My week with Bloomington Brewing Co. (Part I)

Out of pure universal convergence, I ended up drinking most of Bloomington Brewing Co. offerings in one week... and it was awesome.

This post is an amalgam of sorts.  It doesn't really fit into our usual forms.  It's more of an anecdote that winds through a lot of what we talk about here on the blog.  I would piece it out, but the gestalt is way more interesting than just a review of a nitro pour java stout (oh yes, we will get to that).

I celebrated Presidents Day by helping some friends find a place to live in Bloomington and day drinking at Lenny's, the restaurant that is the one half of the sympathetic symbiosis with the other being Bloomington Brewing Co.(BBC).  Of course the food was great.  Of course that could have been because I ordered and drank most of a flight on an empty stomach.  The food was trumped by the two highlights of my tasting,  the Java Porter, and the Ole Floyd Belgian Strong Ale.

The Java Porter was excellent.  Creamy head and mouth feel.  Strong chocolate malt and coffee nose.  It was a wonderful combination of boozey coffee and sweet syrup smoothness.

Then it went next level with a Nitro pour of the Java Porter.

This brew really benefited from such a smooth pour.  The mouth feel was like cream taken from the rivers of heaven.  Seriously.  It was nice to have such a velvety background to launch all those aforementioned flavors to the front.  The same could be said for their Big Stone Stout.  With CO2, it was kind of watery, but with the Nitro, it was very smooth, and richer to taste.  Truly a treat.

I would give the Nitro Java Stout a 4.5, without nitro, a solid 4.




The new specialty beer was their Ole Floyd Belgian Strong Ale.  Belgian Strong Ales have become a new crush of mine, so I was excited to taste BBCs new offering.

It smelled like boozey and sweet and felt the same.  The taste was rich and complex.  The candy sugars added more to the complexity of the taste than to syrupy sweetness, which was also helped by the alcohol cutting through the malts and sugars.  It was like a beer port and was very enjoyable.

I would easily give it a 4



In order to shorten the post, I will continue in Part II, when, a week later, I accidently stumble into a BBC tap takeover and one of the brewers set up shop next to me and chatted me up