Duck-Rabbit Brown Ale

AFFORDABILITY: I was in the Wine Warehouse, where nothing is affordable, so you go from normal thinking to "Ooh! This is only $9 for a six-pack!" thinking. The Duck-Rabbit products were actually even $8.49 a sixer, so I whittled my way down to getting this Brown Ale because my wife be loving on some brown ales. And even though I was wearing semi-dress clothes for my new work that make me uncomfortable and stiff, plus my big Carhartt black jean jacket, I didn't knock any of the tightly packed bottle displays stacked every fucking where in the Wine Warehouse on my way to checkout. 2 out of 5.
DESTROYABILITY: The Duck-Rabbit Brown Ale was good, but it was nothing I would pound with the urgency needed to get my drunken sirens WAAA-WUHHHH WAAA-WUHHHH-ing through my bloodstream with the infusion of insanity that I so desire in this crooked ass world. 2 out of 5.
LABEL AESTHETIC: The Duck-Rabbit Brewery label is very simple and almost inkspot psychological testly-looking, where it is a simple assed duck, but you can turn it sideways and it is a rabbit. The Brown Ale label is, of course, brown, and their whole style is solid colors, very simple looking, which makes it stand out sharp against the back drop of frou-frou superbrew beer labels full of a bunch of allegedly witty descriptives and boring historical data and stupid doohickeys galore. All of that nonsense is just psychic clutter to justify exorbitant microbrew prices to the discerning paranoid consumer. The Duck-Rabbit Brown Ale was packaged so simply and clear that I was like, "Wait, should I get this shit at this price?" because there was no external nonsense to assuage me into wasting money. You were buying a beer, not a pretty label to wash the bottle out and store on a shelf in your hanging out area to show off the obscure stupid bullshit you are into to others who pass through in an attempt to impress them with your wealth of experiences with a fringe culture they may or may not respect. The Duck-Rabbit is the Duck-Rabbit, straight up, no confusion. 5 out of 5.
CORPORATE MASTER: The dude that started the Duck-Rabbit Brewery used to be a philosophy professor at some university, and the whole “duck-rabbit” logo comes from a similar drawing that challenges your perspective from a Wittgenstein book. Plus, they are located in Farmville, although North Carolina not Virginia like I grew up around. Except I did go to a wedding in Farmville, North Carolina, one time, and that whole Piedmont Carolina is like all the good things about where I grew up in Virginia’s neglected armpit of the southside, just with more jobs, thus less hopelessness. This is probably why black dudes in North Carolina and not black dudes in Virginia started rocking donk cars first, because you have to have some sort of hope for the future to pimp your car in such an elevated manner. Also a plus, the Duck-Rabbit Brewery is located in a shitty metal building on a Pine Street in Farmville, and Pine Street is that infamous ass main thoroughfare through Oregon Hill that my first kid was only born half a block off of back in ‘99. All in all, it seems like one of those creative storms where it makes sense that my destiny is to love the Duck-Rabbit offerings, although the more old world slavemaster new world order manufacturers amongst us have learned to engineer these things to create traps for many of us that seems like our destiny but really were just labyrinths meant to cage us up in shitty lives. That would be manifest destiny. Still though, I am tempted to go buy a couple more six-packs of Duck-Rabbit shit right fucking now, and instead of studying more rat brains, maybe I’ll do a little philosophizing and contemplizing in my truck with some semi-cold ones. Which I probably should because I need to write something to perform at this poetry slam thing tonight anyways. I always like the almost always vacant parking lot down beside the multiplex on 29, because people cut through to an apartment building, there’s couches in the woods, and grass grows through cracks in the pavement. Those types of things make for a good suburban environment for getting drunk in your truck and writing shitty paranoid ass hillbilly raps. 6 out of 5.
OVERALL AMBIANCE: I have no qualms whatsoever with this here Duck-Rabbit nonsense, and if I stumbled across it at my convenience, I would heartily partake of it again. I probably wouldn’t go out of my way to find it, but knowing a strong love for Piedmont North Carolina as something that those who believe in either irony or deities would call “God’s Country”, I know I’ll find myself down there at some point, in some bar, with some people, soaking in the vibes, and there will be the surprise of some Duck-Rabbit this or that on tap, and I’ll get it in a frothy pint glass and feel comfortable in doing so, because they seem like decent beer people. 4 out of 5.
TOTAL RATING: 3 & 4/5 STARS!