Side Project Brewing (2024)

They held back most of the bottles for the October in the Field event this weekend

 

The only ones I've had from SP that were overly sweet were the Coconut Vibes. Most of the AC stouts are called imperial sweet stouts. Which others from SP did you find to be sweet?

I agree that the other ones you mentioned are super sweet. Weldwerks is entering that territory as well.

 

I missed that one by a few days

Phase Three ventures into too sweet for my palate at times, too.

 

I think the problem is too many people are drinking these stouts in thimbles during tastings with 30 or more other beers. And too many people are doing this exclusively, getting to used to this being the norm instead of what should be a less frequent occasion relative to larger session pours, especially with how easy they are to access these days.

It's hard to get a good grasp of a beverage's residual sweetness without having at least a solid eight ounces. The massive barrel profile SP achieves is commendable, but it conceals how unbelievably sweet even their non-adjunct stouts (which actually don't exist since they admitted they all have lactose) are.

When you look at breweries like Bottle Logic, people consider them sweet because the adjuncts they use are usually extremely prominent and expressive, but if you drink a whole bottle you find they're actually surprisingly, consistently clean and dry through the finish. It's almost impossible to do the same with any SP bottle. Your palate starts getting overwhelmingly sticky and fatigued, while your head starts getting a sugar rush and crash/headache. Again, these things are hard to notice when you're just doing little tasters and moving on, bouncing between styles, and so on.

I'm not equating BL to SP, they do different things for different people, but just using them as an illustration. Those other breweries I mentioned don't even bother to attempt to clean sugars up with oak/tannins, overwhelming the flavor profile with an absurdly cloying sweetness that comes across as artificial, even if it isn't. WeldWerks definitely has a few that go way over the top, especially some that pour like pudding, but at least they aren't consistently horrible like Horus.

As a sidebar, I think all these little taster shares have contributed to a palate shift in those people who are on the more extreme end of doing them. Don't get me wrong, I love a big share, but some people really need to force themselves into a palate reset with some bitter beer or spirits, or even a sober week/month. What's great right now is that there are some excellent West Coats IPAs coming back into favor from new and old breweries. Even Three Floyd's reviving some of their old school portfolio is proving to be better than I ever remember. Not to mention the growing NA scene elsewhere.

 

Snagged both as well. I just can’t seem to kick this sweet tooth. lol

 

I don't do big shares and consume the vast majority of my beer by myself, so no thimble sized servings here. Typically, I will drink the 750ml bottles split over the course of two days but sometimes I'm feeling spry and will down the whole bottle in a sitting. The 375ml bottles are always a single sitting. From my experiences, Side Projects non-adjunct stuff doesn't drink sweet to my palate whereas their adjunct stuff definitely drinks sweeter, but I've never experienced a sugar rush or crash from drinking them. The handful of Angry Chair beers I have had, have been undrinkable in comparison due to sweetness. Horus is very much in this same group for my own tastes as well as Weldwerks. The biggest difference I have found between Side Project and some of the pastry brewers that were referenced is the ability to use adjuncts and not drown out the barrel which to me, provides much needed balance. Adjuncts should complement or enhance the base beer, not be the whole flavor profile. Too often with breweries like Horus, Angry Chair and Weldwerks, I find that they tend to go overboard with the adjuncts and mute any barrel characteristics. They come off as flabby, excessive, overly sweet and unbalanced. I had this same experience with Monkish's BALTS. They claim the beer was rested in barrels for some extended period of time and yet I couldn't even tell it was a barrel aged beer because of the sugar overload. It was all just one note, and that one note was excessive sweetness. Three quarters of that bottle went down the drain. You need those barrel flavors and heat to cut through the sweetness and balance the experience. Maybe that's really the problem with these other breweries, no balance as opposed to just being too sweet? Some breweries are just better than others at nailing that balance.

 

I don't think I'd have gone after these if I wasn't going to be 45 mins from the brewery during the pickup window - I bet I like these less than most given my thoughts on AC - but who knows. We shall see.

 

Next time mix a non-adjunct BA stout in with a bottle if you think it is too sweet. I use Deth Tar from Revolution when I come across an excessively sweet beer. Really does wonders but it is a pain to have to do. That is why I steer clear from all the sweet breweries listed here and Phase Three.

 

Considering I have some cans of Deths Tar on hand, I'll definitely keep this in mind. Thanks!

 

Deths Tar is so underrated. Had that at a line share a while back and still remember it fondly. That and Black Tuesday were standouts.

 

I get a few 4-packs every year. One of the best bang for your bucks.

 

Good observations from Sabtos and TurkeysDrink. I too will drink at least 6-8oz and the first sip is always the sweetest and then my palate adjusts.

 

Rereading the description of the TreeHouse/Side Project collab, what the hell was Side Project’s involvement with this beer? I’m confused but I also could be an idiot. It sounds like he sampled the various barrel aged beers brewed by Tree House and told them “this is good”.

 

My first trade ever was becuase i was seeking this one out, but 2nd year after label change i couldn't drink it. It's on some 'way too sweet' stuff for me.
Luckily i discovered Repo Man and that's my fave now

 

Sounds like they did some tasting and he recommended some barrels, they chose some barrels, then they blended. So, his contribution was a thoughtful level of thoughtfulness? Probably a fun ass day if you're CK.

Here's the description...

TreeSide is a barrel-aged stout thoughtfully constructed by the specialty beer team at Tree House with insight and participation from Cory King of Side Project Brewing in St. Louis, Missouri.

In late August we curated a selection of various stout barrels, aging in and around the two year mark, to be used for a blending session. Upon tasting, Cory focused on barrels that carried rich fudgy and cocoa dust notes, while the Tree House team selected barrels offering roundness and complexity. The resulting blend is a novel expression of barrel threads from the Tree House archive, greatly enhanced by Cory's touch.

TreeSide is greater than the sum of its parts, thanks to the combined expertise of both breweries.

 

You must have a very low sugar tolerance!

 

Collabs are always about who brewed them, never about the collaborator. SP brewed collabs are always ranked much higher than the collaborator brewed version. When they brew together, at least there is some influence by each brewer as to the base stout. In this case, the only collaboration was blending advising.

If you like TH stouts, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this the same. If you don’t, then I am sure CKs involvement won’t change that.

 

Video they made about TreeSide that just popped up for me.

 

yea that’s how I took it too, no longer strange to me as Brad does this with a lot of his collabs. Kyle from Horus came and tasted a bunch of stuff and they blended it together with his input. When you got a lot of stuff sounds like a fun time. The part I don’t get is the treehouse picking and blending their half into it.

also had anyone actually tried it yet?