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This makes the third Pipeworks beer I’ve reviewed in six months of writing this column—excessive from certain points of view, I admit, but restrained when you consider the alarming number of releases the brewery has rolled out since October. My excuse today is that Pipeworks posted to Twitter that they were “very proud” of Raspberry Truffle Abduction, and the last time I heard such strong language from them, it was cofounder Beejay Oslon telling me he thought Citra Ninja was the best beer he’d made so far—a sentiment I turned out to share. (Two more batches of that double IPA are on the way.)

Of course, the good word is well and truly out about Pipeworks, and Raspberry Truffle Abduction has provoked a minor frenzy. I grabbed a bottle at the Binny’s on Marcey on Thursday ($12.99 plus tax), and in the 20 minutes I spent in the store, the shelves were cleared of two full rows of it. Beer manager Adam Vavrick told me it’d been moving like that all day.

Philip Montoro has been an editorial employee of the Reader since 1996 and its music editor since 2004. Pieces he has edited have appeared in Da Capo’s annual Best Music Writing anthologies in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2010, and 2011. He shared two Lisagor Awards in 2019 for a story on gospel pioneer Lou Della Evans-Reid and another in 2021 for Leor Galil's history of Neo, and he’s also split three national awards from the Association of Alternative Newsmedia: one for multimedia in 2019 for his work on the TRiiBE collaboration the Block Beat, and two (in 2020 and 2022) for editing the music writing of Reader staffer Leor Galil. Philip has played scrap metal in Lozenge, drummed with the Disasters, the Afflictions, and Brilliant Pebbles, and sung for the White Outs. He wrote the column Beer and Metal from 2012 till 2015, and hopes to do so again one day. You can also follow him on Twitter.