Trinidad Scorpion Smoked Porter
Country Boy Brewing

Never backing down from strong flavor or polarizing taste, the Country Boy pepper porter series steps deeper and deeper into the brazen bite of chili peppers, this time with the Trinidad Scorpion pods in mind. The radiant red pepper carries extreme spice, brain numbing and a salsa-like pleasantness to lure the senses into its smoldering web.

Aside from its Chernobyl glowing red pepper, the beer fits the Porter to a tee with a dark and muddy brown color. The beer crowns with a short tan coffee-like froth that allows its pepper additions to dissolve its foam. Moderate tones of chocolate and coffee lay a primary foundation, but the scorpion pepper quickly dominates with a bright, tomato, bell pepper tingle of the nose. Sweet and toffee-like, its nutty, chocolatey, toasty and coffee-like initial palate sets a malty tone early and often.

An ideal malty-sweet base of porter offers enough of a buffer from the growing heat that begins early on the palate and continues to billow into a volcano of spice late. Peppercorn, strong chipotle, stone fruit and a pleasant grassiness quickly turns into an extreme burn with skull-numbing heat- much hotter than most spice beer fans can handle. Peppery head simmers loudly and overshadows many of the beer's more moderate flavors, textures or balances.

Rich, medium, and creamy, the beer's low carbonation allows for a full saturation of both chocolate malt and scorching heat- trending numbing, sweat-inducing, endorphin-releasing, and jaw-dropping burnt on the finish. Its creamy, tepid and moderate porter-like tone is completely lost on the pepper, ...but in a good way.