Category Archives: imperial porter

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Prairie Bomb, As Soon As the Mashtun is up in the Benz, Ales be Poppin like Parkinson’s

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This brewery has dropped a legit blitzkrieg on the trade boards and the offshelf distro world in general. It seems like just months ago I was sipping on the only available beer, Prairie Standard, suddenly places are getting like 10 different offerings overnight from these Okies. Their saisons were a legitmate experience, the hoppy offerings are clean and refreshing…but what about the dark side? Often times when someone is super cutty at the farmhouse world, they go to shit when they try and run a hook and ladder into the chocolate malt world. Remember when Jester King rolled out racksonracksonracks of “farmhouse” stout. Belgian Black Metal sounds like Vampire Weekend. Anyway, this is a huge stout with a list of adjuncts longer than my dick, LET’S SEE IF IT HOLDS UP.

This beer is Bomb, Lloyd Banks is not.

This beer is Bomb, Lloyd Banks is not.

Prairie Artisan Ales
Oklahoma, United States
American Double / Imperial Stout | 14.00% ABV

A: At first blush this has all the blueprints of a walk down Hunaland, which is the gulag in Candyland most players never make it to. The oily sheeting is substantial but you can see its not just a residual sugar mess of needless sheeting, it holds a certain degree of poise and purpose, coating in black khaki but letting the alcohol sheeting zambonie that shit clean. This is substantial in depth and has the attractive cacao foam on top like some overpriced fixed gear coffee drink some stupid girl in a stretched out tank top with a strapless bra underneath would buy. The coffee, not this beer.

A beer this complex is sure to satisfy, use your tornado tongue

A beer this complex is sure to satisfy, use your tornado tongue

S: Alright, time to tap this core sample because we are dealing with some serious strata up in this bitch. Layers and layers of complex periods piled up like corkboard. You know all those adjuncts on the label, well they show up like Dick Tracy villains in turn on the nose: coffee, roasty acidity, a sweetness like Coldstone Creamery vanilla, a tiny bit of peppers submerged under the chocolatey decadence that is pervasive. No swappertunities here you Yoplait fucks, stout hard or GTFO.

T: This is like a Terrence Malick movie rolled into a liquid medium, I don’t know if I fully get it but damn it feels good to try. The whole thing opens with that coffee dryness, baller ass single batch fair trade painter handing out acidity flyers and drying until chocolate shows up dripping wet in a candy coated slab. A fucking 88 Buick Regal of cacao milk chocolatey goodness leaves trails of stick fondant and mousse on all the low-calorie haters. You can feel yourself enrolling in crossfit when you take each substantial sip, there’s no Instragram hashtag to motivate people to this panoply. The vanilla is ranked out and doesn’t show up at all, for obvious reasons. It’s like the cast of Biggest Loser entered an elevator and vanilla is the thin ass size 20 contestant in the mix. Thank god, the chilis are subtle and don’t go ham handed like Mexican cake. It provides more of a diaphanous crackle than a full on heat that deadens the palate. Abv called in sick, nowhere to be found, having a beat sesh to Judge Judy and scrambled Cinemax all day long.

This beer is strange, but it makes my socks go up and down

This beer is strange, but it makes my socks go up and down

M: This doesn’t coat as hard as huna, but it doesn’t really need to since the taste focuses on two aspects that don’t especially need a deep lingering stickiness. It is somewhere in that Parabola range where you wouldn’t call it exceptionally thick, but it isn’t like Blackout Stout/Event Horizon or one of those svelte thin ass stouts. I am looking at you, size 1 jeans wearing Czar Jack with that apple ass.

D: This is tough to answer and I guess it really is up to your parole officer because sure you CAN put away probably 2-3 of these 14% beers. You can smash Goldfish on the entryway and leave a teary voicemail for your ex too, but that doesn’t mean you should. I think the 12oz was perfect, you get the blast of flavors, it opens up and sweetens as it warms and the affair is over with a swift economy that is approachable, unlike a Terrence Malick movie. This displays that poise that I wish some Bruery beers would give in their girth and 750 format, my liver and love handles can’t take it.

This beer is better than most of your other life decisions.

This beer is better than most of your other life decisions.

Narrative: The employees at Nestle were non-union, well, slaves really. The cacao factory in Bolivia was the only show in town now that Kraft had shut down all the local illegal logging operations with their new Chocomegalopolisplex. It looked not unlike Midgar with its huge Mako reactor filled with molten chocolate. The human resource department scrambled around the molten obsidian body of a 4’11” bolivian man who fell into the priming tanks. “GOD DAMN IT WE HAVE TO RECALL ALL OF THOSE CHIPS AT THE HEIGHT OF TOLLHOUSE SEASON!” one executive boomed. The tiny indigenous man parted his lips and the saccharine mud gurgled as he gasped for breath. “Por…por favor…no podemos usar…cafe…en la…dulces….” he stammered dripping mahogany drops on the acrylic floor. “WHAT IS HE SAYING! This is going to be a PR nightmare if we can’t get those coffee/vanilla/chili variants out for the holiday rush,” the production overseer fumed. An uncertified company nurse patted dabs of molted chocolate from Isidro, licking her fingers in the process. The press release would be a carefully executed affair, presenting all of the merits in a restrained way, albeit with underlying power and consequences. Isidro would receive a lifetime supply of Nestle Quik in both regular and strawberry variants, resulting in the unforeseen death of his village due to malnourishment.

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3 Floyd’s Bourbon Barrel Aged Alpha Klaus with Plums, Adjective Stacking FTW

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I know what you are thinking “another rare Barrel Aged 3 Floyd’s beer? Give that shit a rest.” Alright, fair enough, but BA Behemoth was beyond amazing so I can’t stay away, the game needs me. This is another one of those 391 bottle, generic barrel aged bottle releases and so far, all the prior releases were amazing. Let’s see if this follows suit or IF IT DOESN’T HAVE THE PLUMS TO DO SO

Keeping it Alpha as fuck with Victorian literature.

Three Floyds Brewing Co. / Brewery & Pub
Indiana, United States
American Porter | 10.00% ABV

Oh shit, bottle number 221/391, .rar bonus.

A: This has that inky squid discharge look with the nimble porter wateriness that you’ve come to expect from those charming offerings. The splishy splashy cola notes give it a flat soda look with some moderate carbonation. It looks pretty legit, through and through, although some middle carbonation wouldn’t be a total turn off. But this isn’t a Hustler spread, so let’s leave these fictional dreams well enough alone.

Whenever I open a barrel aged 3 Floyd’s Beer: I HAVE THE POWER.

S: While it is plum, I get a deep grape and black cherry from the nose, mixed in like a Cordial with some chocolate and a marshmallow froth. There’s some booze holding this kraken back, but the whole thing seems sweeter and purple Flintstones vitamin more than chocolate rampage.

T: The plum kicks into a deep sweet grapitey grape rampage. Statutory grape, if you will. The plum comes across in more of a light tannin fairy dust sprinkled throughout the fracas like feathers in a sorority girl pillow fight and the chocolate and roast look inside through the malt window with visible erections. It reminds me of a purple fanta meets yoohoo outing that is neither suitable for hikes nor sitting by the hearth, discussing Roosevelt’s re-election. Like a plum bachelorette, neither classy, nor explicitly trashy.

This beer pulls of some strange stunts, which you appreciate but are not sure how to apply in a larger medium.

M: The mouthfeel is dead on and cartwheels into a nimble posture, tossing black cherry shurikens pell mell. It washes away clean but the booze hangs out on the way out, looking for trim on the way down. I would not suggest this to novice beer drinkers unless you want to hear a bunch of irritating adjectives that will denature your experience, “OH MAN IT IS LIKE A TAFFY BURNT TIRE BRO” see I can’t even make them shitty enough to impart realism.

D: This is exceptionally drinkable, but I am torn as to whether I like it more cold or warmer. Cold it is more chocolate with tame fruits, around 60 degrees this shit starts getting into Fruit Stripe Gum territory real quick, which is tasty and original, but maybe not as drinkable. If you focus on the lingering chocolate and cocoa phosphate aspect, it is fulfilling through and through.

Porterrr….plumssses…..bourbon….now….build me a dam sweet Indiana muses…

Narrative: William Goyette gripped his temples and popped another prune into his mouth. His status consistently garnered no showering of likes, thumbs, approval or otherwise. “GOD DAMNIT THIS GUY AGAIN!” he exclaimed and looked at his minifeed cluttered with “THE DOCTOR SAYD YOUR HAVENG A GIRL!” with 56 likes. Another status from a marginally attractive Mormon girl said “each day is a gift wrapped in a sunrise” that received 34 comments. “THIS MAKES NO FUCKING SENSE,” he thought to himself and took a bite from a juicy plum. William lives strictly off of Farmer’s Market food, did crossfit, read H.P. Lovecraft and thought that he was edgy as fuck. He still could not understand why the goldpan of life passed his pithy statuses by. “Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what LPs Real Estate are going to release next fall” he could not understand how that gem of relevance and ultra ironic but self deprecating tone of metacritical commentary rolled in auspicious knowledge, somehow failed to elicit “likes.” Likes are the lifeblood and currency of the insecure. They feed the Williams of the world with a sweet succor of post-collegiate relevance. It is the sweet nectar for his race, the rare and relevant, the cloistered tiers of esoteric civilization. He popped a dried plum into his mouth from the Ronco food dehydrator and he began his 43rd screenplay, this time a SciFi re-imagining of Howard’s End. He was edgy as fuck.

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Southern Tier Mokah, Why Brew Coffee When You Can Brew Beer? Oh, DUIs.

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Southern Tier rolled out a whole line of these imperial stout monsters that tasted like other things, creme brulee, mokah, jahva, all kinds of things. You don’t see that in other formats, I have never seen a baker making cupcakes that taste like an imperial stout, I guess it’s a one way street for people with things to take care of. Anyway, let’s get coffee wasted and start cupping in today’s review.

I can’t be bothered to sort all these damn imperial stout pictures, but this one tasted like coffee. Big shocker.

Guess what, this tasted exactly like creme brulee and the girls lost their shit over it. I thought it was sweeter than the end of a Nicholas Sparks movie, but then again I have that XY chromosomal order.

Spoiler alert, this beer, called Choklat, tasted like a sweet kiss from Johnny Depp, psyche, it tasted like fucking chocolate. Duh, next beer.

I completely forgot what the fuck we were talking about. Oh yeah, this beer, which is TOTALLY DIFFERENT THAN ALL THAT OTHER SHIT. Just kidding, they are all awesome, haters gonna hate.

Southern Tier, Mokah 11.2% abv, Imperial Stout

A: Deep dark oily hues, not so black as Satan’s magic or straight up Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but, still pretty black. Mild tiny bubbles, tiny carbonation, tiny everything. Get your mind out of the gutter.

Most people can’t afford to take down a series of Southern Tier dank ass stouts, pic related.

S: Very sweet milk notes, not unlike their crème brulee, with a solid coffee waft as the backbone. I am very intrigued by this penumbra between the two elements. “Oh wait, he is intrigued?” not a single fuck was given today, I know. But seriously, the dichotomy is amazing.

T: The taste is a spot on rendition between a sweet stout and a deep coffee stout. It is just amazing on both polar ends. At the outset you get an amazing caramel milky sweetness that subsides into a drying coffee dryness. It feels like a cuvee between a milk stout and a coffee stout. Again, just amazing on all fronts.

I love you forever Southern Tier, even though you put my nice things in the toilet.

M: This imperial stout is not overbearing but is incredible in the mouth feel. It coats and imparts some great sweet and bitter notes and fades quickly, not overstaying its welcome. The whole endeavor just smacks of value. This beer has a great breakfast stout character to it without any barrel aging, very impressive.

D: Very drinkable, incredibly silky in its body with a great mouthfeel and coating to it. I cannot believe that this is a simple off shelf beer and again, when it comes to stouts, the east coast is spoiled beyond belief. I feel like I just spoil this category but I seriously could drink this stout for days on end, it has an incredible balance. For reals.

Unlike facebook, I never rage at Southern Tier stouts, because they are sweet and amazing.

Narrative: Do you ever feel like someone is just controlling your every movement? Like Truman show? No like literally hedging every single one of your clips and turns. In what way? Ok, I don’t want to invoke the old deontological chestnut where we discuss pre-destination relative to a divine plan, I mean, in this earthly world, some people are destined to encounter some conflict and resolution, purely on the basis of man’s plight and have it resolved by the same anomalous factors. Well sometimes, like a flat tire and a serendipitous tow truck? That sort of thing? Exactly and now what those conflicting elements interplay so succinctly? Well usually something bad happens and then something pretty cool happens. The bitter and the sweet. Well, yeah. So who determines this balance, if it is determined, the interplay should be fairly evenly divided but who is the wholesale recipient of a load of bitter while others receive nothing but sweet. Well, to that I cannot say? It feels arbitrary and totally unfocused but at the same time, it is uplifting knowing that at any given moment a blast of splenda or carmelized sugar could come my way, sure it could be in the form of strippers or Magic: the Gathering cards, but the treats are nonetheless sweet. Well, I guess I feel you, but I can’t help feeling that this entire discussion was a paper thin pretense for both deontology and simple aromatics in food. Well, basically. Those two are pretty aligned.

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Green Flash Double Stout, When a Single Stout Isn’t Enough, Double That Shit Down.

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Green Flash, ah, just the name feels like the deal of the century. They nestle shoulders with Lagunitas warmly and provide amazing beers are incredibly affordable prices. I love this brewery and they consistently roll out great gems for everyone to enjoy, not just elitist aleholes with boxes littering their homes. So let’s double down some stouts in today’s review.

This beer is stunning and this shit didn’t even go into a barrel. . .that one is coming soon. . .FORESHADOWING TO THE MAXIMUM.

Green Flash Double Stout
8.8% abv

A: This is a welcoming blackness with some deep brown hues. There is a fantastic huge carbonation and lingering forestry of lacing that webs over itself and sticks with aggression. The entire beer is incredibly well done and surprising, not in an elitist way, but come on for the price this beer delivers more than some of the overhyped brewery only releases. I am super serial.

I need MORE OF THIS STOUT. All the time.

S: This is incredible for a beer that is not barrel aged. It presents a huge drying coffee, burnt wood, and 85% cocoa chocolate profile. But with a smoothness like a Feist sustained note. Deep, dark, but entreating. There’s a dryness and a crispy brownie batter aspect to it.

T: The taste is very simple. It imparts a huge burnt dryness that tastes like the dregs of a great espresso that melts into a chocolate profile with that bitterness that is common to very dark chocolate and then a splash of water, and it is over. It is a chocolate splash mountain of flavor and Brier Rabbit barely has time to say anything, edgewise or otherwise.

With something this dark and powerful, shit gets dangerous real quickly.

M: This is swift with a medium coating but a solid coating for about 2 seconds and then it scurries off. It is almost like they want you to drink the entire 4 pack in a single sitting. WELL GREEN FLASH, I see your challenge and respectfully decline, I have other matters to attend to. The end taste of the coating has a sort of a burned black licorice that is interesting, but fleeting. This is a swift little stout but even the most capricious Clipper spies a Galeon on the horizon. YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN.

D: This is incredibly drinkable if, and only if 1) you enjoy coffee, a lot or 2) you cannot wait for baked good to be done and you like baker’s chocolate, a lot. If you want a huge filling stout, this isn’t the one. This is a deep dark oaky coffee ninja that imparts and retreats. Toffee shurikens are likely involved.

Smootheness coupled with an integrated alcohol profile makes me not know what the hell is going on before I knew it.

Narrative: “Another one, this is a series, to be sure.” Detective Branning spit angrily upon the ground and clenched his jaw. “Another chocolate store robbed blind, in an instant, with the insides gutted and replaced with…shitty coffee.” “Yes sir, it just doesn’t add up.” his assistant, Detective Willoughby added. Willoughby’s glasses slide down the bridge of his nose as he chewed on the end of his pen contemplatively. “You know, if someone wants chocolate that bad, why go through the trouble of replacing it with all this shitty coffee? Just don’t add up boss.” Branning nodded and looked into the bag’s of Seattle’s Best, then into a barrel of Yuban. “Someone is fucking with us, it’s a calling card, he’s letting us know that he can get away with it.” Branning ejaculated and flipped his notebook shut. Meanwhile, in the alley adjacent to the knocked off candy store, a lone Peruvian man garbed in all black shook his head morosely. “No detective Branning, this is far from a game, and it has only just begun,” he chortled as his diminutive 5’2” frame chortled with menacing laughter. “IN THE LAND OF SURPLUS CROPS, THE MAN WITH THE CHOCOLATE IS KING.” Branning took one long look at the crime scene and said, “well Willougby, whoever did this is either really sick, or was raised in a place that doesn’t understand relative product value, OR BOTH.” He kicked a lone coffee bean and watched it slide into a pool of melted chocolate.

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Cigar City, Either/Or Black Ale, EITHER This Beer is Awesome, OR Kierkegaard is Wrong.

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Cigar City either blindsides me with a gem, or you open something like Vuja De and don’t know what the fuck to make of it. This beer falls in the former category and my only complaint is the old amorphous “black ale” title that initially put me off to this. Let’s call this what it is: an awesome imperial stout er…maybe a triple imperial porter…fuck. I don’t know it is EITHER a stout OR this is a shitty pun.

Oh, ok. Either and Or are the same beer. Ba dum tish. Dichotomies about.

Cigar City, Either/Or,
Black Ale, 11.5% Abv

A: What a novel gimmick, two beers, the same beer. Sounds like an expensive bottle labeling maneuver. I was expecting some earth shattering Soren Kierkegaard business, but this wasn’t particularly mind blowing…AT FIRST. This has a kinda watery look to it of freshly pressed ink from a baby squid. Murky but shiny. Mild lacing and medium carbonation. It’s like a halfway home for abused porters and baby stouts.

You can enjoy huge black ales and get super dreeze, heck, enjoy nature, just don’t be a dbag when you take it to the 11% abv dangerzone.

S: There is a Huge hop profile, wood, oak, nice black licorice, and a toasted maltiness. It is like a low-cal version of Hunaphu’s. Low is relative, I GUESS. Actually it is more like a more svelte blacker Huna with some smoothe cocoa swagger.

T: This has a great chocolate/anise taste to it that it sweet but with a nice bitterness to it, without being medicinal. It’s like when you were a kid and had too many delicious Flintstones vitamins, only chocolate and tobacco flavored, and no diarrhea. Not yet at least. WE SHALL SEE.

Discover an amazing black ale, realize it is sold 3000 miles away. Shed manly tears.

M: This has a nice coating and mild stickiness to it that washes away but leaves a little something behind, like a crafty clingy first date that wants you to think about her again. YOUR TRICKS WONT WORK ON ME. Ok well I sought it out again so maybe those tricks worked, who knows? I would gladly go after this again.

D: This has a cool hybrid drink ability to it and is very delicious. Overall the complexity isn’t overwhelming but it makes it all the more appealing. Plus in the 12oz format you can come and go as you please, no need to be a deatbeat dad about your black ales, leaving them all around town. You can gently nurse them and pick up another at your leisure.

I don’t know, what the fuck, is going on.

Narrative: “And that’s how you fit 22 slavs in a phone booth!” Yurgis exclaimed with his own eastern European sort of aplomb. “Yes, er uh, thank you for that Yurgis, Mr. Chalmers, Yurgis is our exchange student and he sure does have an INTERESTING SENSE of humor, pass the peas please sweetie.” Walter succinctly stated to his supervisor. This family dinner would decide the fate of his career for the next half decade, if only his disheveled ukranian house guest would keep quiet. Mr. Chalmbers was the new CFO of Texodyne, a chemical manufacting plant whose operations were largely based out of Uzbekistan, apparently a locale that Yurgis had plenty to say about. “And when the streets run red with the blood of the nonbeliev-” “ok ok ok, thank you Yurgis.” It wasn’t that he was particularly bad or dark, he was actually kinda sweet in his own third world sort of way. Most people just had a tough time looking past his penetrating darkness. “Good and bye Mr. Chalm-bers, I want for to make love to your daughter in soon time, we will be good friends!” The family hung their heads at the prospect of another 5 years without a raise.

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Central Waters Fourteen Fourteen 1414 $14.14 Four teens for teams.

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Well, what else can I say about Central Waters? They make amazing stouts and an even more amazing Bourbon Barrel Barleywine, but wait, what happens when they make something even MORE SPECIALER? They took baller ass Winter Solstice and then aged it in (rumored) Buffalo Trace barrels, spoiler alert, this stout is amazing.

A lil 14 on 14 action, NSFW.

Central Waters Brewing Company
Wisconsin, United States
American Double / Imperial Stout | 11.00% ABV

A: This has a nice mild cola splashiness to it that is totally at home in Central Waters’s lineup of other thin stouts. The lacing and carbonation are pretty mild and take a hands off approach to molesting your palate. You remember a week ago when I reviewed winter solstice from Central Waters? Well this shit is like when Bane turns the pump on and gets super jacked immediately. It is deeper, darker, but still slick and light at the same time. Park your boat at a PAIRADOCKS.

Cuddle up for some chocolatey bourbon snugs.

S: This straight up smells like a glass of decadent Nestle Quik with bourbon poured into it. There’s elements of that vanilla and oak that bourbon imparts but comes across as sweetness. There’s a mild coffee but it’s less espresso and more like a watery Yuban aspect, that sounds like a diss but it somehow works.

T: The taste has a nice initial sweetness like a hershey kiss but it takes you to Kentucky real quick. Shit turns into Bourbon central and uncle Jasper wants some sloppytime kisses. I get a s’mores aspect to this sans graham cracker, mod, plus nice heat. However, the heat from the bourbon integrates nicely into the home depot tire aisle earthiness, again, sounds like a diss but just try it, it is bomb.edu.

Seems legit.

M: Hot on the tails of imperial porters, this almost feels like one of THOSE, but the slickness doesn’t really throw me. I have tamed the BB Stout, gotten Peruvian Morning wood, and handled Winter Solstice, and all in all, the wateriness is a part of the magic that Central Waters imparts with a chocolate waterpark hug. I feel like Augustus Gloomp stuck in that chocolate water tube, loving every second of it.

D: The faults from the foregoing become epic wins here, as is often the case. You want to fuck around with some 11% puddle fight? Here you go, but be warned, shit will get real pretty quickly. I don’t know how drinkable a 1000 bottle release can really be but, gotta tip my hat to old SEE DUBs, they know how to push the Wisconsin game even further. I would love to put Wisconsin, Oregon, Colorado, and Michigan in a cagematch, winner fights Vermont.

Hide your stouts, hide your porters, this beer is awesome.

Narrative: “Well maybe if YOU ACTUALLY CARED, you would try to UNDERSTAND ME!” Crystaline Grimnoir (Born Christie Steinbaum) was a troubled 14 year old adolescent. She slammed the door and trudged out to face the 45th gloomy day in a row, to her infinite relief. First, her parents moved her from bustling Milwaukee to Amherst, to languidly waste away amongst tragically boring schoolmates. Next, she had to suffer through music class when all she longed to do was go home and create post-modern beats on a Casio keyboard on the harpsichord setting. She walked up to her clan of fellow miscreants, “You guys listen to the new Godspeed! You Black Emperor album? Fucking sucks, anyone want a pull of that Buffalo Trace?” she gripped the strangely expensive bourbon and looked out on the quad. “So uh, Crys, are we gonna go to formal like, you know, ironically, to see it, not because I want to be there-” her compatriot stammered. Crys took a large bite of a Toblerone and grinned menacingly “yes, we have dark business to attend to.” Her thin frame cackled with an awkward laughter.

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Deschutes Black Butte XXIII, Porters Don’t Get Much More Imperial Than This

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I never really know how to straddle these imperial porters. Regular porters are often so far away in scope and execution, but imperial stouts are completely different beasts altogether. Suffice it to say, I enjoy this style a ton when they are executed well, but if it’s too big, it eats shit like a Korean gymnast. Lucky for us, this one sticks the landing, sticks it so hard.

Droppin twanky tres on em.

Deschutes xxiii Black Butte Imperial Porter 10.5% abv

A: This has a slippery BP black with mild wateriness and deep amber hues, great carbonation and a fantastic presentation. The legs do not show through that well and if this is an imperial porter, it’s a pretty fucking powerful empire because the maltiness toes the line into a stout-tranny, er, you know what I mean.

I won’t say I am afraid of this beer, but it is capable of some dangerous shit.

S: There is an orange rind smell with licorice light and smokiness. It smells amazing. This is one of the most aromatic porters that I have ever encountered and I still get jazzed every time someone busts one of these out. You get some nice vanilla, oak, and light waft of alcohol.

T; There is a great slickness with a little juniper herbal finish to it. The front is similar to dark chocolate notes but the mouthfeel is distinctly porter not stout. It has a finishing dryness with a lingering sweetness. Just fantastic all around on the tastey sesh. I really enjoy the interesting venn diagram that it creates between stouts and porters in that it is still distinctly huge and mildly watery, relative to an imperial stout, but still maintains its character very well. It’s the difference between a chocolate milkshake and some gourmet Yoohoo. Feel me?

There’s a bit of gentle lightness in this deep darkness that delivers the sweetness to your facehole.

M: The coating is huge, probably the thickest porter that I have encountered. This easily gives Victory at Sea a run for its money. I want more and alas, I cannot obtain it that easily after the run is done. I would stack this right next to Birth of Tragedy, albeit below it as a fine example of a beastly porter that delivers harder than a Ramen courier.

D: This is a split ticket decision. On one hand you have a big foamy, filling, high abv porter that imparts considerable dryness. On the other hand, it is so well balanced and delicious, you could drink this into a stupor. Ultimately I will side with the party that supports consuming delicious things at length. If you have soft little hands and a light stride, sure, have an 8oz taster and move on. The rest of us will engage in a bacchanalian festival of porters and rejoicing.

This is deep and dark but menacing at the same time.

Narrative: Mocha stared knowingly at the horizon, sensing a storm was coming. Her penguin bretheren were too busy diving for squid in the shallows to pay attention. However, deep in Mocha’s soul she felt that insightful knowledge, that looming storm. They would chastise her, call her serious and forlorn and continue with their gallivanting. Day by day the temperatures were steadily rising and no one seemed to care. Sage old Mocha wiped her brow and pecked at the shallow pools. No one believed her when she predicated the great migration, no one trusted her when she foresaw the epic enclosure and flock partition, but now, here they were, in the Cleveland Zoo, and things were getting worse. Some Browns fans had showed up to the habitat and were throwing pork rinds into the water. Their jowls shook violently as they guffawed at the penguins splashing playfully. Mocha lowered her gaze at these overweight humans and noted, “mom’s gonna fix it all soon, mom’s gonna drown us set back to the way it oughta be.”

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Hess Brewing Brunus Induresco Coffee Porter, Eh Tu Brunus?

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I love seeking out nano’s and seeing what they are up to. Unlike girls at the gym with nanos, nanobreweries are downright approachable and can usually get up in the mix with stuff that bigger boys may not want to attempt. I don’t know if there is a smaller adjective but Funky Buddha fits this bill pretty well. When people started kicking up dust about this lil upstart, Eric generously hooked this up for me so I could get in on the SD reindeer games. Let’s see what is going down with Hess in today’s review.

It's a coffee drink for people who don't have shit to accomplish in the morning.

Hess Brewing Company
California, United States
American Porter | ABV 7.5(?)

One of the badass things about nano’s is that price is usually not a limiting factor since they are going to be making small runs with weird ingredients so you can try shit like a Durian Gose or an Ectocooler Saison, wait I think I already tried that last month, anyway, shit is cray. This is no exception, this porter has freshly roasted coffee beans from the coffee and tea collective and the nano notes are certainly there.

A: The pour is classic porter, nice Dr. Pepper looking wateriness with mild coating and a light sheeting that billows up a non-offensive amount of carbonation. The lacing is clumpy like 9’s in a club, you know what I mean. The result is lil spotty archipelagoes that cling to the glass like if Casper got hit with a proton pack. Don’t cross the streams with this porter.

At first I wondered if this would be mainstream and disappointing, but then it delivered some memorable moments. Pic related.

S: Easily my favorite part of this beer is the smell. It gets straight up Peruvian with some nice malty roast and an acidic coffee integration like light roasts that still have balls. The beans and dry roastiness trump the chocolate or sticky malt aspects, and for the porter base, I am liking what is going down. This has more coffee to the nose than even those other coffee heavy hitters like Peche Mortel of Founder’s Breakfast Stout, albeit with less complexity. The coffee hits like the Tyrant in Resident Evil with a huge left hook and little more than an aggro charge attack. However, I think it is better as a result.

T: The taste is acidic coffee and deep roasty malts through and through. It isn’t exactly on the smokey zone like some stouts that push the office jokes too far, but the coffee keeps it in line with clean Latter Day Saints coffee humor. The dryness works well with the light watery character and gives the whole beer this sort of morning beverage aspect that isn’t exactly filling but it knocks you down strictly due to the bitterness of the deep arabica character. In fact, if I didn’t know better, I would assert the use of high alpha acid hops like Tomahawk but it isn’t exactly like that, no Native Americans were implicated in the creation of this stout.

Some people complain that I need to take more beer porn pics of me pouring the beer at super high res so you can see the hair follicles in the malt and shit, go to a Spiderman thread, this is beer.

M: The mouthfeel is crisp and dry. There was not a barrel involved here but the roast can trick you into thinking maybe some kids were painstaking working as coopers for Hess, and while I am not an advocate of child labor, if that is the case, so be it if coffee flavor is the price. Anyway, so there’s a nice crisp dryness but not a huge malty body to support it, so you get the porter analog of a west coast IPA, with different palate profiles. I am on board for that shit like crunchwrap supremes at 2:45 a.m.

D: This is exceptionally drinkable and I merked an entire 1 liter growler with the utmost urgency. This isn’t my favorite porter of all time but it does put an interesting spin on those non-BA non-imperial porters like Edmund Fitzgerald that hold a special place in my heart. If you like those but want more coffee on bean sex, this will get your oils all grinding. I would go ahead and assume that this is only as exceptional as noted when sampled extremely fresh, it also helps to sample 32oz at a time for maximum boost gauge omnislash potential.

You wouldn't steal a coffee, you wouldn't download a girlfriend, don't rob nanobreweries by accepting subpar replicas. FEELINGS.

Narrative: Carl Glauber kicked the obsidian sand in front of him and exhaled deeply. He was resigned to his fate, an untimely death on a deserted volcanic island with nothing but the sweet succor of hundreds of pounds of fresh coffee beans to abate his pain. The sweet irony of dying a slow death in the south pacific with only coffee beans to live on was, he was awake for every moment of it. “Go follow the Kopi Lowak coffee beans” they said “it’s the modern day gold rush, with coffee beans!” they said. Now he was here jittering harder than an asian biochem student wondering where it all went wrong. Maybe it was the jumping in the single prop plane, maybe it was the sacks and sacks of decadent coffee, maybe- ah, who we Carl to speculate as he stared out upon the deep, black, obsidian fragments. His hands shook violently from a coffee induced dehydrated rage as he tried to insert a piece of paper inside of an empty Frappucino bottle with a plea for mercy. The bottle floated against the stern of a nearby Seattle’s Best barge and a crewmate ambled up the ropes with the message in hand. “SIR! There is a Kopi Lowak poacher writing in barely legible handwriting begging mercy for his coffee transgressions!” The captain of the Seattle’s Best barge lowered his brown solemnly, “if he chose to exist outside the coffee parameters of gas stations and dorm rooms, he deserves whatever fate the java gods have served him.” Authorities would later express amazement when Carl fashioned a helicopter entirely out of coffee beans and byproducts, only to escape weeks later and learn that he had the coffee all along. He is currently shopping his story to William Morris Endeavor for movie rights.

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BONUS REVIEW: New Glarus Smoke on the Porter, the beer is much harder to make than the guitar riff is to play.

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I love New Glarus and I don’t care who knows it. We all know my civil objection to Red and Tart, but quite literally every other beer is amazing without qualifier.

Now we come to this crossroad. I hate smoked beers, I dislike smoke, and even a flint and dry kindling makes me nervous. So here we go, don’t let me down Wisconsin.

So sticky, so rauchey.

Unplugged Smoke on the Porter
New Glarus Brewing Company
Wisconsin, United States
American Porter | 6.10% ABV

Let me start by saying that every. single. beer. In this unplugged series has been amazing. Seriously. I will also qualify that with the fact that this beer IS AMAZING, but I absolutely did not enjoy it. How is this possible? Well, did you ever see Tree of Life, and you know something incredible is going on but you just refuse to embrace the artistry and amazing deliberate moves set forth. Enough sophistry, is it good? Yes, but not to me. This is not to say that people are “wrong” if they enjoy this. I just cannot stand smoke in my beers unless it they buttress the balustrade with some elaborate railings. So the base beer is amazing, if you can breathe through the smoke and inhale into blankets like that movie The Negotiator, you’ll survive.

I guess I just don’t like my amazing porter tasting like beer jerky [sic] anymore than I would cure a delicious cut of meat with a porter. “I WOULD!” the masses resoundingly announce. Well, intersubjectivity rules again. Some people dress in Furry suits and dome one another up, I am not saying it is wrong, my intercourse is just less elaborate.

The Verdict: This is a great base beer, amazing taste, very drinkable, clean, on to style, great chocolate and slight mocha wash, if you can somehow ignore the HUGE smoke presence, another win for New Glarus.

There are some bad ass elements going on in this beer, but you aren't sure if they should be combined.

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Pipeworks Brewing End of Days Cacao Milk Sweet Ancho Chili Cinnamon Non-Imperial… STOUT.

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I am not kidding. That is seriously what this beer has going on. You know that shit just got real when your stout has more adjectives attached to it than a teenage girl’s drink at Starbucks, but HEY, Hunahpu’s had all that going on as well, SO THIS SHOULD BE JUST AS GOOD RIGHT?

Right?

More like the end of trades.

Pipeworks Brewing Company
Illinois, United States
Milk / Sweet Stout | 6.10% ABV

I heard mixed reviews about this thing, some people were all half mast and calling this the second coming of sweet baby Huna, others decried that this was the largest misuse of chilies since Fear Factor pushed a ghost pepper in that dude’s urethra. Who am I to judge? I WILL SHOW YOU EXACTLY WHO.

The beer pours porter thin and leaves a mild cola sheeting that doesn’t seem to have the britches to carry all those modifiers listed above. The abv of 6% is of particular concern as well and once you taste it, you realize that you liked Tboz the best, not Chili. But, what about your friends?

The taste is like taking a delicious milkshake, watering it down substantially, but keeping that sweet cacao presence, and then adding some cinnamon for good measure. You still with me? Ok so take all that with your watery milkshake, and now add a jamba juice boost of ANCHO CHILIES. After about 8oz my throat has this mild stinging and numbness like when you rub cocaine on some nips. You know the drill. It was refined but out of control at the same time, not unlike 3J from Family Matters. I enjoyed my limited serving but even my levels of badassness couldn’t wrangle this whole beastly 22oz. What about your friends? They were rolling 3 deep on this one and ultimately it seemed like when you see a 92 lbs. girl at the gym with DD implants you think that the inner beauty of simplicity and refinement need not be sullied with a din of chili madness, plus they’re just disproportionate, I mean look at that.

IT IS A CHOICE.