Red Mosquito

Brewery: Clown Shoes - Mercury Brewing Co. - Ipswich, MA
Name of Beer: "Itasca Loonidragon"
Style/ABV: Russian Imperial Stout / 14.5% ABV
Description: Russian Imperial Stout Aged in Bourbon Bottles
Bottle Size: Bomber - 22 oz.
Store Purchased From: Eagle Liquor - Lino Lakes, MN
Date Purchased: Jan. 23, 2015
Purchase Price: n/a
Date Consumed:
Link: http://www.clownshoesbeer.com/cs_beer/i ... onidragon/

Brewery: Schmaltz Brewing Company - Clifton Park, NY
Name of Beer: He'Brew - Jewbelation Reborn 17 (17th Anniversary Brew)
Style/ABV: American Strong Ale / 17% ABV
Description: Ale Brewed with 17 Malts, 17 Hops & 17% Alcohol by Volume
Bottle Size: Bomber - 22 oz.
Store Purchased From: Eagle Liquor - Lino Lakes, MN
Date Purchased: Jan. 7, 2015
Purchase Price: $14.99
Date Consumed:
Link: http://www.shmaltzbrewing.com/HEBREW/j17.html

Brewery: Brash Brewing Company
Name of Beer: Biggie Smalls
Style/ABV: American Brown Ale / 11% ABV
Description: Malt Beverage Aged 50% in Rum Barrels & 50% in Whiskey Barrels
Bottle Size: Bomber - 22 oz.
Store Purchased From: Eagle Liquor - Lino Lakes, MN
Date Purchased: Jan. 7, 2015
Purchase Price:
Date Consumed: Jan. 23, 2015
Link: http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/29426/101761/

Brewery: Stone Brewing Co. - Escondido, CA
Name of Beer: Stochasticity Project - Master Of Disguise Imperial Golden Stout
Style/ABV: American Double - Imperial Stout / 9.70% ABV
Description: All the deep, essence of a stout presented in a brilliant golden ale.
Bottle Size: Bomber - 22 oz.
Store Purchased From: Eagle Liquor - Lino Lakes, MN
Date Purchased: December 2014
Purchase Price: $8.99
Date Consumed: Jan. 11, 2015
Link: http://www.stochasticity.com/beers/master-of-disguise

This is a regular favorite of mine.

Founders is a great brewery. They have a few beers I drink regularly. The Porter (from above) is great. The Centennial IPA is unfiltered and full of great hop flavors. It's a favorite of mine for sure. The Founders Breakfast Stout is also top notch.





"Founders Breakfast Stout may have been the first beer I ever truly adored. I’d tasted chocolate beers before, coffee beers, an oatmeal stout here and there. But this was something clearly and distinctively different, at once the best chocolate beer, the best coffee beer and the best oatmeal beer I’d ever had. It’s luxurious and silky smooth, rich with dark cocoa flavors and intense in its coffee character. It’s also the base to even more sought-after beers: the bourbon barrel-aged Kentucky Breakfast Stout and the maple-bourbon variant Canadian Breakfast Stout. But in many ways, the purity of the original Breakfast Stout trumps even these follow-ups."—Jim Vorel

This is not what you were supposed to be drafting.

This is in very regular rotation:


Bell’s Two Hearted



Brewery: Bell’s Brewing Company
City: Kalamazoo, Michigan
Description: The IPA has become synonymous with American craft beer, and the popular West Coast interpretation of the style—all about hop punch and crushing bitterness with little regard for balance—dominates the selection on tap lists and bottle shop shelves across the country. I adore the thrilling hop-bombs of my home state of California, but I think that the best IPA in the country is actually closer to the style’s English roots: Bell’s Two Hearted ale. It’s a beer so atypical among the craft beer landscape that the brewery doesn’t even call Two Hearted an IPA, but that doesn’t mask the accomplishments of the brewers who’ve created an ale that is at once rich with malt flavor, pungently hoppy, and eminently drinkable. It’s the beer that tastes how you used to imagine beer should taste.—John Verive

I love this beer, but at $15+ for a six pack it isn't in my heavy rotation. I treat myself occasionally.


Ballast Point Sculpin




Brewery: Ballast Point Brewing and Spirits

City: San Diego, Calif.

Description: This San Diego IPA is truly one-of-a-kind. The mixture of pine, grapefruit and orange offers a complex and delicious trifecta. The first sip creates a unique wave of hop-flavor, setting it apart from many of the other West Coast IPA’s. I am haunted by how unbelievable this beer is—both on tap and in the bottle.—Greg? Eckert


@SkitchP wrote:This is not what you were supposed to be drafting.

What are you talking about?

The most expensive bottle of beer I've ever purchased is Utopias. I have a bottle of the 2007 Vintage.



Samuel Adams Utopias

Brewery: Boston Beer Co.
City: Boston, Massachusetts
Description: Utopias is a craft beer like no other; its flavor is closer to a sherry or port than the Boston Lager that the brewery is best known for. This unique beer is created by blending various barrel-aged brews, some nearly two decades old, into a boozy (the 2013 bottling was over 27%ABV) and syrupy elixir that coats the palate with strong oaky flavors. The base brew is aged in everything from Buffalo Trace Bourbon barrels to Portuguese port casks to Hungarian oak tuns that hold the brewery’s “Kosmic Mother Funk,” and the result is thick with malty sweetness, rich in fruit notes, and undeniably potent. A top-shelf brew that redefined malt liquor, Utopias is a unique beer drinking experience.—John Verive

Southern Tier Brewery has some amazing bombers. My all time favorite desert beer is their Crème Brûlée Stout.

The Choklat Stout is a pretty great one too.

Old Rasputin is a relatively inexpensive Imperial Stout, and its a great drink.



Brewery: North Coast Brewing
City: Fort Bragg, Calif.
Description: While many beers on this list attain some prestige because of rarity, North Coast’s Old Rasputin is so available that its inclusion is a testament to the quality of the brew. Some breweries perform a reverse-groundhog act with their stouts, using them to herald the coming of winter. Old Rasputin is the year-round comfort beer that’s always available to hug you with its rich coffee and chocolate flavors. If you’re craving a full-flavored stout, and winter is nowhere in sight, Old Rasputin is just what the doctor ordered.—Don Ayres

I currently have four bottles of this stuff in my caller. It's amazingly good. The hardest part is the wait during the aging.

Goose Island Bourbon County Stout



Brewery: Goose Island Beer Co.
City: Chicago, Ill.
Description: In terms of “influential beers” for the current craft beer landscape, it would be difficult to pick a single more important beer than Bourbon County Stout. When it first rolled off bottling lines just over 10 years ago, nobody had tasted anything like it before, and that immediately made it a prestige beer for Goose Island, long before the brewery’s acquisition by Anheuser-Busch. Its barrel-aged character still packs a wallop today, and that’s not even including the many variants such as Bourbon County Coffee or a spin-off like Bourbon County Barleywine. Unlike some of the more subtle barrel-aged brews, this one gets right up in your face—it pretty much tastes like licking the inside of a barrel. This makes it a great beer for aging, and considering how long it’s been around, it’s a great candidate for setting up a vertical tasting. Just try to make sure you have a few other drinkers on hand, or things could go very badly.—Jim Vorel

Summit Brewery is local to St. Paul, MN. This brewery was significant in my choosing to enjoy the greatness that is craft beer over domestic shit. I still drink many of these today.

Another equally fantastic hop blasted IPA is Surly's "Ferious". It's a Minnesota brewery (located about 10 minutes from my house). I've been a fan since their birth, toured the brewery several times, ect. The beer comes in four 1pint cans. It has a fairly high ABV (6.2%). It's an awesome summer evening beer, with some power.

I just drank of bottle of this last week. It's one of the best beers I've had in a long long time. It comes in 4-pack bottles. If you see it, buy it. It's that good.

Fulton Brewery Worthy Adversary



...russian imperial stout, rich, dark, and roasty...

"The beer in the black pajamas"

This Imperial Stout is about drawing a line in the sand. It has a consistency similar to 5W-30. Adventurous tattoo artists have used it in place of ink. If left outside during winter, it won’t freeze, even in Minnesota. Beneath the dark exterior, a swirling ambush of coffee and chocolate flavors await, held up by a decadent malt backbone. Like its namesake, The Worthy Adversary’s movements are mysterious. Be wary–it could strike anywhere, any time.

I also have a bottle of this, which I've never had before and I'm excited to try. It's the Goose Island Bourbon County Brand Coffee Stout.

I am also sitting on a bottle of Central Waters Barleywine Ale Bourbon Barrel Brewer's Reserve. I've never had this either. It is supposed to be fantastic.