When a man goes back and looks at all of his 5-star reviews on Untappd from 2018, filters those for “beers tried for the first time this year” and realizes that five of those seven are pastry stouts, a man can come to one of two conclusions. Either one: he has a terrible palate and the only beers he loves are the ones that don’t taste like beers, or two: WOO, PASTRY STOUTS.
Beer probably dominated my life in 2018 to a greater degree than just about any year prior. Trips to Chicago, Decorah, Milwaukee, and Amherst, among others, popped up just about monthly. There were numerous opportunities to share beers and drink some unprecedentedly whaley whales with great friends. And yeah, judging by my Untappd activity, #blessed is really all I can say.
2018 was the year I fell in love with basically everything from Eagle Park Brewing in Milwaukee. Stupendous hazy pale ales and luxurious milkshake IPAs share space with some of the state’s best adjunct stouts, and so what if that’s kind of a stereotypical new brewery product lineup? When the beers are great, does it really matter if the brewery is blazing a new trail or following a familiar path to success?
On the other side of the Wisconsin/Illinois Border, Hop Butcher for the World has been setting the Chicago beer market on fire with a furious churn of new hoppy combinations in 16-ounce cans, punctuated with the occasional stout or brown ale. The fruity milkshake IPA called Blazed Orange really cemented my love for Hop Butcher, but ask me if I’ve had a bad beer from this Darien, Illinois, brewer yet. (I haven’t.)
I finally got to try Old Nation’s M-43, Michigan’s most hyped-up hazy IPAs — and it was immediately replaced in my heart by Full Earth, Old Nation’s hazy double IPA. Two different releases from Wiley Roots Brewing’s Funk Yo Couch series crossed my palate in 2018, and the combination of Brett complexity and juicy dry-hopping made these Greeley, Colorado, beers intensely crushable favorites.
Of course, here at home, Funk Factory continues to put out winner after winner. Abrikoos En Hop was a limit-one taproom release, and man, do I wish I could have more. Dry-hopping and apricot-fruiting is a terrific, almost sure-thing combination. Emotional context added even more joy to beers like Funk Factory’s 2017 Cervino Sangiovese release (cheers, Michael and Lizzi!), as well as Nectarine Fruit Stand from Casey Brewing in Glenwood Springs, Colorado (cheers, Kevin and Katie!).
And yeah, there were those whales. Fremont Brewing’s Brew 2000, deGarde’s Broken Truck, Funk Factory’s Framzwartje, and Three Floyds’ 2015 Marshmallow Handjee Dark Lord all delivered on their hype. The Brew 2000 was probably the best of the bunch, smooth and sweet with no intrusive booziness despite the barrel and ABV. Marshmallow Dark Lord, considering its age, retained an absurd amount of vanilla.
Anyway, it was a good year for beer, and a big year for fruit, haze, and the bakery case. Here they are, my top 7 (no reason) new beer experiences of 2018.
7) Eagle Park Booze for Breakfast imperial stout. It’s kind of a cheat code to throw so much stuff into a beer, but even so, it’s no guarantee that it’ll come out tasting great. This pile-up of maple syrup, vanilla, and barrel-aged coffee was as good as anything you’ll pay five times the price for in Iowa.
6) Casey Nectarine Fruit Stand wild ale (10/12/17 batch). It was a wedding beer for one of my best and oldest friends, so there’s a context bump to this one. But Troy Casey knows how to blend, and this combination of juicy fruit and lightly cheesy grist is just perfect.
5) Untitled Art/Mikerphone Barrel-Aged Hazelnut Imperial Stout (batch 1). Yes, this was released in 2017. Yes, I’m being a total beer hipster by referring back to the ultra-limited first batch. No, I don’t care. Batch 2 was great, and with its greater bottle count, I’ll be happy to continue drinking it into 2019. But b1 was a sweet and woody stunner back in January, a revelation of what Untitled Art will be able to accomplish.
4) WeldWerks/Mikerphone Sweet Disposition imperial stout. Like Booze for Breakfast, this has all those seams and points of addition and manipulation, any one of which could result in a loss of composure or worse, infection. But nope, these brewers know their way around adjunct stouts, and the complex barrel program only adds harmony.
3) Moody Tongue Bourbon Barrel-Aged Gingerbread Imperial Stout. A sky-high ABV doesn’t get in the way of enjoying this liquid dessert, and indeed the slow sipping that booziness inspires probably helps drive home just how flavorful both the base beer and its adjuncts are. I’ve found that Moody Tongue’s culinary ambitions often exceed its ability to translate those flavors into a beer context, but consider this landing stuck.
2) Cigar City Bourbon Barrel-Aged Caffè Americano. So many coffee beers aren’t as coffee-forward as I’d wish them to be. Others are coffee-forward but in a bad way, all green pepper and acrid roast. There may have been chocolate and vanilla in this recipe, but the espresso shouted above the fray, resulting in one of the most perfect expressions of coffee in beer I’ve ever had.
1) New Glarus R&D Kriek. A-ha! All these pastrybois and what’s this, Nabilcy has thrown you all for a loop by picking the most straightforward fruited sour recipe as his top new beer of 2018. If you haven’t had this beer yet, the good thing is that New Glarus has a tendency to stockpile its R&D beers. And certainly, someone you know has a bottle. But you should absolutely drink this at your earliest convenience because it is flawless. Dan Carey loves his cherries and puts them in a lot of beers, but R&D Kriek is a solitary masterclass in European-style brewing and blending.
