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All you suckas gather 'round, a brand new dude is coming to town! Thick Silky is a man with a plan and a Kung Fu backhand, you dig? He runs the chocolate game in this city, and when it comes to haters he shows no pity. With his fine, foxy ladies sitting pretty in a tricked out '73 Cadillac DeVille, he's down with the double chocolate oatmeal scene and keeping it real. So, if you crave satisfaction, Thick Silky is the man who's got that action!
Resolve your yin and yang and awaken your true brew destiny with this IPA infused with Super Matcha Green Yuzu tea. Earthy, grassy and bright citrus notes balance on a katana blade with the nimble touch of sweet honey malt.
Take a sip and honor the Super Matcha warrior spirit within, unleashing the strength, vitality and fortune of a great brew ninja.
Laughing Skull is a full bodied amber ale. Smooth-flavored and easy drinking, it develops a loyal following wherever it’s served. This beer pours a brilliant amber color, with an off-white head. The late addition of Willamette hops provides an earthy and mild bitterness, which balances the bready, malt character. The refreshingly crisp, clean and dry finish makes this a highly sessionable beer.
Hoppier than a frog in a buggy summer, our flagship American style India Pale Ale tips its cap to the lazy porch days and honey colored skies of a great Southern city. Kick back and enjoy the aroma of citrus with hints of native pine balanced by a crisp malt backbone with a clean finish.
Appease your divine nature and drink in the mysteries of this milk stout brewed with organic chai spices. Dark chocolate notes combine with an exotic blend of ginger, cardamom, black pepper, coriander, and cinnamon, which is softened by the milky sweetness of lactose. Meant to be revered, this handcrafted stout may produce spontaneous moonlight mooing, awaken your chakras, or set you sailing on your own passage to India.
Starr Hill’s Little Red RooStarr Coffee Stout is a full-bodied milk stout brewed with coffee from our friends at Red Rooster Coffee Roasters in Floyd, VA. Malt sweetness, chocolate and caramel notes dominate the flavor, while roasted coffee notes add balance and round out the aroma.
Reviver is an India Pale Ale that blurs the boundaries between IPA and Amber styles. Specialty malts provide its inviting ruby-red hue, medium body and firm maltiness, while American hops impart a refreshing citrus aroma and flavor.
Shmaltz Brewing Company’s Funky Jewbelation 2015 is a kaleidoscopic dreidel of flavor. To quote the label, it’s a “blend of six ales and lagers aged in 65% bourbon barrels and 35% rye whiskey barrels.”
It’s got the mouthfeel of a sour with the patented smoothness of barrel aging, and a finish of gentle whiskey heat. In between there you get hints of the myriad beers that were melded together. Rye is most noticeable, but I’ll be darned if there isn’t a whisper of hops buried in its manifold layers.
More than a few hardcore beer geeks would argue, in fact, that these wildly popular and notoriously insipid lager beers offer a drinking experience not too far removed from that of carbonated water.
Designed to maximize refreshment and minimize any assertive aromas and flavors, the light lager as we know it today is largely an artifact of post-Prohibition pragmatism, and it embodies the qualitative “dumbing-down” of the American palate for many discerning beer drinkers. Although many of us who enjoy more substantive, complex beer styles may be quick to dismiss this style as the sole jurisdiction of the unknowing and uncaring masses, there is an undeniable point to be made in that the masses seem to actually enjoy the stuff.
Curious.
So then, what is the beer connoisseur to make of this, the most popular beer style in the world? Do we continue to refuse it the dignity of being recognized as “real beer,” at least in our own eyes, or do we attempt to discern what makes this easy-drinker so appealing to so many people? Beer preference is a categorically subjective affair. One man’s drain pour is another man’s King of Beers, after all. While we’re all free to drink whatever we choose, it may be useful to examine this popular style a little more closely and decide from there whether it is worthy of a place in our collective beer coolers or whether it can head for the mountains for all we care.
