Tag Archives: Imperial Stout

Mother Earth Brewing Company, Vista CA

September 12, 2015 Paul McGuire Leave a comment

Mother Earth is one of those breweries that I heard a lot about but rarely tasted. Fairly recently I tried their Boo-Koo IPA for the first time and knew I should visit the tap room sometime soon. Located in the center of Vista, Mother Earth is thankfully close to the 78 freeway and easy to find. The tap room is large and has a good amount of seating and room for dogs. Aside from four core beers on tap they also had a few interesting special release beers available.

I tried the Boo-Koo IPA, Roundabout Oatmeal Stout, Make up Your Mind IPA, Sin Tax peanut butter stout, and Quit Stalin bourbon barrel aged imperial stout. The Boo-Koo is a delicious light body and light colored IPA with lots of citrus and tropical fruit and medium bitterness. This one recently showed up in six-pack cans and is one of their best major beers.

The Roundabout Oatmeal Stout was listed as a smaller specialty beer but it was so good I wouldn’t be surprised if it joins the main lineup at some point. The beer was dry and roasty with a nice bitter chocolate finish. Though it was a low 5.4% alcohol it was bursting with flavor. I liked it so much that I took home a crowler (32oz can they fill on the spot for you to take home). The Make Up Your Mind IPA was a delicious tropical fruit/juicy IPA also with the light color and medium bitterness. The biggest difference between this and the Boo-Koo is the sweeter hop flavors that dominate.

The Sin Tax is a strong 8% peanut butter imperial stout with an intense and overpowering peanut butter flavor that adds a bit of sweetness and makes the beer seem a bit syrupy. The peanut butter flavor is similar to the Belching Beaver peanut butter milk stout. The underlying stout is a bit typical and tasty but I found this one too sweet. My husband liked it though. I ended with the Quit Stalin bourbon barrel aged imperial stout. This was very impressive, giving a strong stout background and plenty of sweet bourbon flavor. Everything balanced quite nicely, avoiding any strong boozy flavors.

Mother Earth has two locations and I visited the Main Street location. Their web site says that this location tends to get a more wide selection of beers. There is also a home brew shop next door. Overall Mother Earth is a very impressive brewery giving the right focus on their core beers while also brewing some smaller batch stuff. I happened to visit them after Wavelength brewing next door and I found Mother Earth to be the more impressive of the two, though they are also much older and established.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

Follow Me:

Tasting Room

Abita Brewing Company – Abita Springs Louisiana

July 25, 2015 Paul McGuire Leave a comment

While out in New Orleans for the fourth of July weekend I went out to Abita for some beers. The main tasting room only does tours and serves people beer as part of the tour. They also have a brewpub if you want to order some food along with your beers. I was a little disappointed that they only use plastic cups for beers on the tour but it seems to be common in certain local bars to give people plastic cups.

Abita Brewing 01 — They were working on some renovations when I visited so the outdoor view was a little messy.

When you go on a tour, you are given a cup and allowed to pour your own beer from whatever they have available. They even pulled out a few bottles of the Bourbon Street bourbon barrel aged imperial stout and baltic porter for people to try. Though I didn’t get to try the bourbon barrel aged imperial stout while I was there I did bring a bottle home from another local bottle shop and my thoughts are included.

While I was there I tried a smaller sample than usual because you only had one cup to fill and pouring small taster sized pours of everything would not be very practical. I got to try the Jockamo IPA, Wrought Iron IPA (which I’ve previously written about when it showed up in San Diego soon after the brewery released it), Turbo Dog brown ale, bourbon barrel aged baltic porter, and bourbon barrel aged imperial stout.

I started with the Jockamo IPA. It was a solid IPA with good balanced caramel malt base and medium bitterness. Hop flavors mostly tended towards the classic English earthy variety. In comparison, the Wrought Iron IPA is closer to a West Coast style IPA. Hops give it a good golden flavor that sometimes tends towards citrus and mango. Malts are not as strong as the previous beer. This is the one to go for here if you like the West Coast style.

I then went for the Turbo Dog brown ale. It had a higher alcohol content than most browns I see in California with some solid roasty and nutty flavors. This was a solid beer. I skipped most of the other lighter options available and went straight for the bourbon barrel aged stuff.

The bourbon barrel aged Baltic porter has a smooth caramel flavor from the Bourbon barrels. It is a little on the sweet side but overall solid. The bourbon barrel aged imperial stout is fairly light bodied and the bourbon comes in strong. I opened this bottle recently after returning from my trip. It is a solid first beer to introduce someone to bourbon barrel aging but compared to many of the more well-known examples of the style it doesn’t hold up.

Overall, I was impressed by the tour offered of the brewing facility, especially that it was offered for free and included free beer. Though, with the way they don’t really limit your pouring, make sure you have someone coming along to drive you back. If you are mostly a hop head, you might be better off looking for the wrought iron on tap in the city of New Orleans because the Jockamo IPA will likely disappoint most who are not big fans of the English style

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

Follow Me:

Beer Reviews

Prairie Artisan Ales – Tulsa Oklahoma – Bottling Delicious Stouts and Sours

June 20, 2015 Paul McGuire Leave a comment

Due to the various laws in place in Oklahoma I wasn’t able to visit Prairie and do tasters. So while I was in town in April of 2015 I stopped by to pick up a few bottles around Oklahoma City from one of the best known Oklahoma breweries. Prairie is known for its farmhouse ales and imperial stouts. I got to try a few examples of both. I tried the different beers listed here over the course of many days after I came back from Oklahoma.

Set of Prairie Ales. — Selection of Prairie beers I brought back with me (along with another Oklahoma Imperial Stout I did not open yet)

The Prairie Cherry Funk was a nice highly carbonated and lightly tart cherry beer that tasted like carbonated juice. Given its 7.5% alcohol it was hidden very nicely. The Funky Gold Amarillo was a nice strong citrus tart that blended nicely with the inherent tart and the hops. It had a very interesting tart lemon flavor at the end. The Eliza5beth, a tart farmhouse was a nice beer that poured a cloudy lighit orange flavor with a lot of carbonation. The flavors were a mix of tart peach and belgian yeast. It was mildly tart but could have gone more tart from what I tasted.

Prairie Bomb is one of the most popular beers from the brewery. A strong imperial stout, this beer is sold in individual 12 oz bottles. At 13% it was strong yet not boozy and had a perfect balance of the coffee, chocolate, and chili peppers. It was lightly sweet with just enough hot pepper flavor and a nice mellow chocolate to make a world class beer. Compared to this, the Bible Belt, a collaboration brew with another brewery, was not as sweet and had a lot more prominent flavor from the peppers. It was almost acidic cherry and lacked the balance of the Bomb. As the beer warmed up, the coffee became more pronounced.

The final beer I tried from Prairie was called OK Si, a tequila aged imperial stout. I thought that the tequila added a nice bite to the overall beer though I still preferred the Prairie Bomb as the best of the three. Prairie is a highly rated brewery and it deserves the praise. The Bomb is still my favorite of all of them and is worth checking out if you are able to get it for a good price. Hopefully one day Oklahoma will change their beer laws to allow people to visit the brewery for a flight of tasters.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

Follow Me:

Tasting Room

Bottle Logic – Orange County California

May 30, 2015 Paul McGuire Leave a comment

Quite close to Noble Ale Works and still not far from The Bruery is a brewery I hadn’t heard much about called Bottle Logic. I got a certain feel similar to the experimentation present in Beachwood Brewing. They give you a nice preview of things that are currently fermenting so that you can have an idea of what is coming next. When I stopped by I ordered a flight of most of their core beers and a few others. Some of the beers were quite impressive though others were merely good.

I started with a flight of the Tattered Prince French style saison, the Lagerithm dark lager, Recursion IPA, milk stout, Berliner Weisse with peach and hibiscus, and the baltic porter. I finished off with a taster of the Double Actuator double IPA and Imperial Coffee Stout.

Bottle Logic Brewing First Flight — First flight of tasters.

Starting things off the Tattered Prince I really enjoyed the tropical fruit and belgian yeast flavors mixing with the various spices that are typical in a Saison. It packs a good punch at 7.3%. This beer recently won a few medals and I can see why. I almost left with a bottle. Next came the dark lager. It was a solid beer with some light coffee flavors and roasted malts. It would be very refreshing but I was hoping for something closer to a Czech style black lager. It was more of an amber lager.

Bottle Logic Brewing Last two tasters. — Last two tasters.

The Recursion IPA was a solid juicy/melon IPA with some strong bitterness and mild herbal notes. As I got through the taster the herbal aftertaste became a bit much for me. The milk stout was very smooth and had plenty of roasted malt flavors. Everything was more silky because it was poured on nitro. The Berliner Weisse was refreshing and not too tart. The peach and hibiscus blended together nicely giving it a very light pink color. This was listed as a refreshing summer beer and I agree it was.

Bottle Logic Brewing Beer List — Beer list when I visited.

The baltic porter was also quite nice, and a bit more flavorful than the milk stout. It had some smooth chocolate flavor and light booze that blended nicely with a subtle hazelnut flavor. The imperial coffee stout was not much stronger than the porter but it had a very strong coffee flavor that was quite nutty. This was my favorite dark beer of the bunch. Finally the Double Actuator double IPA was a powerful IPA with citrus, tropical fruit, and melon and just the right amount of malts to balance it out. This one was also quite delicious and my favorite of the two IPAs.

Bottle Logic Brewing Indoor shot — Nice wide open area to sip your beers in the back.

Bottle Logic has a fairly large tasting room with seating in the area with the bar and additional seating in the back by the fermenters. When I visited on a Sunday afternoon they had a food truck on site and I expect they have food trucks fairly regularly.

Top 3 beers
Tattered Prince French style saison,
Double Actuator double IPA and the
imperial coffee stout

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

Follow Me:

Beer Reviews

Stone Brewing Side by Side Imperial Mutt Brown and Chai Imperial Russian Stout

April 24, 2015 Paul McGuire Leave a comment

Stone brews so many different beers each year that sometimes it is better to review two at once. This time I happened to find the new Imperial Mutt Brown in the store at the same time as the 2015 Odd Year Chai Spiced Imperial Russian Stout so I thought I would review them together. Since I hadn’t tried any sort of imperial brown ale before I was interested to see what I would find.

Though I really enjoyed the bottle design I was pretty let down by the overall flavors presented. Overall I found it to be heavily boozy and not presenting a lot of roasty flavors. While it pours thick it doesn’t have any of the flavors of an imperial stout. Many of the mellow flavors that you get in a brown ale are still present here though slightly stronger. Overall it doesn’t have the strong amount of flavor that should be expected from a 9% beer. It does have a small amount of chocolate flavor that is revealed when it warms up. While I know this is not an imperial stout, the alcohol content and price are such that I think it is a fair point of comparison.

Next came the Chai Imperial Russian Stout. At first I was hesitant to give this a try but I heard good things so I picked up a bottle. Spices are good and mellow balancing nicely with the imperial stout flavors that are always enjoyable. I was very unsure if I would enjoy this but it really makes a great stout and stands out among the crowd. The tea flavors are mostly overpowered by the spices so I didn’t notice them very much here. This is a nice mellow beer that packs enough flavor to go up against the classic Stone Imperial Russian Stout.

If you have a choice between the two beers above, I would absolutely go with the Chai Stout over the Imperial Mutt Brown. If you had a different experience with the Mutt Brown I would love to hear about it in the comments.

Paul McGuire

Paul McGuire is a craft beer enthusiast. He likes to travel with his husband and enjoy the great outdoors. In his day job, Paul is a divorce attorney serving clients in San Diego California.

Follow Me:

San Diego Hop Addict

Tag Archives: Imperial Stout

Mother Earth Brewing Company, Vista CA

Paul McGuire

Abita Brewing Company – Abita Springs Louisiana

Paul McGuire

Prairie Artisan Ales – Tulsa Oklahoma – Bottling Delicious Stouts and Sours

Paul McGuire

Bottle Logic – Orange County California

Paul McGuire

Stone Brewing Side by Side Imperial Mutt Brown and Chai Imperial Russian Stout

Paul McGuire

Exploring San Diego's Craft Breweries