Big Lushious from Founders Brewing

Happy New Year to everyone. It has been way too long since I have typed up one of these. With the holidays and all, I was just hanging out with my wife mostly. We also got a new puppy. He is pretty awesome. We lost one of our pups back in August and thought that it was time to get another pup. Thank you to Facebook for making the day that I lost my dog one of the big moments of the year for me. That really sucked to pull up Facebook on my phone and see that displayed prominently. You suck Facebook. Anyway, we found an awesome dog at Stray Rescue.

I wanted to name him after a variety of hops. One of my favorite hops is Simcoe. Wifey said no way on that one. I started going through some of my other favorites and kept getting rejected until...GALAXY! His name is Galaxy. He is a border collie mix and is super cool. Our pit, Abbie, has started to warm up to him. They love to play. It took our cat Roddy longer to get used to him. Here is Roddy staring him down on the first day we brought Galaxy home.

So, with all that being said, I am going to try to write more reviews. I recently had a bottle of Big Lushious from Founders Brewing Company. This is an Imperial Stout with chocolate and raspberries. It is 7.8% ABV. It pours a dark black with a small tan head. The smell is...wow! The smell is like chocolate covered raspberries. The taste is the same, chocolate covered raspberries. The body is a little thick but very silky. This is a dessert beer. There are dessert wines and also dessert beers.

This really is an amazing beer. This tastes like Founders combined some of their Breakfast Stout with Rubaeus, their raspberry beer. I would love to have a glass of this after a nice dinner. Just great. I give this 4.0 hop flowers. Wonderful!

Stray Rescue of St. Louis
Founders Brewing Company

Storm King Stout by Victory Brewing

A few months ago, we drove to Evansville, IN to go on a beer run for beer we could not get here. One of the beers we brought back was DirtWolf Double IPA by Victory Brewing Company. That was one heck of a beer. I absolutely loved it. Well, when we traveled down to Florida and the Carolinas to see family, we made it into another beer run. One of the stores had DirtWolf, so I picked up some of that. Right next to that beer was Storm King Stout. I looked it up on Rate Beer and it has a 97 by style and 100 overall. So of course, I grabbed two 4-packs of it. Storm King was in my beer advent calendar. Yesterday was the day I was able to try it.

Storm King is an Imperial Stout. It is 9.1% ABV. It pours a deep black with a nice tan head. The aroma is a nice roasted malt but also some hoppy bitterness to it. I took a sip and it was really nice. With that first sip, I got the roasted malts but also that bit of hops.

With other stouts and especially the Christmas Bomb! I reviewed, the more it warms up, the more flavorful it becomes. I let this one set a few minutes and took another sip. The chocolate and coffee notes started to become a bit more up front. I let it set a few more minutes and man, it was coming alive. I waited again and this time all of those complex flavors were wonderful. I figured that if it is coming directly out of the refrigerator, I would want to wait about 20 minutes for it to get to the right temperature. If you want to taste this beer open up, start drinking it immediately after taking it out of the fridge and take sips every few minutes. This is a wonderful stout but it could be characterized as part IPA also.

I really wish that Victory distributed to the St. Louis area. They have some wonderful beers. I still have some more of this great beer if someone would like to have a tasting party. I give this 4.5 hop flowers. It is so good.

Victory Brewing Company

Christmas Bomb! from Prairie Artisan Ales

Prairie Artisan Ales, out of Krebs, Oklahoma, has an Imperial Stout called Bomb! or Prairie Bomb!. This is a very good stout. There is also Pirate Bomb!. The Prairie Bomb! is an Imperial Stout with coffee, cacao nibs, vanilla beans and ancho chili peppers. This beer is down right delicious. The Pirate Bomb! is the Prairie Bomb! aged in rum barrels (get it, rum barrels...pirate?). When these beers are released, there is usually a mad dash to your local craft beer store to get them. They are very tasty. I have both of these variants. Well, for the Christmas season, they release Christmas Bomb!. With this beer, Prairie adds Christmas spices like nutmeg and cinnamon. It is 11.5% ABV.

I was able to pick up some bottles of this stout from The Wine and Cheese Place. When it was released, we were still on vacation down south, so I placed an order online and picked up my bottles when we got back into town. I recently made my own Beer Advent Calendar and added this beer to it. Unfortunately, I have not tasted it and I will not be picking it of my Beer Advent Calendar box for over two weeks. So, I decided to grab another bottle and try it out. Boy, am I glad I did.

This beer pours a deep black with a small tan head. It was clear a little bit around the edges. The aroma was heavy coffee, some of the spices and malt. I could have just smelled it for a while but then that might have been weird. That first taste is really nice. It was chocolaty, malty and hints of those spices.

I pulled out my phone and brought up the Untapped app to rate it. I rated it a 4.0. I took another sip and got a few different tastes. This time, I tasted the coffee and more spice. I set the glass down for a minute or two. I picked it up and swirled the glass a little bit. I then got just a hint of licorice. I can not stand that anise flavor from black licorice but there was just a hint of that in the aroma. I did not taste it though. Wifey said it best when she said that when it warms up, it opens up like a flower. I have to totally agree with her on that. The more it sat and warmed up a degree or two, the more complex flavors came out. As it got a bit warmer, you get some of the alcohol heat. When you drink this, you really need to take a little while to finish it so you can taste the different complex flavors as they develop with the change in the temperature.

This is such an amazing beer. I cannot wait for the day that I can pull this out of my Beer Advent Calendar. I give this one 4.5 hop flowers!

 The Wine and Cheese Place
Prairie Artisan Ales

Here is my Beer Advent Calendar