Founders - porter (aged 9 months)

This is my 3rd follow up to the aging of Founders Porter. So far all goes well and this may just be its peak time. I've got one more out of this pack that I stuck in my file cabinet of goodies that I think I will either wait till the 12 month or possibly the 16 month mark to try.
So this follows the lineage that I figured it would take. Less carbonation, a slightly heavier body, less coffee, more chocolate and less head. Cold it still has a sharp coffee bite, but as it warms it smooths considerably. The only thing that makes me think that it will not age any further is that it is starting to develop a slightly dry taste, so will it last any further or is this just the taste of the coffee giving in to the chocolate? Only time will tell, now if I can just stay patient enough to wait another 2 to 6 months...

Founders - porter (aged 3 1/2 mo)

OK so this is another aged porter post, but this one was aged in my file cabinet of goodies. I had set to open this guy up on the 20th of last month, but got caught up at work and completely spaced on it till now.
OK so the non fridge aged is very much the same but really not at the same time. The regular aged really did not seem to take the bitter edge off as much which did not let the chocolate come out as much. The overall booze was much stronger as well.
The overall effect was very odd to me... I figured the bottle that was in the fridge would age more slowly and that the two would come out backwards from what they did... overall I am just perplexed on how or why 2 beers could come out different like this... oh well we shall see how the next one comes out in another 3 months. Only time will tell...

Founders - Porter (aged 3 mo in fridge)

Alright, right off the bat I have to admit that I know you shouldn't age beer in a fridge... its just been in the fridge for 3 months and I have a couple of bottles that I am progressively aging in my file cabinet of joy that I will compare it to.
OK so I am going to cut to the nitty gritty on this one, as if you read this you more than likely know this beer already. So I am going to talk about the differences between a new bottle and this one. If you haven't drank this beer, go drink one already.
OK so the first thing I noticed was that there was far less carbonation and less pshhhhh when I opened the bottle. Oddly the body seems to be vastly bigger as I found this beer kinda thin for a porter when I first had it. One of the largest differences is that there is mucho less bitterness, which I find very nice. The overall burnt coffee taste of this beer really turned me off straight off the shelf, but now it is simply an afterthought in the finish of the beer. This lack of bitter really leaves the toffee and chocolate flavors in the forefront and they really shine, it just rounds out the whole flavor profile all together and it finishes far smoother all together.
 All around this beer is far better with a couple months under its belt in short. It makes me anxious to try my bottles of gnarlywine and other founders porters (amongst other undisclosed beers) in the future. If I was founders I would age all of my stouts and porters slightly before shipping if this is the way they turn out... just sayin. I would buy a lot more of your product if I could just pick one up and it taste like this.

Breckenridge - Vanilla Porter

I want to like this beer, but I think this is another case of "I may like it if its been aged a good bit to take the edge off it".

The "black and tan" or how I learned to stop caring and love dark beers

Like alot of people I never liked dark beers, always saying "i dont want to chew my beer!". The problem is that, like many americans, I am not the biggest fan of bitter beers or those that have a heavy coffee taste. I am not a coffee drinker as it is, so why would I want my beer to taste like it? Mainly I got brain washed (like many have) that bud heavy and pbr are beer... I am sorry, but they are to beer what Dr. Dre is to punk rock... The beers I guzzled in college only deserve the name of beer as they will get you get you drunk if you drink a absolute gigantic ammount of it.
As time went on living in KC I got more interested in craft beers, the Boulevard brewery was right down the street and I got heavily into their wheat beer. Then I dicovered a couple of liqour stores that had beers I had only heard in whispers as I passed bars on the weekends. All of a sudden I was randomly buying beers off the shelf and finding some amazing stuff and some really bad stuff posing in a fancy expensive bottle. But there were still few dark beers that struck my fancy. I tried porters, stouts, oatmeal stouts, chocolate stouts and porters. Then I thought back to a drink named the "black and tan", you may have heard of it...