This beer comes to me from a great beer guy, Jason over at BarleyPopMaker. The two things I always ask him to send me are New Glarus and the Tyranena’s Brewers Gone Wild beers. Jason had previously sent me a wicked Rye, Bitter Women in the Rye (Awesome Beer), so in this trade he sent me Benji’s Smoked Imperial Porter with Chipotle Peppers.  Now, I’m a huge fan of smoked beer and chili’s, but at the same time don’t want my lips to go numb while drinking a beer.

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On May 8th Captain Lawrence released Smoke from the Oak through their brewery, but lucky me, it was after I went dry for the month of May.  Did that stop me from getting to the brewery to get my allotment of this beer? HELL NO!

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I love porters, I have said it before, and I’ll say it again.  Love drinking them and have crafted a couple of homebrew recipes around the style.  The Founder Porter is my latest stop on my Porter tour.  Coming from a good lineage of Founders dark beers, KBS, Breakfast Stout, and Imperial stout, I’m expecting this to be another good brew.

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I made this beer on a whim, had the ingredients and a basic porter recipe.  I  monkeyed around with the ingredients list till I got what I think might be a good or at least interesting beer.

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OK, OK, I know I’m not supposed to drink this for another 800 years, but I bought 2 bottles, so it’s ok!  Right on the label Stone says it is designed to be drunk after 2012, so where probably talking about a really hoppy malty beer.   Stone describes this as a “Belgian style Imperial Porter”, yeah it’s a mouth full.  This is the 8th beer in Stones Epic Vertical series.  I bet in 2012 there are going to be some pretty killer vertical tastings of all 11 stone beers, but that is a couple years down the road.

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On a recent trip to Albany NY, I was taken to a local Brew Pub, Brown’s Brewing Company in Troy NY.  This brewpub over looks the “scenic” Hudson River in a part of Troy that looks to be going through a face lift.  Right off the bat there were some things I liked about this Brew Pub, easy parking and some classical warehouse/factory architecture.  Brown’s is located inside a huge brick building.  To greet you after a walk up a flight of stairs to the outside patio, are 5 pots of Willamette Hops.   These look to be for show, but it is still nice to see.  The pub has, patio, bar and upstairs dinning seating, making for a very spacious place.  Unfortunately the outside seating is pretty limited when thunderstorms are threatening, but nonetheless our party of 6 waited about 20+ minutes for patio seating.  While we were waiting it gave me a good opportunity to explore the Pub.

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