New Year’s 2024 at Mellow Mushroom will excite you; it is time for celebration, bidding adieu to the old year and welcoming the new. Get ready with your resolutions and calendar goals. Dance till you drop and end the year with a crazy celebration. The ones who do not fancy partying can celebrate the new beginning by having a drink at one of your favorite local bars here in Bowling Green. For the lover of unconventional things, there are some very interesting options here at Mellow to kick off the year of the green wooden dragon.
First, clean out that beer cooler with all those holiday specialties you have yet to try. Who cares if Christmas was weeks ago? Our friends at Fat Orange Cat Brewing are here to say that Santa Claws is here to stay. You would want to take advantage of this small, seasonal farm batch imperial stout loaded with rich Cinnabon flavor. Fat Orange Cat Brew Co. specializes in high-quality small-batch recipes to support and promote local agriculture in Norwich, England. And they were satisfied with this one. If you are interested in stouts with a lot of taste packed with pastry and dairy notes, this beer fits that category. When you open the beautiful floral can, the Welcome to Harga New England Style Double IPA hits you with a tangy pineapple/guava aroma. The first sip is almost sweet, but don’t let that fool you. This beer changes fast as the spices hit you, and cinnamon and nutmeg coat your mouth. Combining these two produces subtler aromatic qualities that sit well on the palate to balance the pastry stout sweetness. In addition, the flavor carries out mild fruity notes, adding an underlying creaminess and supplying a surprisingly refreshing finish.
Suppose you are sick of the holiday cheer and want something more fruity… A juicer experience. Looking for a fruited sour. Blue raspberry, green apple, strawberry, watermelon, raspberry? You can have everything with sour straws by 450 North Brewing Company, a velvety sour ale full-bodied with ripe, juicy fruits and a creamy mouthfeel that mixes the inherent mouth-puckering flavors of the brew with extensive fruit punch notes and a silky finish, forming a perfect blend of tart and sweet. This sour has the aroma of a strawberry milkshake, an apple melon smoothie, or even raspberry ice cream. Probably because of the lactose or the sweetness of the peach smell. This drink will coat your taste buds with candy, vanilla sparkling white wine, and racy acidity, a tantalizingly tart ale that is as much sherbet as it is of ale. You could easily say that they are “souring us” instead. Try this if you are looking for that perfect line between jaw-clenching sour and a decadent dessert beer.
Whoa, whoa, whoa, slow down a second. We are barely into 2024, and I’m already a bad influence. Why don’t we take a second to slow down and give ourselves a break from the party? It may be a whole year, but those 365 days will fly by quicker than you can say non-alcoholic beers.
When creating tasty non-alcoholic brews, many “tricks” can be deployed, from less flocculant yeast strains to different filtration or centrifugation techniques to hops and malts that can impart a more familiar taste. It’s like designing a drink backward, thinking about the mouthfeel, the aroma, and the body, using all that to guide the brewmaster in selecting the best ingredients and processes for the job. No one is better at this than our friends at Heaps. Heaps Normal started with the aim of encouraging conversation around mindful drinking. Fast forward a few years, and the brand has become the most popular non-alcoholic beer in restaurants worldwide. I love the Quiet XPA for its full-flavored citrus and tropical ale flavor profile. I highly recommend the Heaps Normal’s Half Day Hazy Pale Ale. This is one of the Aussie brewer’s most ambitious drinks. The Hazy Pale Ale is a super drinkable, juicy beer jam-packed with fragrant hop flavor. These are just two examples from this fantastic brewing company offering craft beer without alcohol. It’s a win-win!
Like the year ahead here at Mellow Mushroom, the options are endless in 2024.
-by Maeve Black
