Daredevil Anniversary

The first of a few tap takeover / anniversary parties for Daredevil took place last week at 20 tap. Since the brewery is still being built they are doing what they did last year and hosting multiple parties celebrating 2 years here in Indiana. Hosting multiple parties allows their fans from all over Indiana to celebrate with them and try some great brews. This month of parting comes to a close with a beer dinner at Black Market. If you didn't go last year, you need to check it out. The food was just as awesome as the beers were.

Last year Daredevil released a few limited release beers that they called Rare Devil beers. These were their standard brews aged on different fruits and other tasty flavors. This year they've taken a little more classic approach and aged 2 of my favorite beers, JWP stout and Muse Belgian, in Rye whiskey barrels.




I talked with Shane from the Daredevil team at the release and he said that they chose rye barrels because they didn't want as much sweetness as the bourbon barrels are known for. It's also a great mix because the standard JWP stout has rye in the malt bill already. The spicy whiskey flavor blended great with both beers.




Here is a quick rundown of both beers:

Barrel Aged JWP was aged for 13 months. Normally JWP is a pretty hopped up American stout. The hops compliment the roastiness of the malts and the spicy rye flavor well. The barrel aged version has been aged long enough that a lot of the hop character had fallen off. I was worried this would make the beer unbalanced. It's hard to know what a barrel will do before you put the beer on, so it can be a bit of crapshoot. This gamble paid off. Although the hops were significantly lighter the barrel characteristics made up for it and balanced everything out nicely.  The roast of the malt was still right there but the barrel added a little bit of sweet vanilla and oak flavor that was balanced out with a bit of spicy rye whiskey. The rye accentuated the rye in the malt bill and made it significantly more forward. This beer packs a ton of flavor for a beer under 10% ABV. The balance is absolutely fantastic.

Barrel Aged Muse might have been the most impressive part of the evening. Muse is a great Belgian beer. It is a big golden beer with some delicious fruit flavors. Thick white head released all sorts of delicious fruity aromas. The head followed all the way to the bottom of the glass with stick lacing hugging the sides. It has great traditional flavor with a rich golden color. The barrel did a good job of balancing out the sweetness of the beer. It added a bit of vanilla and oak that came off like a coconut. The yeast flavors turned into an almost pineapple tropical fruit flavor that added a great direction to the standard Muse.

These two beers will be at all of the Daredevil parties except the Pizzology events. If you like the standard versions you need to make your way out to one of these tap takeovers. The BA versions won't disappoint.

If I haven't sold you on the Black Market event yet, there will be a couple Rare Devil beers that will only be at the dinner and maybe Winterfest if I don't drink them all.

Congratulations again to Daredevil on your anniversary. The beers were awesome, and I can't wait to see what you bring to town when the brewery is up for real. 

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.

Sun King Brewery King's Reserve Afternoon Delight Review

A yes the Sun King King's Reserve Series; I kind of have a love-hate relationship with these beers. Why? Well let's start with the bad. 

Hate- In my opinion the releases are expensive ($6- $25 per 16oz can) and the beers don't always justify the price. They can also be very hard to acquire as they're brewery or event only releases that are packaged in limited quantities. Meaning that unless you're on top of the release you'll miss out.
 

Love- Yes, I think there have been a couple duds, but by and large the releases are high-quality, fun, and tasty beers. Maybe more importantly, some of those "hate" items are also good signs that Indy does have a growing craft beer scene. 1) A local brewer is packaging and releasing a limited one-off beer (presumably) on a semi-regular basis. 2) That release disappears within hours of its availability. 3) Those releases are highly sought after outside of Indiana. (Just yesterday I got a request from a California stranger for Pappy Van Muckle).

In general the King's Reserve concept and beers are great. I think the series will continue to improve as Sun King rolls out more offerings on a regular basis. Huh? Oh right I'm supposed to be doing a beer review here. 

The latest release in the KR series was their GABF Gold Winner, Afternoon Delight- a Bourbon Barrel Aged Dopplebock (SK's Dominator Dopplebock to be exact) clocking in at 8%.

Now I'm not the biggest fan of dopplebocks, but I ran down there and bought some before heading off to Tomlinson Tap Room, Flat 12, and La Margarita for some beer adventures with friends (The Big Guy remembers this day fondly, well, some of it). 

The pour from the 16oz can yields a dark reddish-brown liquid with a 2-finger beige head that clings to the edges in wispy threads throughout consumption. The smell is all bourbon barrels and sweetness, with notes of vanilla, oak, grain alcohol, caramel, and dark sugars. I hope you like bourbon, because up front the taste is all bourbon. Again, there are bourbon notes of vanilla, oak, toffee, and grain spirits. With the swallow things change a bit as caramel, dark fruits, spicy hops show up, but at the end the booze comes back into play. As bourbon barrel beers go this is a bit thin, but keep in mind that this is a dopplebock (a strong German lager) and not your run-of-the-mill barrel aged imperial stout. Not a lot of carbonation, but what's there is a bit fizzy. Finishes dry and warming, but after awhile leaves a sticky residue. 

This is essentially a bourbon bomb, which isn't necessarily a bad thing if you're a bourbon fan like myself. You get all those wonderful confectioner's notes you get with some bourbons, but with a nice mellow and malty finish. Again, this is one of those beers that can be hard to rate because you can't exactly go to your local liquor outpost and pick it up… but if you know someone who has a can of this… do what you have to get it from them 4.5/5

Stone Farking Wheaton w00tstout

So this Brewer, geek culture icon, and an alternative news website creator meet at a party.  The resulting brewing masterpiece that is formed from "their powers combined" is affectionately called w00tstout.

Greg Koch, Wil Wheaton and Drew Curtis masterminded this Imperial Stout.  Brewed with rye, wheat, malt, pecans, then aged in Bourbon barrels for 3 months.  W00tstout clocks in at a hefty 13% ABV and 65 IBUs.

The Big Guy and I snagged a few bottles of w00tstout at our local Brew-Pub Union Brewing Company when it first hit shelves.  Cameron has recently started to bring in cases of rare bombers from national breweries as a nod to beer geeks and as a subtle "while your waiting let me get you a taste of what cask beer tastes like!"  It is a nice compliment to his fantastic line up of beers!  Attract the Beer Geeks with the rare beers, then get them hooked on cask beer...  SNEAKY but very effective!

Tasting Notes:  The nose has a subtle pecan with minimal head formation.  After the first sip your pallet will be graced with a... how would Mr. Torgue put it "A FLAVOR EXPLOSION!!!"  Roasty carmel, with notes of cocoa, vanilla, oak, and a grainy pecan husk that is both deceptively fizzy and sweet.  The motor oil appearance makes you think that it would be a medium to thick bodied stout, but after the first sip you find it pleasantly light to medium.  The dry finish is a combination of sweet and nutty.

I would suggest snagging a bottle to have now and another to cellar for six months to a year.  Really solid collaboration beer!  Good luck in finding two of the three bottle designs! From what I have seen at retailers, there were 1-2 comic strip/super hero bottles per case.  The rest were the entwining hops logo.

It would have been awesome to get a bottle signed by Wil when he was in town for GenCon, but it just wasn't in the cards (and by cards I mean any number of magic related card games that were played during GenCon).

DUG IT!

The Big Guy: I am all about this beer. It has tons of wacky flavors that I normally wouldn't think of putting together especially in a beer. I picked up three for myself. One for now and two to get some nice age on them. Cudos to Wil Wheaton and everyone else who was a part of this. I give it a 4.5

The Little Lady: When I checked this in to Untappd, I added the following comment: "I love everything that just happened here." Which is true. Imperial stout? Love it. Sweet pecan flavor? Love it. Bourbon barrel aging? Love, love, love it. I think the combination of flavors, which I of course read as the combination of influences of the makers, was fantastic. Really smooth, well balanced, and very drinkable. I gave it a 5- very rare for me. I have to be blown away to give that rating, and I was. Well done! 

Doom 2013

Doom is unleashed when Founders’ award-winning specialty Imperial IPA, Double Trouble, is aged in bourbon barrels for four months to create a distinct flavor experience. So, while Double Trouble is brewed to turn your world upside down, Doom is brewed to tear it apart: pungent hops conspire with boozy bourbon notes to send your senses spinning. -Commercial Description

Now this was a really hard beer to find. There were a lot of shops that didn't even get bottles of this. Luckily I was ready for the drop when it came out last Friday (by the way, Founders limited releases normally drop on Fridays). Doom is part of Founders Backstage Series, which are "experimental taproom beers [brought] to a much larger audience." The Backstage Series is really the creme de la creme, but they are very limited and getting them down here in Indy isn't as easy as I would have hoped. Luckily I have a friend up in Michigan that was willing to help me out and pick one up and ship it. I also found one down here for myself. O-Dawg was able to get one and El Duque was able to get a couple to share. We had varying reviews, but for me this was one of the best finds in a long time.

It poured out a beautiful yellowy orangey color that reminded me of a sunset, or something manly, whatever. It had a great barrel aged aroma with some vanilla and oak scents mixed with some nice sweet caramel notes and hints of citrus fruits.

The flavor was sweet and smooth, which was not really what I expected from a DIPA. The hop flavor was sweet and citrusy without the traditional harsh bitterness. There was big bready and caramel sweetness to the body of the beer. The barrel aging did a nice job rounding all of this one out. The vanilla and oak flavors helped bring the sweet malts and hops together. Behind all these beautiful sugars was a great boozy heat that added a bit of sharpness to the beer that was missing from the hop profile. The most impressive part was how well everything was balanced and played off of each other.

This was a really unique treat, and I am thrilled that I have another one aging (I will pop it open in about six months to a year). I will make sure that when the next Backstage beer comes out I do whatever I have to to hunt it down. I give this a 5!

O-Dawg
Trivia: This little gem went by the name "Hand of Doom" when it was originally released by the Michigan Masterminds at Founders in limited quantities in their Tap House and festival-only beer line ups over past years.

Pro Tip:  These are sold in the European & Australian standard large bottle 750ml.  For the metric non-initiated that is 25.4 oz.  In Indiana, large bottles are called "bombers."  Other colloquialisms in the USA are "rocket" or "deucer."  What that means dear neophytes is that you squeak out an additional 3.4 oz. than the typical American bomber (22oz).  More beer is more beer!

At 10% ABV the brew reminded me of Backwoods Bastard with the malt and booziness balance.  I hope more people get a taste of Doom!  I would not be surprised if it snuck into a seasonal rotation... One can only hope!

What I have tried from The Backstage Series thus far I have really enjoyed!  I can not wait to see what else comes out for the last two releases for the year.  If they are anything close to Frangelic Mountain Brown or Doom I will be very happy!      

A big "Thank You" to The Big Guy's beer contact in MI and my Hippy Beer Guy.

El Duque
Let me start off by saying that I really liked this beer, so when I say bad things, it's from a place of love, not my usual angst ridden vitriol.  I was just as pumped for Doom as I was KBS, but just like this year's KBS, it seemed like it was a little off its game.  Doom was bourbon smooth like caramel, and sweet like chocolate, which considering it was Double Trouble, caught me off gaurd.  Double Trouble was bitter with a floral bite.  Those notes didn't seem to transfer well in the aging, which I understood, but Doom needed something to tie everything together.  I was hoping that throwing a well done DIPA into a barrel would create a more unique flavor profile than the typical "...this barrel aged brew was syrupy, caramel, blah blah blah."  I hoped for more, maybe like how Goose Island's Nightstalker had some surprising hops, I hoped that Doom wouldn't be a typical bourbon barrel offering.

But it was.

And it was still damn good, if underwhelming for the hype.  I give it a 4

Professor Beer
I was disappointed by Doom after all the hype.  It was basically a decent IPA... oh, and there was some bourbon flavor.  The two tastes didn't really seem to complement each other very well, it seemed more like two separate flavors just thrown together.

I give it a 3.5, which might go up to a 4 if I tried it again, but it's not worth the effort of trying to track down a bottle.

Bourbon Barrel Wee Mac

So last Monday I got a call from O-Dawg and it was big enough news to make me turn around and hit the nearest liquor store I could find. The newest King's Reserve limited release by Sun King is their Bourbon Barrel Aged Wee Mac. It is in cans at your local liquor store, just remember to go the refrigerated section like everything SK does.

My favorite everyday beer is Sun King's Wee Mac. I get down to the brewery almost every Friday because you can get an entire growler for $5. It's smooth and tasty. It has a strong sweet flavor but is light enough that it's still drinkable... nay, chuggable. When I heard that they were going to barrel age one of my favorite beers I needed to try it.

The Bourbon Barrel Wee Mac poured out a deep reddish mahogany. There was a nice lacing of off-white head floating on the top of the glass. It smelled like vanilla and bourbon laid over beautiful toasted malts and caramel. The flavor is incredibly clean. It has hints of caramel, toasted nuts and bready grains. The flavors imparted from the Bourbon Barrel aging gave it great vanilla and oak undertones. It all blended together very well. There wasn't much of a hop finish but the barrel aging made up for that with a solid finish of its own.

O-Dawg and I were just talking about how hard it is to find a beer with a lot of flavor that doesn't have high abv or crazy amounts of hops. The Bourbon Barrel Wee Mac is 5.3% abv and only 23 IBUs. They pack so much flavor into this beer despite the low stats. I could drink this everyday, all day if it weren't for the cost. I wish more people tried to impart this sort of flavor into every beer they make. It isn't quite sessionable but close enough for me. Maybe we need a new term, like American Sessionable and call it anything under 5.5% instead of 4.2%.

I give it a solid and resounding 5

Weigh-In: O-Dawg
This little treasure came in two packs.  Not two packs of bombers, like little Kings Reserve 12oz cans two packs. I really didn't know how to react to that when I was stopping in at the brewery to pick these up (price was around $20).

The Kings Reserve line of brews from Sun King are super tasty brews that end up (just like Dark Lord) taking up tank space for an extended amount of time with more than your average usage of beer crafting materials tossed in.  All that time in the tanks and beer material adds up to a great beer with a higher than usual price tag.  Did this put me off?  No.  Just a data point of reference.

The first can went down during the week with the wife.  Movie night with "The Apparition"!  Not a great movie, but not terrible...  The beer made up for the movie.  The second was de-stressing with friends over a nice oily maduro cigars.  In both instances the flavors came through as Big Guy described above.

Two points that weren't mentioned that I think I should add are there is a nice mellow bourbon finish that is just fantastic.  It is the perfect balance of booze heat and oak/vanilla balanced with the beer, not overpowering it.  The other point is that after half a glass I started to notice an almost buttery/cream flavor that was not unpleasant at all starting to coat my pallet.  I liken it to the buttery/cream flavor that you get during and after eating Blondies Cookies.  Makes you hungry right?  Mouth watering yet?

Easy 4

KBS 2013

I hope everyone was able to get a sip of one of these brews, because they came, they saw and the rocked. KBS is the limited release Kentucky Breakfast Stout by Founders. It is a big, bold, bourbon aged imperial stout that was only available for a week-ish (if that; many stores sold out in the first three or four hours after KBS was delivered). Most liquor stores were only allotted a case or two. The beer is sold in four packs, but because of its rarity a lot of stores would sell it individually. If you got one enjoy, because this is a rare treat.

I poured this great beer into a tulip glass and began to enjoy. The aroma had a heavy bourbon smell that was almost strong enough to start getting me drunk on the spot. There was some pretty tasty coffee and cocoa scents in there too. It pours dark brownish black and it has a slight brownish tan head. First impressions of this beer were very good. It seemed warm and inviting, and made me just want to dive right in.

There was a bittersweet flavor that had some pretty nice cocoa and coffee flavors that mingled together. Behind these front running flavors there was a sweet vanilla and bourbon barrel flavor. It was sort of like a boozed up coffee that you have after a meal. There was a very nice light hop bitterness that balanced it all out.

This beer was not an easy thing to find. I was out of town and thought that all hope was lost. I have an awesome friend who took it upon herself to go out and find a few of these for me. In the next week or so we will be featuring a post by her giving some beginner's directions for finding the hard to find limited release brews.

I give it a resounding 5. Totally worth whatever effort you have to go through.

El Duque:  KBS started the big love I have for bourbon barrel aged stouts.  There's a lot out there, and I'm not sad for the styles popularity, but KBS stands as King of the Oaken Hill.  I found there to be a little more bite to it this year than in previous brews, but give this a year to cellar, and we're gonna need more heads to do this justice.

It's good to be the king.  I give it a 50, i mean 5.

Bourbon Barrel Johan

Sun King just released 250 bottles of Bourbon Barrel Johan, which is about as limited of a release as it gets. It was the first beer they brewed when Sun King started up in '09. The beer released on Jan 28th, but there were 125 bottles that were available for preorder on the 21st. I was out of the state for the week but my wonderful, beautiful, gracious wife was able to get on the list. Preorders sold out in about sixty seconds, so she was good.

It was easy to pick up. They gave anyone who preordered a week after it was released to get it, but it did set me back $25 for a pint bottle and I was only able to grab one. I got it home and decided it would make the perfect start to my Super Bowl beer extravaganza. From what I was able to find on the net, BB Johan is 10% abv with 60 IBUs. It is an English Style Barleywine.

When I poured it out it was a dark mahogany with almost no head, just a bit of tan lacing around the edges that lasted for most of the beer. It smelled like vanilla and oak barrels, which is pretty standard for something that has been bourbon barrel aged for three years. There were also scents of dark dried fruits and a heavy lingering boozy aroma.

The first sip told me this was going to be a big beer. It was sweet and intoxicatingly boozy. It had a nice round caramel flavor with dried fruits and some winterish spices. These mixed great with the oak and vanilla flavors that came from the barrel aging process. I wish that the barrel flavors had been a little bit more laid back, because they were starting to overtake the sweetness of the beer itself. It finished off with an alcoholic sharpness that helped cut through the sweet malts and barrel flavors.

The beer itself was a sweet and syrupy mouthful with almost no carbonation. It was like drinking a true wine.

Whenever I get my hands on one of these super rare beers, I feel obligated to give it a five without tasting it. There are a ton of beer heads out there that all of a sudden go nuts trying to find these diamonds. I really have to sit back and think about the beer so I don't go crazy with my review. Rarity does not guarantee an outstanding beer. This was a very good beer, totally solid and I would gladly drink it again, but I liked the Velvet Fog better.

I give it a 4

Barrel Aged Frosted Frog Christmas Ale

Creation: Barrel Aged Frosted Frog Christmas Ale
Style: Winter Warmer
Masterminds: Hoppin' Frog
Location: Akron, OH
ABV: 8.6 %
IBU: 12
Hops:
Availability: Seasonal Winter
Drinkability:  All night long, not too sweet not too heavy with enough of an ABV to keep you warm throughout the Holidays!
Awards: Won the Annual Blind Christmas beer tasting at Vintage Estate Wine and Beer 2012 in Boardman.  Topped his event in 2010 and 2011.

"Not the Gumdrop Buttons!"

Served Cold out of the bottle

Pours with a dark black to brown with a red glow on the edges.  Reminds me of a color hybrid between a porter and an amber.  Minimal head and carbonation

The Cinnamon nutmeg and ginger spice sing Christmas Carols to you senses!

Starts off with a Dark Spicy Christmas malt with silky sweet chocolate notes.  It's as if I was eating Nestlé chocolate all my life then all of a sudden found out what Godiva chocolate that literally melts in your mouth tastes like.

Leaves the mouth  Coated with a Finish of  a light cinnamon sweetness that sticks around for a minute.

Serve Warm(er): to really let the Christmas spices come to the front and stop hiding behind the malt.

O-Dawg: 4.0 heads

Post-mortum:
The old crew got together in that brief window between Turkey Day and X-Mas to catch up and wish each other a Merry Christmas.  What better Place to meet up than Shallo's!!!  If you find yourself in Greenwood, IN please go here!  Try anything that has the Swamp sauce on it and pair it with one of there HUGE selection of micro-drafts and micro-bottles.

Being in the Christmas spirit I decided to try out the Frosted Frog.  Now I have tried D.O.R.I.S and B.O.R.I.S from Hoppin' Frog with fantastic results so I figured this to be a no brainer beer purchase.

I liked it, The Big Guy liked it, hell our wives liked it (and that doesn't happen...  Ever...). It was a Merry Christmas to my pallet courtesy of Hoppin' Frog.  I would recommend snagging one for the cold winter nights ahead!  Delicious!

Merry Christmas to all out friends once again!  We would t know what to do without you all!

The Big Guy: I did in fact like it. This was an excellent winter warmer. It delivered everything I was looking for plus a nice hop profile you don't always find with this sort of beer. The sweet malt and booziness was like getting rocked to sleep on a Christmas Eve. I give it a 4.5

Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout

I love stouts. I LOVE high alcohol stouts. I have never had a stout this high in abv. Bourbon County Brand Stouts were put together by Goose Island brewery in Chicago, IL. This is their coffee release. It has 14.3% abv and 60 IBUs. It pours out a dark black beer with a tan to brownish head that stands about a finger tall and disappears to nothing but wisps and lacing after a few minutes.

The smell is big on the bourbon followed up by coffee. I think I had an uncle whos mug always smelled that way... hmmmm...

The flavor was big. The malts were heavy up front with hints of chocolate, toffee and obviously the coffee. These flavors mixed beautifully with the vanilla oakiness from the bourbon barrel aging. There was a slight toastiness to the malts that added another nice layer to the flavor profile. I was shocked at how well the bourbon flavor covered up the flavor of such a high abv beer. The oak flavors of the barrel also helped to mellow out the sweetness from the big malts.

The flavor got bolder as it heated up in my tulip glass. Malts came through a little bit stronger and the barrel flavor fell away a little bit. The coffee flavor also became richer, moving on to an almost espresso like quality. I served this straight out of the fridge at 40 degrees. Next time, I will probably let it warm up before I start drinking it.

It had a big syrupy mouth feel that coated every edge of your tongue, but not in a bad way. It didn't linger too long or have that oily consistency that we've seen before.

A lot of people were concerned about the quality of the beers at Goose Island after they were purchased by InBev. It was unsure if they were going to be able to produce unique beers that were true to the craft movement. This beer has put my worrying to an end. It is cool to see a large company still do it right on a smaller scale.

This is one of the best beers I've had in a long long time and I still have one more bottle aging. This is a limited release so go get it if you can. The next version of this they are releasing sounds like it will be vanilla.

I give it a 5.

Sun King Tap Takeover

Sun King came up from downtown and took over the taps at Chatham Tap in Fishers. They brought eight beers with them and dominated the bar. 

I am not sure what I was expecting, but it was mostly the normal bar at Chatham with some taps changed out (when I went to a Bells take over they had stickers, raffles etc.). The cool thing was, Sun King brought some of their rare and hard to find beers. If you like something different this was a great event.

I had three of their beers, the Bourbon Barrel Aged Maibock, Stupid Sexy Flanders (sour), and Timmie Imperial Stout.

These are all beers that I was excited to try. I missed the Sourfest, but I heard good things about Stupid Sexy Flanders.

The Bourbon Barrel Aged Maibock was my favorite. It was 8.4% abv and 24 IBU Bavarian Spring Lager that was nine months barrel aged. It reminded me of an Oktoberfest, but lighter. The nose was basically honey and bourbon. The beer showed up with a great looking light brown or dark yellow color and a light white head. It tasted like caramel, toffee and natural honey. The bourbon mingled well with all the different sweet flavors without the usual vanilla flavor that you get from a bourbon barrel aged beer. It helped balance the whole thing out. It had a heavy alcohol finish.

I give it a 4.5

I had the Stupid Sexy Flanders next. This sour or wild ale had 5.4% abv and 23 IBUs. I have not done a lot of sours, so the review is going to be brief. I liked it a lot. The beer was a dark red to mahogany in color with no head.  It had a nice sweet and sour flavor to it that took some getting used to. It reminded me of bitter berries and red wine vinegar, but it was not very fruity. The flavor was complex and very very unique. I recommend you get your hands on it when you can.

I give it a 3.5

Lastly I tried Timmie Imperial Stout. Timmie has 10% abv and 70 IBUs. It came out in a tulip glass. It was a dark brown to black oil colored beer. It smells like heavily roasted malts and boozy alcohol. The beer started off with a very nice dark roasted flavor, not super smokey but it was nicely balanced. The malts tasted like baking chocolate and coffee. There was a nice sharp bitterness with the sweetness. I am not sure that the hops came out heavily but the beer's flavors were so well balanced it was not needed.

I give it a 4

Mustache Ride Red

"Who wants a mustache ride? ... Ooh, I vant von!!!!"

You will vant von soon too! So Movember is done and over with. My mustache looked like a cross between a 70's porn star and someone from the TV show Cops, but it was all for a good cause and my wife hasn't left me yet. We have raised all the money that we can. Thank you to everyone who joined the team or donated. Since it is all over, I wanted to make sure we threw some love to those people who put together a good brew for the cause.

Flat 12 Bierwerks did a great job with their Mustache Ride Red. It was damn good. This is a bourbon barrel vanilla amber. It had 6% ABV and 42.7 IBUs. The Flat 12 amber tends to be a hoppier amber than the average red. This worked out great for this beer because it had been barrel aged with a hint of vanilla, and the hop profile did a lot to even it out.

The beer poured red with a nice faint dusting of pure white head. It looked like a snowfall on a beautiful sunset. It was not a ton of hops, but enough to make a wicked grown up milk mustache. It had a bready aroma with a hint of the bourbon barrel and a nice earthy hop scent.

The beer was sweet and malty with hints of caramel and obviously the vanilla from the barrel and the vanilla beans added in fermentation. It was sweet and smooth and went down surprisingly fast for a 22 oz of beer. There was almost no alcohol flavor, it was just like drinking a malty soda. There was a slight bourbon oakiness that was pretty intense at the end of the beer. It mixed well with the flavor of the earthy hops and made for a very strong finish to an overall great beer.

I know it may be a while before you can get your hands on this, but make the effort. Its a great beer for a great cause.

Thanks to Flat 12 for putting it together.

I give it 4 beer head mustaches.

O-Dawg: 4 Heads, I would give it another half head if it was off of the Nitro tap... My god there are certain things that Flat 12 does right... and this is so right its wrong... in all the right ways!

Batch #1

Batch #1 is Triton's anniversary beer. It's a bourbon barrel oatmeal stout. The beer was brewed in August of 2011 for Triton's opening. They brewed it and then put it in used Heaven Hill bourbon barrels to age. Once it's time for an anniversary celebration they pull out the barrels, top them off, and add CO2.

There are at least 8 more years of beer currently aging in other barrels somewhere in the back. As the beer ages the beer begins to evaporate, in distilling this is called the angels' share, more beer is added to replace what has evaporated to reconstitute the beer and keep it close to the intended ABV and flavor. Batch #1 was aged for 13 months. A beer like Kentucky Bourbon Barrel ale is only aged for 6 weeks. You can imagine how different the flavor would be.

The ABV is between 10.5% and 12.5% and it has 20 IBUs. It poured out a dark mahogany color with a tan to khaki head. It smells like caramel and chocolate with just a bit of an alcoholic aroma.

Up front it has rich chocolaty tones with heavy sweetness and a nice boozy flavor that I find intoxicating. There is a pervasive bourbon flavor with hints of oak throughout the entire beer. The woodiness of the oak against the sweetness of the malt makes it a nice complex drink. It finishes up with just enough bitterness to make it taste like semi sweet chocolate. The bear had a heavy mouth feel like any good stout should. It is warm and round with a great body.

This is not available for growler fills. Get in there and get a pint because it is damn good.

I give it a 4.5

The Big Guy's 30th Birthday: Bourbon Trail

Yes this is the Beer Barons not the Bourbon Barons (but it may be a good idea for a spin off), so I will make it quick. My wonderfully amazing wife took me down to Kentucky to hit the Bourbon Trail for my 30th birthday. We hit 6 out of 7 distilleries in a weekend (we would have hit all of them but they added a 7th in October of 2012). Sadly, we missed Four Roses. The upside of that is that we get to go back and do it again.

As we were heading down to Kentucky, I was struck by how beautiful the MidWest really is. As a sales guy, I travel all the time and really have grown accustomed to some of the Rockwellian landscapes that I see on a daily basis and have apparently started taking for granted. On the trip down to Kentucky I was not working; I was not on the phone. It was just me and my wife, and we were in awe of how beautiful this part of the world really is. We live in a place of where things are grown and stuff is made. We live in a place where you can get all natural, because so much here is natural.

To be a bourbon whiskey, there are several rules but the biggest of them are, the mash must be made out of at least 51% corn. The bourbon must be aged in a charred white oak barrel that has never been used. There are specific proofs entering and exiting the barrel. The final proof may vary as will the length of time used for aging. There may not be any additives to the whiskey (this is what excludes Jack Daniels, they run their whiskey through a maple flavored charcoal to filter out impurities making it taste cleaner and sweeter). Lastly and most importantly it is a spirit that by law must be made in the USA. This has made it more than just a drink, but a true American tradition.

In the craft beer industry we have started a similar tradition. The craft beer movement is one of the few growing industries even during this God-awful  recession. It is proof that the entrepreneurial spirit of America is still alive and kicking in this generation. It also shows that there are those of us out there who appreciate something that has been made so thoughtfully. We are no longer a lite beer nation, we are a people who appreciate quality, flavor and a hand made approach.

    

Like the production of Bourbon we have started creating our own standards and traditions. There is something distinctly american about an overhopped APA, or a bourbon barrel aged beer. Anytime someone goes against the norm and tries something different, I am proud to be part of an area and nation that celebrates them. For my 30th birthday there was nothing better than being shown all of this again.

I had my wife and my best friends driving through Kentucky for three days. We got to drink together, eat together and celebrate. It made me thankful for everything that I have been given. I am truly blessed with some amazing people in my life. Thank you for taking the time to read what we put up here, also thank you for supporting the men and women in Indy that dare to brew something different.

This was an amazing long weekend. Here are the highlights.



Favorite Bourbons were by:

Heaven Hill
Makers Mark
Woodford Reserve
Wild Turkey
Jim Beam
Town Branch (Altech)

Best Tours:
Makers Mark
Woodford Reserve

Heaven Hill

Jim Beam
Wild Turkey
Town Branch (Altech)

Coolest Facilities:
Makers Mark
Heaven Hill
Woodford Reserve
Jim Beam
Wild Turkey
Town Branch (Altech)

I came back home with nearly twenty bottles of hooch for friends and family.. and myself. Not saying I have problem or anything.