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. 

Founders Backstage Tasting

The 2014 KBS release has come and gone already. This year bottles were dropped on different days for a little over a week, which made it very different from last year's one-day blitz.

In honor of this years KBS release, the Barons got together with some close friends and went through all 9 of the releases so far. We also did 5 years of Kentucky Breakfast Stout (KBS) and 3 years of Backwoods Bastard. It was an epic night from Founders Brewing.

For the last 3 years Founders Brewing Company out of Grand Rapids, MI has been bottling limited release experimental beers called their Backstage Series. They all have big flavor, high alcohol content, and really interesting ingredients. They are a beer geek's white whale. We haven't been great about reviewing all of them, but we did get to their Barrel Aged Double IPA, Doom.

There is nothing better than having awesome friends that share a passion as much as you do. Our tasting group is made up of some outstanding traders who get their hands on some of the most impressive beers out there. When we're able to combine our powers there isn't much we can't put together and this night was proof.

My favorites from this tasting were: Blushing Monk, Frangelic Mountain Brown and Doom (although it was closer to a hopped up barleywine like Behemoth by FFF).

Blushing Monk was the first of the Backstage beers to be bottled and distributed. It came out almost 3 years ago, and that was well before I got into trading etc, so it was one I had never tried. It was very impressive. It reminded me of an imperial version of Rubaeus, their seasonal raspberry beer. It poured out a beautiful ruby color with a little off-white head. It had big raspberry aroma with just a little bit of boozy heat. After 3 years there was still barely any oxidation. The beer was thick, sweet, and boozy in all the right ways. There was tons of berry sweetness with an excellent tart finish.

This was the kind of tasting where you have a tough time deciding what the best beers really were. All the backstage beers were impressive in their own ways, so it was an epic evening all around.

Kevin: This was a great event.  It was fun to go through each beer in the order of their release. Blushing Monk was by far the best beer of the series at this point. Interestingly, Founders only uses one strain of yeast for every beer they make. Blushing Monk is the only beer they have made that doesn't use the house yeast. Take that for what it's worth. Easily the best of the night.

It's also sad to have experienced the death of CBS. When fresh it was a massive coffee stout with loads of maple, chocolate, and bourbon. A glorious beer. It's dead now. Oxidized and tasting of barrel tannins with just a touch of maple. It bordered on unpleasant. A good example of a beer that should have been consumed when fresh. 

The surprise of the night for me was Doom. The hops had faded away a bit but it was crisp, clean, and still had a tiny hop bite that balanced the malt and bourbon goodness. I actually wouldn't mind having another. I also enjoyed Frangelic Mountain Brown. It wasn't as sweet as it was fresh and seemed to be holding together nicely. 

One suggestion if you have these bottles. Drink them. Founders says that the majority of their beers should be consumed freshly. This series is proof of that. None of them were better than when they were young.  I wouldn't advocate trading them either unless you clearly tell the person you are trading with that the beer is clearly past it's prime. Also, stop trying to trade for them...except Blushing Monk. 

Tastings like these are once in a lifetime. Was a great experience. But I learned my lesson. With every Backstage release moving forward I will definitely not let them sit around.

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.

A six pack costs how much?!?!

If you haven't noticed, your favorite craft beer spots were just taken over by a strange, green alien from another state, Hopslam. For those of you who may not know about this strange visitor to our Indiana beer landscape, Hopslam is by Bells Brewery in Michigan and it's a DIPA brewed with honey.

It comes in at a big 10% ABV and has a big hit of hops. It's one of my favorite beers in the winter. Its got a ton of alcohol to warm you up, but the big hop flavors remind you of summer.

Although, it's a great beer, some of you may get a little sticker shock when you pull it off the shelves. A sixer of this nectar of the gods comes in at around $19 to $21. This might be hard to handle when you can go pick up a six pack of other brews for $10-$12. One of the biggest things we pay for with these seasonal releases is quality. Here's a little breakdown:

Ingredients: The first thing to look at while talking about price is the amount of resources a brewery puts into making a beer. Any of your high ABV beers, which are my favorite, are going to have a little higher price tag because they require more malt to make. More malt = a little more money. In addition to higher malt costs, good quality hops can be expensive. In some cases seasonal releases use harder to find strains of hops which further escalates the cost of brewing. Take Hopslam for example, "Starting with six different hop varietals added to the brew kettle & culminating with a massive dry-hop addition of Simcoe hops, Bell's Hopslam Ale possesses the most complex hopping schedule in the Bell's repertoire." Now get a beer that has a huge ABV and more hops than you can shake a stick at and the ingredients alone are putting you into a whole different price category. Extra ingredients like organic honey, molasses, coffee and others can also escalate costs.

Fermentation: Another topic to consider is the duration of fermentation. Lagers take longer to ferment then ales. Fountain Square's Workingman's Pilsner takes almost twice as long as their other house beers just because it lager ferments. When we're talking basic beers we're normally going from five days to ten days or something equally less frightening, but for the brewery that's still half the output that they'd normally get, therefore half the revenue coming in on the brews. When we get into barrel aging, like the Sun King Reserve beers, we start looking at months in a barrel on top of fermentation, and these barrels take up space as well as resources keeping the environment at the right temperature and humidity. Hell, we probably have to add some cost just for purchasing the barrels, because they can't be used forever.

Specialty: One of the biggest complaints I hear, is "why are all the sour beers so expensive?"
This one actually makes the most sense of all since sours have their own unique brewing process. To sour a beer, we add a different strain of "wild" yeast or bacteria to the brew. This gives it a uniquely sour flavor. Most people who make sours then take their various batches of sour beer and blend them together to create something tasty. As you can imagine having many different batches to blend going at any one time adds to the cost. Also, if something sours in the wrong way it may have to be discarded. On top of all this, most beers soured with lacto end up being aged for a year or more, often in barrels just like we talked about above. There is also a big risk of cross contamination with the bacteria that sour the beer. Often sour programs have to be held in secondary brewing facilities, because even a dividing wall may not keep the bacteria from migrating. Sours can really get pricey, but a lot of passion, patience and expertise go into making them.

The Hype: The last reason for high prices that I'm going to talk about is the hype. Every true Indiana beer nerd has had that moment where an out of state beer nerd asks, "so have you ever had Zombie Dust?" Zombie Dust is an amazing beer with great hop character balanced by sweet, smooth malts. Excellent in every way, but more than that, it has become like the movie Evil Dead or Goonies... it's now a cult classic. It has become a rite of passage for aspiring beer geeks to show that they've truly made it.This sort of cult following has allowed liquor stores to break up six packs and sell the beers for a premium. I can get a six pack of ZD at Three Floyds for ten dollars but most places around town charge 3 dollars per bottle. Other breweries like Bells and Founders have similar beers where the price comes up just because the beer has so much hype that everyone wants to try it. Now this is the supply and demand portion of our beer econ lesson today. The better known a brewery is and the better the beer they make contribute to the scarcity we experience in the market.

I'm not accusing these big breweries of being all hype. Most of them are making really great product. They've done such a great job brewing quality beer and actually marketing it, that now they can get a premium. Some of you may say that this is just price gouging by the breweries, but I strongly believe that as long as the product is of a good enough quality that it sells out in stores or breweries or whatever venue it's offered, the brewer is just asking for the right price for their product.

With all these factors out on the table, we have seen instances where breweries have made a less than stellar beer that had a high ABV, or barrel aged something that just didn't age well. When this happens and the brewery still puts it out, it brings their whole brand into question. It hurts their hype. When a brewery gets a reputation for barrel aging piss and charging exorbitant amounts of money for the "brew" people stop trying some of their other beers. It's straight up capitalism. If you make crap and I buy it, I may be wary of your beers next time. If you make crap and charge me my first born for it, I may have to go bananas on social media and avoid your beer forever, but I should really be mad about the quality of the beer first and foremost not the price.

If you are drinking on a budget there are a few ways to keep the quality without blowing all your mad money.

1. Fill your growlers - Most 64 oz growlers are between $12 and $18 dollars to fill up at the brewery.
2. Look for deals - Many breweries have growler discount days. For example, you can get $5 fills at Sun King on Fridays of all of their house beers
3. Look for 6 Packs - I'm not really sure why this is the case, but six packs tend to cost less than bombers per ounce. I've even seen the same beer in both packages come in at different prices per oz.
4. Everyday Beers - IN breweries have some great offerings that are year round, these tend to be cheaper and most are great quality beer.
5. Try before you buy- Look for liquor store tastings to try some whales before buying them, that way you know you're happy with what you're buying.

When we're talking about how much is too much, it will always come down to how much you are willing to pay for an awesome craft beer experience. Everyone makes priorities in their life, whether it's a new car, fishing trips with the kids, or vacations with your loved ones. We make choices, and some people will look at these pricey six packs and say "it's not for me." That doesn't mean they're bad options. The only real problem is when we the consumer allow people to make bad beer and then go out and buy their next barrel aged whatever. Vote with your dollars.

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

Bourbon Barrel Aged Coconut Porter

Congratulations to Great Crescent Brewing Company in Aurora IN. They turned five years old last week and threw one heck of a party at their brewery in Southern IN. We haven't really highlighted Great Crescent here before, but its not because their beer isn't good, its because they're so close to Cinci its hard to get to them on a regular basis and they don't distribute much in the Indy metro area, because they go through Starlight distribution. They are little bit easier to find down in Bloomington at the main Big Red.

One of my friends, Parker, had been looking for the Bourbon Barrel Coconut Porter since they brought some to the CANvitational. Since I was driving into Cinci for work, I decided to take a few minutes and stop by the brewery to see what I could get. There were three cases left, and I took half of them to bring back to Indy folks.

The standard coconut porter is 5.6% abv, but this bourbon barrel aged version has been jacked up. It comes in at about 9.5% abv with a big imperial porter flavor. It pours out dark as motor oil with a nice short sticky tan head. It smell like roasty, vanilla, oak and just a bit of nice toasted coconuts.

The flavor is super sweet and malty upfront. This could be a dessert all by itself, and that's totally what I'm looking for in this kind of a beer. My favorite part of this beer is how the coconut is perfectly balanced. It's nothing overpowering or fake tasting but its definitely there adding a nice roasted note to a great porter. One of the biggest problems I had with the Stone Coconut IPA was the lack of coconut flavor. The coconut in this beer delivers a nice light nuttiness that really hits the spot. It blends perfectly with the big bitter chocolaty notes of the beer. It reminds me of a bitter sweet almond joy.

This guy was pretty hard to get but well worth the effort. Great beer, and I give it a solid 4

The Tide and Its Takers

photo courtesy of Anchorage Brewing Company

Like Ahab's white whale, this beer is a beast worth of devotion and furious obsession.  It deserves to be serenaded with sonnets and ballads strum upon pearlescent lutes leafed in hazy gold to match the yellow hued straw of this bottled sunlight.

Whereas big Imperial stout, or rich chocolate porters conjure images of dark velvets and language that is as laced and heady as a deep red wine, this Trippel, imbued with Bretts in an Oak Chardonnay barrel, is just as decadent, but with contrasting lightness.

It pours out like straw colored champagne and retains its head and lacing like the aforementioned beverage.  It holds a nice golden light and gives off a soft nose of yeast and lemon.  The addition of Bretanomyces really takes a solid Trippel and makes an incredibly nuanced beer more akin to wine than a straightforward beer.

Anchorage Brewing Company has really mastered the use of Bretts and have not feared the big bad monster of "wild yeasts."  Embracing the fact that they have been around souring beers before the discovery of sanitizing in the 19th century, it's another connection bridging modern brewing with the traditions of the past.  It's fitting that Belgians haven't shied away from this beast and for Anchorage to throw it into a Trippel is a nice touch

The tropical, peppery, earthy-ness that is lent to Bretts creates such a unique and subtle backbone to this exquisite Belgian.  You still get the zesty lemon/grapefruit, but it seems to be infused with an apple-pear crispness and the oak and chardonnay tartness really add to the surprisingly robust flavor. All that sharp and airy tartness has Bretts breath through it and adds that wonderful, earthy funk.

The name of this beer is spot on.  It really does feel like the ocean.  Light, breezy, wild, and satisfying to the core.

As far as Bretts beers go, this one is insanely approachable.  It would turn on any wine drinker with its white wine aspects.  It's not aggressively sour or funky and that's the beauty.  It takes an established style and elevates it to something wonderful.  A white whale in this under sailed sea of Bretts beers.

"...the waves should rise and fall, and ebb and flow unceasingly; for here, millions of mixed shades and shadows, drowned dreams, somnambulisms, reveries; all that we call lives and souls, lie dreaming, dreaming, still; tossing like slumberers in their beds; the ever-rolling waves but made so by their restlessness."
-Henry Melville, Moby Dick

5 adoring heads out of 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! 

Barrel Aged Maibock

I live only a few miles away from Sun King Brewery, but I don't really take advantage of this awesome local resource, like some people named The Big Guy, who I swear has a mole on the inside.  The alacrity with which he snags all of their special releases is envy inducing and totally not fair.

So when I was able to snag Sun Kings Barrel Aged Maibock on tap before he could, I considered it a personal, if childish, success.  SUCK IT BIG GUY

It was late April (so technically not May) and spring had broken and I love a good Maibock.  The Bavarians, being the beer nerds that they are, always paired their seasons with the type of beers they brewed.  Fall begins the Starkbierzeit, or strong beer time.  The dark 8%-12% bocks are rolled out to hunker down for the alpine winters.  In the Summer, Americans are very familiar with Munich's Helles blonde beers that are served by the stein and easily quaffed with friends sharing a sense of Gemütlichkeit, that feeling of bright euphoria wrapping around friends that are warmed by good beer where time doesn't exist.

The transition between those two very distinct styles is the Maibock.  Pale malts, lots of hops, and noticeable alcohol are the perfect transition when people are ready to shed their cabin fever, but not warm enough yet to enjoy a good garden party on a syrupy summer night.

Maibocks are great and although I am not a big fan of this whole bourbon barrel panacea trend, I was exceptionally pleased with the outcome.  It took those sweet whiskey notes from the barrel and paired them well with the booziness that comes with a Maibock.  Even though it was aged four months, the aggressively hopped bock shined with a wonderful German hop finish.  Hoppy, sweet, light and boozey.  It was a perfect mouthful.

I give it a 4.5.  Before I had Founders Doom and the other aged IPA iterations this spring, I probably would have only given it a 4, but seeing how Sun King was able to punch their hops through, which I think is pretty difficult for four months of aging, it gets an extra half point for execution.  I hope to see this again next May!  Der Maibock is ausgezeichnet!

The Big Guy: I had this one at a tap takeover at Chatham Tap in Fishers a little while back. I thought it was outstanding;. Unlike El Duque I love the barrel aged beers. I am pretty sure I would drink bourbon barrel aged Miller Lite and be pretty happy. I had never had a maibock when I first tried it, but it was described to me as May's version of an Oktoberfest, and I dug that. This brew had bright hoppy flavors, mixed with big boozy heat and some great barrel aged sweetness. I really don't appreciating you telling the guys at SK that I have their warehouse bugged, it might get me in trouble. Anyway, I give this delicious spring treat a 4.5 as well.

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.

Rye Barrel Aged Big Black Dog 68

Big Black Dog is Flat 12's seasonal rye stout. This year they kicked it up a notch and aged it in a Rye Whiskey barrel. The Big Black dog was named after a hockey player who wore the number 68. In his honor Flat 12 makes this beer at 6.8% abv and 68 IBUs.

The beer pours out a thick, dark black with a brown head on top. The head is about one finger tall but fades away to lacing after just a minute or two. Right when you bring it to your nose you get a blast of rye whiskey flavor. It is sweet and spicy with a nice note of booziness.

There's a strong cocoa flavor without a ton of heavy sweetness or the vanilla flavor that you get from a bourbon barrel aged beer. There are hints of caramel and roasted oak just behind the cocoa. There's a very nice consistent whiskey flavor throughout the beer. The rye has more of a spicy flavor to it than the bourbon barrel aging gives, and the spice lasts throughout the beer. The stout is also brewed with rye malt.

This is a great beer. It is heavy, but not so heavy that you can't drink a few of them in a row. It is sweet, but not sweet enough to make you sick to your stomach after half a growler. Incredibly well balanced would be an understatement for this beer. Each unique character has been allowed to have its moment in your taste buds. Right now you can get this on growler, so get it while you can.

I give it a 4







El Duque: I will admit, when I had this, I was nursing the Vertical Epic tasting hangover.  With that being said, what better cure than a good ol whiskey stout.  There were two things going on in my mouth.  The first was sweet toffee and oak.  Kind of like a burnt marshmallow.  The other was straight whiskey booziness.  It created a great taste combination, but even though the rye cut it well, I still found the syrupy-ness a little much, which may have been because my liver was holding my soul hostage.

If I could cellar this and let it mellow, this would easily be a 5, but fresh from the tap, its a little too raw, but it's damn good.

I give it a 4

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.

Bastard VS Bastard VS Double Bastard

Ohh Arrogant Bastard, how I love you. This is my kind of hoppy beer. So often I find a hoppy beer to be nothing but a bitter hop flavor. The Arrogant Bastard, however, brings hoppy joy to life with a nice flavorful ale. The color is almost a dark orange or burnt sienna (yes, I said burnt sienna, my wife is in design it's not my fault). It has a citrusy smell that you get from a lot of West Coast IPA's.

Although the hops dominate the taste of this beer, the sweet maltiness helps round them out and make them less abrasive. This isn't one of those beers where they just tried to see how much hop they could force down our throats, it's well balanced and refreshingly delicious. With caramel and slight citrus fruit flavors there is some great balance with the citrus and pininess of the hops.

When it comes to an all around good beer, there are few things that could out do the Arrogant Bastard... or so I thought.

I just got some Oaked Arrogant Bastard on tap at Shallo's. It was impressive, so to be fair I went out and got a bottle so I could compare bottles to bottles. In a competition between bastards the Oaked Bastard had all of the strong points of the original with added complexity of an oak aging process, which I believe helped to mellow out the bitterness of the hops even further. Right away there was a woody vanilla aroma added to everything that had already happened with the AB. All this is good stuff, but I will say the oak flavor was pretty intense. It overwhelmed a lot of the great flavor that you got from the original Arrogant Bastard. If you like the oak aged flavors, this beer totally delivers.

To take this one step further I decided it was important to get the double bastard in here. Double Bastard is the "barley wine" version of Arrogant Bastard. It's 11.2% abv instead of Oaked and Standard AB which comes in at 7.2%. The Double poured out a little less transparent than the other two but about the same coloring.

This was my favorite of the three beers. It smelled a little bit more like berries and the same citrus hoppy aroma from the other Bastards. Upfront there was caramel and fruit flavors with rich sweetness and slight toastiness. This was balanced out  by a clean bitterness that lasts for about ten seconds of bliss and then it rolls over to the alcohol flavor.

This is definitely more boozy than the others, but it is still well balanced. The heavier malts and hops help to cover up the alcohol taste and make the whole thing pretty smooth. It has a heavier mouth feel than the other two beers, but it was not unpleasant.

In wrap up:

• The Oaked Bastard was less hoppy but had a heavy vanilla flavor. If you are scared of heavy hops or just love an oak finish this is the beer for you.
• The standard AB had the cleanest finish, the Double Bastard had lingering booze flavor and the Oaked had lingering woodyiness. It is hard to beat a classic.
• If you like something with a bit more kick, Double Bastard is your brew. Solid flavor, tons of kick.

Arrogant Bastard- 4.0

Oaked Arrogant Bastard- 4.0

Double Bastard- 4.5