Back from Utah and I want to write up 3 beers that beat me up and stole my sobriety.
Boulevard‘s Long Strange Tripel
Epic‘s Big Bad Baptist
This imperial stout was a knockout. I am still thinking about it. Pours black as tar into the glass, it’s a chewy stout that feels like it wants to be a porter. They brew it dark and then add in darker coffee and cocoa nibs. Epic ages this for a short time with oak so it has a bourbony vanilla thing hiding in the taste as well. What a winner.
Deschutes‘ Black Butte XXIII
Another wicked dark beer. This is a filthy porter that has all sorts of extra belgiany flavors going on. They added cocoa nibs like the big bad baptist, but left out coffee. Don’t need it – the porter coffee flavor comes through. Instead they added a little bit of chilli and some orange zest. Having a lil chilli in an already flavorful beer is a great idea. Because you already have other flavors going on, it is hard to make out the spice – but you feel it. This reminds me of the Dogfish Head Theobroma – another great chocolatey spicy beer.
Homebrewing
Something that really appealed to me when I looked these beers up – all of these breweries list the ingredients they used to brew the beer. It’s a kind of open source feel. Sure, they may not give you the exact times and proportions, but it is encouraging to see that you can play with the same stuff to get a similar brew. I think next fall I should try to put together one of those black beasts in my own brewkettle.
But wait, there's more
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