The Lost Abbey King of Tyre

I'm back on the Rare Beer Club train, my wife having re-enrolled me for it for my birthday last month.  And one of the brews from my first duo was the King of Tyre, a blended, barrel-aged barleywine from The Lost Abbey.  The 12% ABV brew pours a dark, cola brown with a light tan head and smells of molasses, caramel, and a little bit of oak and booze.  The flavor is a slightly creamy and slightly roasty mix of berries, vanilla, caramel, and some notes of booze.  It was a wonderful dinner beer.

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Red Horn Liquid Bake Sale Imperial Stout

One thing i absolutely adore about the craft beer community is just how communal it really is, people with a common love of beer coming together in good times and bad.  And the last year has proved just how vital that communal spirit can be.  COVID hit the industry hard, like it did a lot of things, and now the Texas Craft Brewers Guild, a non-profit trade association that works to advance the brewing industry through advocacy and education, has put together a fundraiser dubbed Liquid Bake Sale where craft brewers from all over the state brew special, original recipes using Texas grown malt to raise money to support the guild's mission.  And i was able to try my first last week from Red Horn.  Their brew is a 10% ABV imperial stout brewed with chocolate and peanuts, and it's a delicious treat of a desert.  The beer pours black with a tan head and smells of chocolate, peanuts, and malt.  Dark chocolate and peanut notes hit heavy on the tongue with some general roastiness in the mix as well.  It's rich and sweet but well balanced and a smooth drinker.  Wonderful.  Here's to sampling some Liquid Bake Sale goods from all over the state in the near future.

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Batch Tapped Imperial Stout

Back on Good Friday, the wife and kids and i all had the day off and a hankering for some kolaches.  There's a place in Austin called Batch that makes great kolaches, and as i recently discovered, also brews craft beer.  So we went to Batch...or we eventually got to Batch.  Life with kids a lot of the time means you arrive late.  Anyway, we arrived late, and i guess in a mad holiday, increasingly post-vax world, they were sold out of kolaches.  They still had beer though.  And i drank some, one of which was the delicious, 12% ABV imperial stout called Tapped.  Brewed with maple syrup and fermented on maple wood, the beer pours dark and thick with a light tan head and smells of malts, chocolate, and maple syrup.  The flavor is a velvety mix of chocolate and maple with a little hint of booze.  Great stuff for drinking on a day off from work...and at home.

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Megalodon Imperial Coffee Porter

It's always fun to drink a beer with can or bottle art that my kids are fascinated by.  And i guess if you put a picture of shark on the can, you're gonna have their attention.  It's cool when the beer is great too.  The Megalodon Imperial Coffee Porter from Virginia's Champion Brewing does it right, the 10% ABV brew pouring a dark, blackish brown with a tan head.  Aromas of roasted coffee beans, chocolate, and some hints of cream or vanilla hit the nose quick, and the flavor is heavy on the coffee and chocolate with some notes of cream and dark fruit that finishes just a little bit boozy.  Yum.

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