Category: Beer Reviews

Revisiting my first beer review 25 years later.

Brewed with cocoa, coffee, pasilla peppers, vanilla, cinnamon, nutmeg, and lactose, with English Challenger and East Kent Golding as featured hops.

Boss Pour checks all of the West Coast IPA boxes, while Mocha Stout—made with local coffee—drops plenty of roastiness, baker’s chocolate, bitter cacao nibs, espresso beans, cola, and dark cherries onto the palate.

The Vienna Lager from Civil Life Brewing Co. in St. Louis, Mo., is as authentic as you can get outside of Austria.

These three beers from Double Mountain Brewery in Hood River, Ore., feature fresh hop variations with hops harvested from Sodbuster Farms in Oregon’s Willamette Valley.

If you’re looking for a near perfect example of the style, hunt this Saison down or run through the rest of Blackberry Farm’s portfolio, which is loaded with similar beers and other Belgian-influenced offerings.

The controlled acid profile in this kettle-soured IPA allows the desired hoppy, fruity, and sour elements to be distinctly noticeable yet still play well together.

Beginning with the Walking Tree’s Barleywine from the year prior, the 2017 barrel-aged edition of Barnacled Manatee spent eight months in French oak red wine barrels from Napa.

Part of the Yard Beer series from Highland Park Brewery, Batch 4 is inspired by ingredients found growing in neighborhood yards, including black limes and sour flowers.

Oro Nero is quite drinkable for a slightly bigger beer; the dryness sets in but the flavors don’t fade as quickly as they do in other beers.

Sapience’s mélange of ingredients includes pink peppercorn, coriander, honey-like specialty malts, acidulated malt, and American hops.

Made with fresh-cut spruce tips, Banded Horn’s Greenwarden is by far one of the most drinkable versions of a spruce beer, and very much worth the hunt.

The Big Broadcast’s bitterness is at a perfect level to let the hop flavor shine while still keeping this brew in balance for the style.

Monks’ Reserve Ale is definitely not your typical Quad. It’s different. Done their way. And very American.

Fungus Shui is truly an “aha!” beer moment that all gastronomy geeks must try.

This dry-hopped Pale Ale is all about nuances, and that’s something that makes it so much more inviting.

An American Wild Ale fermented with marionberries and boysenberries, SLOambic’s tasting experience recalls a “funky berry pie.”

Impressive all around, this is the kind of sour you want to have in your fridge at all times.

Despite its high alcohol, Track #8 is an insanely drinkable beast of a beer that’s been tamed for your enjoyment.

The nitro works well in Ode to Mercy—just enough to enhance the mouthfeel without tempering the toasted malt flavor or the bitterness and roastiness of the coffee.

Although a robust and somewhat chaotic beer, the balance of ingredients brought a surprising drinkability to Forbidden Root’s Fernetic.

An Imperial take on Funky Buddha’s Last Snow, a Porter that’s brewed with coconut and coffee, Last Buffalo has a warming alcohol hitting 11.5 percent alcohol by volume and a lush, full-bodied mouthfeel you’d find in a souped-up adult coffee drink.