MAXED OUT: the best beer I ever drank

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It's Max's last blog post of the year so that means it's time for the great unveiling!

Huzzah! We made it through our first year together, y'all! We laughed. We cried. We bitched and moaned. And best of all, we DRANK GOOD BEER! Thanks for stickin' it out with me.


And now, without further ado, my FAVORITE BEER OF ALL TIME!!! Wait, no. I'm going to further ado for a moment and recap my previous 9. Which ones have you tried out of my top 9?


Ok, so we started the year off with Jolly Pumpkin's Oro de Calabaza, remember that one? The 'breakfast beer' that I'd love to drink every morning when I wake up. Who needs OJ? I'm not sure, but I think the next one was Hitachino XH, a sour brown ale from Japan. Delirium Tremmens was next, and is oft voted the "best beer in the world" by beer geeks. I had two IPAs on the list, my favorite of which is Pizza Port OB's Cho Saiko which is unfortunately rarely available. The other IPA being Ballast Point's Sculpin, which is just my go-to beer that is typically available year round. We also had the mouth-puckeringly sour St. Louis Geuze Fond Tradition that I had for my birthday at Toronado. FYI, we have that in bottle at Hoffer's as well. Moonlight Brewing's Reality Czech made the cut as my favorite pilsner, so next time you're in the Bay Area keep your eyes open. And the final of the best of the rest is actually the most similar to my numero uno which is Ballast Point's Victory at Sea, a huge Imperial Porter that tastes of coffee and vanilla and rainbows and magic. OK, maybe not rainbows, but magic for sure. Alright, that's it, my top 9.

And now! Now it is time to unveil. Gosh, seems like I've been building up to this moment for so long. I guess I kinda have, haven't I? You know, this one time that I was... Ok! Ok! I'll get on with it. Geez!


My absolutely most favoritest beer in the history of all things fermented is Stone's home brew collaboration winner from 2009. Ken Schmidt is a local home brewer and in Stone's first home brew contest he created a recipe that combined coconut, coffee and macadamia. Stone took it one step further and paired up with Maui Brewing Company out of... uh duh!... Hawaii. And used their kitchen to toast thousands of pounds of coconut. The elicited Kona Coffee Company for their freshy fresh freshest coffee beans, and threw in several hundred pounds of macadamia nuts. The result? Well, it's the best beer I've ever had. That's the result.


I was working at K&B Wine Cellars in Del Cerro when this beer first hit the market. The word of mouth was soooo huge that we had to limit the customers to 2 bottles a piece. But I worked there! HAHAHAHAH! Between my roommate and I, we racked up about 15 bottles. Maybe 20. Oh, and it gets better. About 6 months ago they released their Bourbon Barrel Aged version of this beer. They raffled off a few hundred bottles at $1 per ticket, all of the proceeds going to some Escondido cause of sorts, then sold the bottles at $25 each. Oh, and one of my best friends, one Joseph Ornelas happened to win! BBOOOOOOOYYYAAAAAA BBAAAAABBBBBBAAAAYYYYYY!!!!


I could go on about how limited it was and how you now have to spend some $75 on ebay to find one of the original 12oz bottles, but instead I am going to describe this little taste of heaven in a glass.


So, the thing that is most amazing about this beer is that it changes COMPLETELY with each passing moment. There are certain beers that gain complexity the more they warm up, and this one absolutely takes the cake. As it warms you start off with strong coffee notes with a little back end of coconut. All of the sudden the macadamia slowly drifts in, but never takes control of your tongue but simply adds a beautiful, slightly oily mouth feel. Towards the end of the bottle (which took me 45 minutes to drink the first time I had one at home) the toasted coconut, macadamia and fresh coffee seem to harmonize into a perfect rift that makes you want to some how ring the bottle out for the very last drops available. I really don't know how to describe the last sip of this beer when I first had it. It's like having really good sex for the first time. It's like the first time you catch a perfect wave. It was like.... MAGIC!!!!!!!! And a couple of Saturdays ago I had it side by side with the Bourbon Barrel Aged version. My head exploded. EXPLODED!!!


Oh, and just so you know, it's technically an 8.5% American Porter. Or as I call it THE BEST BEER THAT I HAVE EVER HAD!!!!


So there you have it, kiddos. My Top 10 favorite beers of all time, so far. But next year is another year with more beers to try and more blog posts to tell you about them. I'm going to take a couple weeks off so I can regroup and organize my thoughts but please, join me in 2012 for another amazing year of hops, grain and water! And a little teaser for this year to come: Oktoberfest in Munich. My favorite beer of the week. And much, much more! I'm working on it, guys.


As always, thanks for joining and COMMENT!!!


Until next time my beer loving brethren, have a beer for me.

(ed. note: We wanted to chime in with what we thought was our favorite beer of all time. We believe it was a one-off because they, unfortunately, do not brew it anymore (at least, that's what we think) but Speakeasy Ales and Lagers concocted a couple of years ago their Prohibition Amber Ale. It's classified as an American Amber/Red Ale but because of the amount of hops in it, it drank like an IPA. (And a quick check of Tap Hunter.com just now did not reveal any locales where it was being served). Don't ask us for any Max-like deets on flavor, notes, noses, sessionability or any of that faldoral... all we remember was that it was amazing and that we would walk a few miles if it meant wrapping our taste buds around one again.

Alright, gang. As Max said, he'll be taking a few weeks off here over New Year's and into January to re-charge the batteries. We sincerely hope you've enjoyed this regular feature of the Beers with Demo franchise.)