Black Metal Imperial Stout

Black Metal Imperial Stout from Austin's own Jester King Craft Brewery is just the thing to kick start an evening, or wind the night down to.  The 750 ml. bottle of pure happiness has the all the things you would expect from a great stout:  the dark black color, the mix of subtle chocolate and pepper flavors, and the 9% alcohol by volume content.  The head on this beer looks like a dessert, and you can taste the dark chocolate flavors in the foam.  Awesome.  So, pour yourself a big glass and sip away.  If anything, the bottle artwork alone is a reason to try this beer.  And on a side note, they use harvested rain water from the hill country in all their brews, and that's pretty cool.

Visit the brewery:  Jester King Craft Brewery

(I swear i will try something from outside of Texas next week.  I've already got friends giving me suggestions.  Let me know if you have one too.)

Iron Thistle Scotch Ale

The boys and girls over at Fort Worth's Rahr & Sons Brewery have gifted something truly great to the world:  Iron Thistle Scotch Ale.  The brew is a perfect mix of hops and malts, with hints of chocolate and caramel in a smooth, smooth Scotch style ale.  It goes down so smooth in fact, that you don't realize that the beer's 8% alcohol by volume until you get up...and have to steady yourself for a minute.  Try it with a good brie.  I recommend this to anyone and everyone.  At last Fort Worth can be known for something great (besides a TCU drug scandal).

Visit the brewery:  Rahr & Sons Brewery

Mesquite Smoked Porter

And now for something completely different.  The brewers at Ranger Creek in San Antonio decided that pairing a beer with food was a pain in the ass.  So, why not just combine the two?  That is essentially what you get with their Mesquite Smoked Porter.  All the regular porter flavors are there...the hint of chocolate or coffee or whatnot, and the hop spices, but you'll also detected a smokey flavor in the back of your palette that tastes just like Bar-B-Que.  It's like you've been grilling on a charcoal grill using some mesquite to smoke the meat.  That spicy taste you get in the back of your throat and in your nostrils from the smoke is basically the aftertaste of this brew.  The first pint is awesome because it's different, though i'd probably stop after that and move on.  But, it's definitely worth a try.

Check the brewer's website.

512 Pecan Porter

To those of you not in Texas, or more specifically the Austin area, you're missing out on a delicious local porter from the 512 Brewery.  And for that, i'm sorry.  The Pecan Porter is a dark porter brew with hints of chocolate  and (you guessed it) pecans.  The nut flavor from the locally grown pecans is a great addition to porter style beer.  The drink is 6.8% alcohol by volume, so a few of these should take you the cusp of Happyland.  This is a great brew to drink with a meat and cheese plate, or a burger, or on its own.  So, i repeat to those of you reading this from afar, you are missing out, and should promptly get your ass to Austin to imbibe the awesome Pecan Porter.

And then go home...we're getting a little overcrowded as it is.

Visit the 512 Brewery.

Left Hand Milk Stout

There's something to be said about the beers i would consider to be desert.  Left Hand Milk Stout takes all the things i love about a good stout beer (Guinness, i'm looking in your direction), the thickness, the smoothness, and the subtle mix of sweet and bitter, and then adds milk sugar into the mix to sweeten the brew.  For lack of a better analogy, it's like if the milk left in your bowl after eating a sugary cereal was actually a thick beer.  And by the way, it goes great with Saturday morning cartoons.  This beer blows my mind!

Love it, and so should you.

Visit their site:  Left Hand Brewing Co.

Abbey Belgian Style Ale

Digging on the desert that is most Belgian-style ales right now.  New Belgium's Abbey is really smooth, just the right amount of sweet, and feels like it could go with just about anything.  Drink it with cheese (mild or stinky), chocolate, or cigarettes...it really doesn't matter.  And if you were to open and pour one at 9AM, i wouldn't look at you weird.  I would simply ask you where mine was.  This is a very easy beer to drink with a 7% alcohol by volume.

Check out the New Belgium website.

Ommegang BPA

Moving on.  It may be winter (some days), but we drink a lot of pale ales here in Texas, and i've got to say, i've  discovered a winner from Cooperstown, New York of all places.  Brewery Ommegang's Belgian-Style Pale Ale is great mix of the usually malts and hops, but with a slight citrus tang and fruit aroma.  It's an awesome blend of bitter and sweet that reminded me a little of a hefeweizen, but in a thicker ale form.  You really can't go wrong with this brew.  There are some beers that are better before dinner, some that go with your meal, and others that are purely an after-meal endeavor (please see previous post).  The BPA would work for all three, but it feels most like a dinner beer.  So have at it.

Check out Brewery Ommegang here.