer though, for a porter it had a very clean finish and malty flavors that reminded me more of an ale than a porter. The actual review was a 7.5 out of 10, but since it lost points, I give it a 5.5 out of 10. In my mind, that is a Motley Crue out of Dio.
Caleb: Finally after seeming 93 hours of having to listen to J ramble, we are at our last "beer". Quotation marks are almost a never a good thing.
Hellion American Table Beer (What the fuck??) 4.2% ABV
First off, American Table Beer? Do American tables taste different than others? Do we use the blood of the oppressed to stain our wood before it is finished? Why would you want a beer that tastes like that? Is this a metal thing again? I really need a sad looking Nordic fellow wearing all black to explain metal to me. Either way, I am clearly stalling so I don't have to get to this shit of a beer.
Despite a solid beer-y smell, there was almost no flavor to this beer and what was there was not great. Almost no table taste, American or otherwise. This gets my lowest score of the day a 3 out of 10. Or, the dreaded Poison out of Dio.
J: OK, first, I'm calling shenanigans on the false advertising here. I, personally, live in America and own a table, and this beer tasted nothing like licking my table. Is that good? Is that bad? I dunno. How well do you like pork chops and desperation? Do you like beers that are sour? Not a sour beer, but just a beer that has been left out too long. How about beers that taste like ammonia? Does that do anything for ya, tiger? No? Me neither. This one was disappointing all around. Firstly, it didn't taste much beer. Secondly, it didn't taste like an American table. I seriously doubt I would have been happy with that second one, but it would have been something above "basic beer" level. However, I cannot give it more than a 4, or a Whitesnake out of Dio.
I would like to leave you with this thought. We were sitting in Trve brewery, watching the metal chick bartenders decide on music to play, and, obviously, wondered if they would take requests. The best we came up with was "Barry Metalow", singer of "Copa Cabana" in a growl. While it made us laugh, in retrospect, the idea was so bad we gave it a 1, or
