The Nefarious Ten Pin is made by Ska Brewing it is 8% alcohol and is called a “Baltic porter”. Originally Baltic porters were made in the 1700′s and sent across the seas, hence the nickname. The company that brews this beer is from Colorado (Ska Brewing) and produces many different types of beer so check your local beer store for more varieties. This particular beer was sealed with wax. The reason companies seal the bottles using this method is to help ensure that no oxygen can enter the beer. The 2 things that will ruin your beer are oxygen and light so anything you can do to prevent those getting in is a great idea. Plus… I’m sure they do it for looks ;o)

The Nefarious Ten Pin is best paired with Beef, BBQ and cheese. If you have eaten and any finer restaurants lately, you have probably started to notice more beers being offered on the menus. Even at some of my favorite wine bars, I have started to see some of the more expensive and higher quality beers starting to appear. The reason I bring that up is most people have thought only wine is best paired with cheese but you would be surprised at how well beer stacks up to some delicious cheese. Hopefully soon we will have some more info about cheese and food pairing on the site soon.

If you are going to be tasting multiple beers in a night, I usually prefer to go from lowest alcohol to highest. It’s not always the best method but try and make sure you cleanse your palette between tastings so you can truly enjoy the next beer.

The stout pours jet black with no lacing and minimal head. It doesn’t appear to have much carbonation and looks like a flat cola. It has a mellow smell that is very sweet and malty with a slightly toasted smell. I get slight hints of yeast and that familiar alcohol smell that comes across slightly sour in these higher alcohol beers.

It has a very refreshing snap to it with a smoky slightly burnt wave. You get the warm smooth flavor enveloping your mouth but it has a very refreshing super drinkable beer. Normally stouts can be hard to drink on a hot day but this is a great summer beer. I really expected it to be just a dessert beer but it was very good. The higher alcohol will keep you from enjoying to many but you can try!

This is one of my personal favorites from Ska Brewing. Ska has made sure to pay attention to the finer details in this beer with an excellent bottle and an astounding flavor. If you are a die hard traditional stout kind of person this might not be your thing but I love when breweries keep it interesting and step out of the “normal”. Ska Brewing has truly stepped out of the box.

The bottle is ceramic and can be used in bottling your own beers! This is an award winning bottle so make sure you save it for your collection.

The beer pours a golden haze with about an inch of head. The head holds very well and has a crisp white color. Not a ton of carbonation and looks similar to many hefeweizens.

The smell started off very sour. It has a strong yeasty smell and the signature pilsner skunk aroma. Based on the smell, I wasn’t real excited to give it a taste.

The taste was surprising. Very smooth, had the czech skunkiness but not overpowering and was very drinkable. After tasting the beer, the smells mellowed out and I could get much stronger smells showing through. It was tough to get through the sour smell but once you were past it, this smelled and taste pretty good. I would drink it again!

The Pale 31 pours a light color with no head and is reminiscent of apple cider in appearance. The beer gives a crisp hoppy aroma. The smell is nice and simple, nothing too complex.

The taste is pretty tame, nothing too wild. Very refreshing and great drinkability definitely a nice step in the direction of craft beers from the standard mass produced fizzy yellow beer. The beer doesn’t stand out too much in any single way but still a good beer to throw back on a hot day or as a gift to someone who is curious about the beer world! If you are just stepping out of the mass produced beers and into the craft beer scene, this would be a great beer to start with. Take your time with bitter beers since they can take some getting used to…

The Anniversary Ale pours a nice thick head with a dark warm color not much head retention with this ale. The hops stand out with this brew and there are subtle hints of spices, honey and pine to it. A nice aroma from this strong ale.

The Stone 13th Anniversary tastes great! There is a nice sweet flavor that combines the bitterness of the hops with the sweetness of the spices and pine. The high alcohol content provides a nice warm feel going down. The taste is unique, you can tell this beer was definitely brewed outside of the box. Overall, a smooth beer that has great drinkability for such a strong beer.

The American Ale gives off a floral-hoppy aroma with some hints of citrus.

The beer is refreshing and has a nice crisp bite to it thanks to the extra hops added during the brewing process. For an ale its one of the hoppiest we’ve tried. Rogue did a great job at creating an American Ale that stands out.

Overall this beer was above average we did enjoy it and it had a unique taste and character to it that Rouge is able to instill into their handcrafted beers.

Stones Sublimely Self-Righteous Ale started as Stone 11th Anniversary Ale. People loved the Ale so much that they decided to remake the beer and bring it back.

The beer pours a dark brown almost black color. Through the thinner parts you can see a brownish red tint to the beer. There was a large amount of head (roughly 3 fingers) that was creamy mellow tan with a foamy texture. The head sat still when I swirled the glass but the bubbles faded quickly.

The smell was nothing like I expected from such a dark ale. I mostly smelled hops and didn’t want to wait for the head to dissipate to open up the aromas. It had a very citrus grapefruit like smell with a tiny hint of sweetness.

The taste was another shocking wave of deliciousness. It starts off with the alcohol making it warm and inviting but not overpowering. It was very rich and malty, the bitterness made this a very interesting experience for your senses. It’s hard to describe but the beer just tastes exceptional. For those of you that think higher alcohol complex beers are hard to drink, you should try this one. Your brain will be questioning if you are enjoying an IPA, a stout, or some type of strong ale.

Great job with this Stone Brewing, we hope you re-produce many of your limited release beers for us Stone Brewery lovers!

Rogue makes some exceptional beers and we love our stouts. This one is 6% alcohol and is rated very high on most other sites.

The Shakespeare Stout pours a dark black with a rich burnt brown head. It poured perfect and is exactly how I would like a dark stout to look. Great lacing, head retention, color, etc.

Our Rogue stout had a very nutty, chocolaty, vanilla and coffee smell. Almost a toffee caramel hint also. The bubbles and alcohol give you a tingly feeling in your nose. It smelled smooth with a small bite.

The first thing I notice was the very very smooth mouth feel. It helped make this exceptionally easy to drink and really opens up the possibilities for pairing with food. It has a bold rich bakers chocolate taste with hints of espresso. If this was on nitrogen, it would be a perfect 10 overall. I will be buying plenty more of Rogues exceptional Shakespeare Stout.

The beer poured a dark rich dry brown that was pitch black. There is about 2 fingers worth of head. The head was very dark brown and may be the darkest head I have seen. When they say Old Viscosity, I think they are referring to oil… That’s exactly what this stout beer looks like.

It has a dry woody musk smell that wasn’t too sweet. It reminds me of an extra stout with burnt woody vanilla smell with small hints of cocoa. I’m a big fan of oak aged stouts and think it really steps up the flavor notch for a beer as potent as this.

The taste was superb. You can get the higher alcohol warmth right away which works great with the strength of flavor of Old Viscosity. The vanilla and burnt flavor come through very smooth but strong. It has a heavy thick dark chocolate flavor that would make this an excellent drink for desert, or on a cold day.

Each Vertical Epic beer is designed to drink sometime after 12.12.12 (end of the world?) for a “truly epic tasting”. If you had all 10 bottles, it would be an experience maybe 3 or 4 will get to try. They use very interesting ingredients and release them as homebrew recipes usually a month or so after their release. I have tasted every vertical epic since 06.06.06 and really appreciated the delicious chocolate Vertical Epic released for 09. We picked up 8 or 9 bottles hoping to save some… First 4 and then we had to grab more… There’s only 1 left… This is a great beer and I really hope they add this to their “regularly produced” list.

The beer poured a very dark espresso color and is pitch black in our glasses. The head was very creamy and it had a nitrogen appearance which was really surprising.

It has a citrus swiss chocolate smell like a sweet candy. It reminds me of chocolate covered orange peels that I used to eat as a kid.

The taste was exceptional. It has a strong coffee chocolate flavor with a very smooth creamy texture. The citrus creates a nice bitterness that combined with the burnt malty chocolate is DELICIOUS. I knew there was no way our bottles were going to last after that taste.

I think my last bottle is going to last through the day… Thanks Stone Brewing!

The beer contains cocoa, chilies, honey, tree seeds and more. It’s not what you expect from a chocolate beer and I promise it will surprise you!

The beer pours a redish amber with almost no head. It looks unfiltered and should help keep the flavor.

It has a sour smell and it makes it very difficult to pinpoint what it is. Theobroma didn’t smell like most beers and I think the chile’s with cocoa mix really confuses what you expect to smell.

It was sour and has a spicy dryness. It feels excellent in your mouth. It was very surprising. You get the cocoa bitterness right up front but the chiles really follow through in the end to keep it very complex.

I wouldn’t drink this everyday but it is worth buying and trying!

Coney Island’s brewery is out of New York (Shmaltz Brewing Company) and is one of the few east coast craft breweries that makes it all the way to Arizona. The bottle has excellent artwork and really stands out on the shelf when you walk by.

The Coney Island brewery donates a portion of their profits to a foundation that helps keep Coney Islands historical landmark maintained.

The beer is 6.66% alcohol seasonal beer with 5 different hops and 5 different types of malts. The beer pours an unnatural red color to really stand true to the name. I’ve never seen a beer this red that wasn’t a framboise.

It has a very sweet sugar flavor with a nice wave of hops. I would probably classify this as an OctoberIPAfest. If you like the sweet beers that are full of hops, this may be your new favorite.

Another beer we tried while In CA was the Cali Belgie from Stone which is a specialty IPA with a Belgian influence, the yeast is special Belgian strain that offers a unique taste.
We picked this beer up at Stone while out at the brewery for a special release of the vertical epic series where we were lucky enough to try the Vertical Epic 06.06.06 beer which was a nice spiced seasonal beer.

The IPA pours a nice golden color with about two fingers of head and great lacing that sticks to the glass. Cali Belgie has a very fresh hoppy aroma with faint hints of the imported yeast, nice smooth taste and great mouth feel. This great blend of ingredients brings together a high quality IPA with a sophisticated taste that has subtle hints of citrus.

A very tasty and unique IPA indeed.

The brew bosts a 27% ABV, which makes this the strongest commercial beer currently available. This is also the strongest offering of the Utopias which was first released in February of 2002. There were 9000 bottles released this year and because the alcohol level is so high, it is banned in 13 states. The Utopias is brewed with Carmel, Cienna, Moravian and Bavarian Smoked Malts and all four varieties of noble hops. It has been aged for around 15 years in oak barrells and is acctually a combination of several generations of Utopias to create the perfect blend and complexity. The beer comes packaged in a copper finished kettle that resembles those used during the brewing process. The Utopias bottle is a work of art on it’s own. The 2009 edition of the Utopias is currently being sold for $150 a bottle, we picked our bottle of Samuel Adams Utopias at BevMo in Queen Creek Arizona.

The beer poured a beautiful carmely red that reminded me of a fine cognac. There is no head and Utopias viscosity reminds me of a fresh made maple syrup. You can smell the alcohol 3 feet away from the beer and get a very sweet inviting smell. When you breathe it in you get an excellent carmel vanilla toffee smell. Sam Adams really went all out on Utopias making something that redefines what a beer can be. This reminds me of a very fine cognac with a sweet syrup flavor that has rushing waves of flavor as it coats your mouth. The video helps show everyones reactions to the delicious flavor. It’s definatly made for sipping and a few of our friends couldn’t handle Utopias greatness. Most of the true beer lovers were in awe at this beers character. If I could sum up this beer into one word… Heavenly…

I found a new favorite for my top 3 beers of all time. Sam Adams, you have truly outdone yourself this time.

The beer has 100% Kona Coffee and Macadamia nut. The beer was very dark and poured with excellent dark malty head. It has a very strong smell with higher alcohol than most porters. The beer had intense flavor with a strong coffee/espresso like taste topped off with a rich sweet nutty finish. It was better than we expected. If you like dark beers, coconut, chocolate, etc this is an excellent choice!