Mimi's Tabernacle

We haven't highlighted Indiana City before on the blog, and that's probably our bad, but we really haven't heard much from the community about these guys.

As a sucker for anything barrel aged, when they released their Crimson Bombshell I had to go down and give it a try. It was pretty good, but it was a barrel aged imperial red. Reds aren't what I normally think of when I'm looking for a barrel aged beer. 

Crimson Bombshell was good, but Mimi's Tabernacle is great. It's a big 8% stout with oatmeal, maple syrup and Dutch chocolate. This is the perfect beer to put in a barrel. I had to have it.



Indiana City calls Mimi's Tabernacle is a "breakfast stout." We will not be doing a BREWniversity style guideline on this anytime soon, because it's really not an official style. When most people hear breakfast stout they think of the beer by Founders. In fact if you google "breakfast stout" it takes a page or so before you find anything that doesn't reference Founders. Since Mimi's Tabernacle is a stout brewed with a ton of breakfast ingredients, I get where they were going, but it did make me think they were trying to do some sort of Founders clone. The beer is probably somewhere between a sweet stout an oatmeal stout and an RIS.

First thing's first, this is not a Founders Breakfast Stout clone. This beer has a ton of unique flavors. The beer pours out a beautiful oily black color with a nice sized tan head that fell off pretty quickly into sticky lace. The aroma was mostly oak and chocolaty roast malts, as you might expect. What really impressed me was the flavor. The second thing you must consider is this is a sweet beer. If you like your stouts drier, go somewhere else. From the first sip you can tell Mimi's Tabernacle was brewed to have big sweet flavor. Up front you get big cocoa and coffee notes almost like a Starbucks mocha latte and then you get a really nice hit of the maple syrup flavor. The bourbon barrel aged flavor helps finish it all out with smooth vanilla and oak. It's sort of like an entire breakfast including the shot of bourbon... wait you don't drink a shot of bourbon with breakfast? My bad.

This is an excellent beer. I picked up an extra to let it sit for a little while to see how it ages. My only real criticism is from calling it a breakfast stout. I get that the name can be descriptive, but everyone I've mentioned it to has asked if it's basically a Founders clone. Its hard for a new brewery to get going, but playing off another beer doesn't help you out much around beer geeks.

I give this beer a hearty 4. Its perfect for this cold winter we've had.