Stout and About


As mentioned in previous posts, we reconvened the tasting panel for a tasting of Dark Truth Stout. We also had a bottle of new to Kansas Hoppin' Frog B.O.R.I.S Imperial Stout. Both of those were very good but they only got us started for the evening. Again, the participants were Chimpotle, Weston, Yeti and newest member JJSKCK.

Our first beer after Dark Truth and B.O.R.I.S. was the O'Fallon Chocolate by the Barrel Cream Stout. My thought was "oh good, chocolate, stout and barrel aging, this has a chance to be good". I stand by that thought, but boy was it not good. For me, O'Fallon is batting .000 for it's career. Granted, I haven't tried everything O'Fallon brews, but I'm kind of tired of giving them chances. I think all of us in the room felt it was a bit too carbonated and had a thin mouthfeel which doesn't bode well for a milk stout.

By this time discussion, as always, turned to our favorite show "Check, Please" and Chimpotle's hate for the lady that dissed Blanc's burgers (I had a better hamburger that week) yet recommended U-Gene's. Yeti doesn't like the show because it made his fiance want to eat at Korma Sutra and he doesn't like Indian food (he also doesn't get all the fuss about Blanc). In short we came to the conclusion that Chimpotle needs to be on "Check, Please" and Yeti has horrible taste in food.

Next we cracked open the Great Divide Oak Aged Yeti and it was just fabulous. Regular readers know of my stance against barrel aged beers because they either end up tasting like bourbon or wood. I only like wood in my mouth on special occasions or if I have too much to drink and while I like bourbon, I like beer more. So the flavors barrel aging give beers don't usually meet my ideal flavor profile. But, Great Divide made nearly a perfect barrel aged beer with the Yeti. It had all of the things I love about the regular Yeti with an added vanilla component without the woody flavor. I think it's better than regular Yeti and since it's very nearly the same price, I'll be coming home with the Oak Aged Yeti whenever I'm in a Yeti mood. Yeti, the person, told us that Barley's inexplicably has Yeti, the beer, on tap for $4.25 every day. If there's a better beer deal in town, I can't think of it right now.

To punish ourselves for all the great beers we drank earlier, we cracked open the Tallgrass Buffalo Sweat. The beer is, obviously, not good. But, in addition to that, it has the most unappetizing name of any beer I can think of. Buffalo Sweat? Why would you name it that aside from the sheer Kansasness of the name? For some reason the name led us to talk of Viggo Mortensen's vestigial tail. Chimpotle's takeaway from the sex scene in "A History of Violence" is Viggo Mortensen has a tail and apparently it was Yeti's takeaway too. We seriously spent 15 minutes talking about this.

The night started to break down a little bit and we just started opening bottles and pouring what we wanted. I had some Left Hand Milk Stout and of course, loved it just like I do every time. Old Rasputin actually, after drinking 7 or 8 other stouts, didn't seem as great as it does when it is the first thing you drink. This was the Bully! surprise of the night. We weren't doing a blind tasting or any tricks, but for some reason the flavors and mouthfeel didn't match up well with the other beers of the night. I may have had the Old Rasputin after the much more full flavored and richer mouthfeel of the Founder's Breakfast Stout which is simply wonderful. The Left Hand Imperial Stout I had is mostly forgotten.

We finished out the evening drinking a couple of Belgian style beers with the Chimay Blue and Goose Island Matilda. Matilda is one of my favorite Belgian style beers and it was good, but after a bunch of stouts it just wasn't spectacular. This may be shocking but I've never had a Chimay, of any color. I thought it was a bit too carbonated, but that could be because of all the stouts. I'm certainly not turned off of it. This led to talk of movies that we'd never seen that seem odd. Mine is "Empire Strikes Back" or any of the other Star Wars movies other than the one from 1977. I've also only seen "Star Trek V" of the Star Trek series and that's only because I worked at the movie theater it was showing or I had free passes to it, I don't remember. Chimpotle has still never seen "The Godfather" which, to me, is almost unbelievable.

Overall, these little tasting parties are a great time and a great way to drink a bunch of different beers. It's also great to talk about movies for a couple of hours (I would much rather talk about movies or baseball than beer, especially when drinking beer). We also spent a good amount of time talking about restaurants around town and Chimpotle's favorite topic, strip clubs around town. Your favorite conversations may vary, but drinking 10 different beers in a night, not feeling like you had 10 beers and not paying for 10 different beers is well worth getting a group of friends together and have a tasting party.

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