I’ve mentioned Founders Breakfast Stout before and the fact that over the course of a few years, they’ve taken a great thing and improved on it with different versions aged in different types of barrels. The Canadian Breakfast Stout, for example, is aged in maple syrup barrels. The Kentucky Breakfast Stout is, of course, aged in bourbon barrels. In addition to recently tapping a new keg of the Founders KBS, your friendly, local Bowling Green Mellow Mushroom has snagged some bottles of variations on the Kentucky Breakfast Stout specifically. The KBS Espresso is a take which adds that classic coffee stout backbone to the beer, perfect in my opinion if you like your coffee cold, roasty, and with a shot of bourbon in it. The other bottle is Cinnamon Vanilla Cocoa Kentucky Breakfast Stout which sounds like a lot, I know. The beer itself adds pinches of these classic stout flavors to the already powerful mix, which allows the beer to really settle itself nicely between being overly boozy, bitter or sweet. This mouthful of a beer name is worth having a mouthful.
Evil Twin has a couple of strange, yet wild, new sours out on the local market simply titled Orange and Grape. Simple and classy, right? I haven’t been able to get my hands on an Orange yet, but the two follow the same idea and I have had the Grape, so I can make some assumptions about the former. I’ll be up front with you. This is soda. Technically it’s a sour ale with grape added (orange for the Orange), but if someone handed this to you, without inspecting the label, there’s a good chance you would just assume it’s grape soda. The 5 percent ABV is extremely well hidden behind the grape flavor and the sweetness of the beer. Be careful around the kids with these, because not only are they delicious, but they’re not at all boozy, and even the labeling is almost solid purple, which doesn’t give anything away outright that this is a fully alcoholic drink. If they got their hands on it, they probably wouldn’t even notice until they end up crashing the Power Wheel into the tree in the front yard. Child DUI jokes aside, this is a phenomenal beer that is basically soda, and comes in two flavors, so even if you’re not usually a fan of sour beer or of beer in general, if you like either grape soda or orange soda, you’ve got to try these out.
Somewhere on this page is a big ol’ ad for “Steal The Pint Night,” which I believe gives all the details on how it works. What it doesn’t mention is which breweries are featured each week. Even with Pint Night returning each week, there are still hiccups from time to time when it comes to the distribution of the physical glasses and whatnot. Because of this, the list for all of the Pint Night breweries isn’t always available too far ahead of time, but I do know that this month on the eleventh (11/11), the brewery will be Against The Grain from Louisville, which has been available all over Kentucky for a while, and many of their beers are available on tap as well as in cans all around town. Bo+Luke is a big Imperial Stout originally brewed as a collaboration with a Dutch brewery, and it was such a hit, they’ve continued to brew it each year. The ingredients are smoked with cherry wood and aged in Pappy Van Winkle bourbon barrels, so Bo+Luke is a big, smoky stout with a chip on its shoulder. If big, intense, jet black beers aren’t your jam, try A Beer. That’s the name. A Beer. Brilliant marketing if you ask me. Anyone walks up to the bar, orders a beer. That’s what you get. Against the Grain A Beer is an American Pale Lager made with German aroma hops. This brew is medium bodied with just a hint of malts, the hops are at the front and back end, but not aggressive. Easily sessionable and perfect for when you just want A Beer.
-by Josh Helton
