On to the new year

Involdstout Mocha Porter
It's official. The Involdstad sisters approve of the name! Sorry, Stupp, no homocha.

The Involdstout comes heavy on the coffee side with a strong, bitter, chocolate aftertaste. This is more of an after dinner drink to accompany a medium bodied cigar. I would also pair it with a number of desserts. I had with homemade cheesecake and it was extraordinary.

Now for the history lesson. Ingvoldstout comes from a combination of the last name and the German city. (Funny thing is, Germans don't make stouts). The town of Ingolstadt is quite famous in the beer realm. Ingolstadt was the city where William IV, Duke of Bavaria wrote and signed the Bavarian Reinheitsgebot in 1516. (Yes I copied that from wikipedia, but I knew it beforehand!!) The Reinheitsgebot is the German purity law which originally decreed that beer could only contain barley, hops and water. Yeast wasn't included because no one knew what the hell it was until the 1800s! German monks actually used to call yeast "god is good" because they knew it created alcohol but they didn't know how.
Lastly, Ingolstadt is the town where Dr. Frankenstein created his monster. This beer may not be a monster but it will have you howlin' after a few....
















The Devil's Double IPA is bottling and should be ready for the new year. Who needs champagne when you have 10% abv lip smackingly delicious beer?

The final beer of the year is going to be a collaboration. Stu's brew came up with the name Graduator for what's going to be adios to law school and hello to Barbri...
The Graduator will get you through those long days of studying. It will be a German style bock brewed with homegrown hops and American Ale yeast. Cold storage will keep this spring time savior nice and smooth.

Beer fact: Bock means "goat" in German. If you ever see a beer label with a goat on it, its most likely a bock or a doppelbock. Doppel just means double, as in twice as much malt is used thus making the beer stronger in alcohol.
The reason these beers are called bock is not because of goats, but because they were originally brewed in the town of Einbeck. Somewhere along the line beck became bock and goats became associated with beer!
These beers are also especially associated with monks. In particular, monks in the order of St Francis of Paula brewed a type of beer as "liquid bread" to sustain them during Lent. They called it "Salvator," Latin for Savior. Hence, all the bocks that followed used the suffix "ator." Do you now see why we are calling ours the Graduator? Also, remember back to my Wolfenator?? Twas a bock.

To be fair, true bocks are lagers. I'll probably never make a beer with lager yeast because I don't have the capacity for sustained cold storage. Lager's are boring anyway. You Stella drinkers know what I'm talking about.

Well, hope you enjoyed my rant. Don't be afraid to try new beers! Especially in the winter, forget Stella and ask for a nice, strong, dark beer... maybe even a bock! (though, generally, bocks are brewed for the spring.)

Cheers!