Crusher
Casey Brewing & Blending and Barrel Cellar

Joining forces with Side Project, Casey finds a partner to tag team the tastebuds with sourness. Throw in a copious amount of grapes and a collaboration beer of sour proportions leaves the tastebuds beaten and battered.

Pale gold and carrying a slight haze, the vinous looking beer is just getting started. Sharing little in the way of froth, Crusher teases the senses with a blend of citrus, cider, white wine and floral fruits along with a piquant acidity to tingle the nose. Scant sweetness graces the tongue with light wafer, a dash of pixie stix and sourdough before wisping away. What trails behind is a juicy merlot grape flavor, wrapped in lime, lemon, passionfruit, gooseberry and crabapple. Slightly funky, the finish is of dried burlap and weathered woods in a dry and refreshing afterglow.

Light, crisp and truly crushable, the session is effortless on the palate and stomach if you can handle the bracingly sour finish.

 

 

 

 

This is the Merlot (12/13/19) batch.

This one pours a slightly murky purplish color, with a small head, and a little bit of lacing.

This smells like like funky Welch's grape juice, oak, red wine, and some almost jammy bluberry like character.

This has a nice sweet and jammy grape character, with red wine and blackberry/blueberry type flavors. There's some oaky wine barrel, and a touch of vanilla. It leans a bit more sweet than I expect from Casey, but that's fine.

This is creamy, and medium bodied, with a good drinkability, and not much acidity to it.

I don't always gravitate to grape sours, but I Really like how this one felt to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a grape version of jammy and leaner, and a really solid beer, hard to argue quality in something this objectively delicious and good, but ill play devils advocate here and say this didnt floor me like it should for its relative rarity and the hype behind it, let alone the two legends who made it together. i wanted more from it, ill say it. its a gorgeous lavender color, deep and just a little hazy, purple and red winey looking also, not a huge head on it after the initial pour, but plenty of life to this anyway. the nose is funky and tart as expected, but not as wild as i hoped, its a little more casey and a little less side project to me, in terms of fermentation profile, which means more brett less acid, generally speaking, and i appreciate that here. i think the grapes and the oak bring enough tannic elements and the higher funk is nice. the fruit is awesome, the best part of this for me, and while i have not known great wines to come from colorado yet, it sure seems like this merlot fruit is high quality, which i guess is more an indictment of the winemakers than anything, its like grape candy in the nose, still some sweetness in the taste, maybe not obviously merlot, but definitely a bigger, lush, dark fruity grape and its very natural and bold in the taste here, really nice. i wanted the fermentation profile to be more distinct, and while i like the casey funk over the side project sour, this is also quite piquant and honestly a little bit simplistic, knowable, and samey to me, especially from these guys. more time in the bottle may help that, it appears to still be in its infancy in terms of evolution, even though there is woody and tart maturity here too. overall a delicious beer thats hard to be too critical of, but i expect so much from these breweries that i thought and hoped this would be life changing. it fell well short of that, but is a lovely grape wild beer that still deserves some of the credit its getting.