Founders CBS in Seattle?

I've seen soooo many posters stating, "maybe it's just my palate" while relating to Founders recent BA offerings. I think the fact that many are willing to cut them some slack shows that they really want to like those brews like a perfect prize. The fact that it doesn't measure up to past experience, speaks volumes.

I had no expectations and thought the CBS and recent KBS were both enjoyable, but many other BA stouts (at a lesser price point too) have surpassed Founder's recent offerings.

 

I never had any of the original versions, but I had this year's version today. I thought it was a bit thin and lacked the kind of barrel I'm used to with some good PNW barrel-aged beers. I shared it with some "coors/Jameson" drinking family members and they liked last year's big bad baptista a whole lot more. I agreed with them. If you're still on the fence about this one, I say get yourself a Fremont Dark Star and a sixer of willetized.

 

I’d honestly rather have Breakfast stout over both KBS and CBS. But ain’t nobody wanna talk about a cheap 4 pack.

 

I very slightly prefer KBS to breakfast but for the price difference, there's no contest. FBS is something I'll buy regularly all year long, now that it isn't seasonal.
Edit: realized after posting I didn't even mention CBS. That's really all I need to say about that.

 

In fairness, this forum has no less than a few threads devoted to the appreciation of our local, inexpensive shelf beers; and when FBS finally became one of them a year ago, many folks were quite pleased about its introduction to our market. Those sentiments were even articulated here. Some of us have even remembered them.

Of course it's not surprising that CBS got its own thread, and has stimulated the preponderance of recent conversation. A highly rated and almost "legendary" (scare quotes are my own) beer not bottled in several years and not previously seen locally (with some minor exceptions?) suddenly showing up will do that. This is just how the human attention span works.

Personally, having now tried it, I'd put CBS further than I would have expected down my Founders dark beer totem pole (i.e., FIS>Porter>KBS>FBS>CBS). And especially when monetary value is a factor, which, for most of us, it is. That's not to say I didn't like it, or found it to be a bad beer. I did, and it isn't - especially for one produced at such a scale. I also respect its status as an OG envelope-pusher for complex and nuanced barrel-aging. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then a lot of other breweries are presently paying Founders a great deal of respect. And rabid beer-nerd consumers are rewarding those who do. Pedigree and precedent-setting are surely not the be-all and end-all, but they count for something. At least to me.

CBS has definitely been surpassed within its style, but I credit the brewery for bringing it back (and with such wide distribution), and for imagining it in the first place. And I credit Founders, too, for making some of the best commercially produced dark beers out there. This particular example may be last on my own subjective hierarchy, but that's more a reflection of the outstanding quality of the others, to my way of thinking, than it is the shortcomings of this one.

It's also a reflection of the marked progress and exacting control and mastery among a dozen or (or two) other NW breweries in recent years, plain and simple. We should certainly pop balloons, whenever appropriate, but we should not consume our progenitors. Their DNA is part of us, and helped shape us, no?