Neon Knights
1840 Brewing Company

Tasted blind: Neon Knight's nose truly threw me off when the beer was cold. My best guess was brandy or rum barrels used in the aging. I had no idea what I was going to be drinking, honestly - my best guess was a chocolate stout, which sounded a bit odd to me in rum or brandy barrels. The taste was a bit startling - the beer is incredibly rich, and the barrel and bourbon notes are exceptional.

So this obviously is not a stout, but obviously the distinction is kind of ambiguous. As rich and high ABV as Neon Knights is, I'd be more comfortable calling it a stout.

The bottle on this guy is one of the more quirky things that I've recently encountered - it looks like an old medicine bottle. I found that sort of charming, actually. I'd prefer a larger bottle, obviously, but I also don't need to drink a 750 of 11% beer all that often.

I'm really impressed by 1840 and would like to make the trip some day soon. To have aged a beer so perfectly is very impressive - this particular beer was bottled 12/17, so it's about as fresh as you could ask for. Even a few of the more venerable breweries aging beers today suggest allowing the beer to bottle age for up to another several years. Neon Knights doesn't need further aging in any way - the Heaven Hill barrels have imparted a ton of flavor to the beer, and it's tasting incredible at this very moment. It's not hot and it doesn't need to mellow at all. Bravo, 1840 - amazing work.