I excitedly opened the bag, wondering what kind of funky, rare beer he found for me that day. He does that sometimes. For the first birthday I had while we were dating, he bought me a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a growler (a 64 ounce jug) of a delicious beer. I knew he was a keeper. Over the years, he has alternated surprising me with flowers and unique beers that I would like. He knows me so well.
As I opened the bag, I could tell right away that it was a Three Floyds (an extremely popular brewery out of Indiana that our grocery store only gets small, rare shipments of. They are so popular that their followers can practically smell the shipments as they arrive so these beers rarely sit on the shelves for long.). He told me to ignore the picture on the label (rightly so, because it was a disturbing image of people's brains exploding. . .but the funky, creative artwork is fitting for Three Floyds' funky, creative concoctions) and just read the name and description. I saw the words "Coffee Stout" and I hugged him, because beer and coffee are two of my favorite things, and if you put them together for me, I will hug you.
I've had many coffee beers in my day, but my first was still my favorite: Schlafly's Coffee Stout. Schlafly is a small brewery in St. Louis with a small, local, family-feel that I fell in love with when I visited a few years ago. Their Coffee Stout is brewed with coffee from Kaldi's, a small St. Louis roaster. The French roasted coffee brewed with the rich, dark stout was the perfect, magical blend of coffee and beer, my first experience of two of my favorite things in one bottle: liquid happiness.
Since then, I have tasted many coffee beers. Most of them have been good, but none have tasted quite like that Schlafly Coffee Stout (*side-note* this goes for pumpkin beers, as well. I have tried a lot of pumpkin beers, but Schlafly's Pumpkin Ale is the BEST bottled pumpkin beer I have ever had. It is the perfect blend of sweet and spicy, pumpkin and ale. Nom.). A lot of coffee beers are unbalanced and sloppy tasting, with either the coffee or the beer overpowering the drink, but Schlafly provides a great balance. It is the standard to which I hold all coffee beers, and this Three Floyds Wig Splitter was no exception.
The description on the bottle stated that this is "an oatmeal stout brewed with freshly ground espresso for those of us who like a little beer with their coffee or a little bit of coffee with their beer." Grammatical inconsistency aside (the sentence shifts from first person to third person--"those of us who like... their coffee"--don't get me started on the frustrating rise of grammatical laziness in professional business writing! Or do get me started and hire me to be your editor.), this descriptor set a high bar that most coffee beers don't reach. It boldly proclaimed that it would be adequately balanced between coffee and beer. And you know what? It was.
This brew was deliciously balanced so that the flavors of coffee and beer worked seamlessly to create something beautiful. The espresso that Three Floyds used actually brightened the stout and gave the brew a delicately crisp acidity that danced on my tongue in a way that forces me to rank this coffee stout up there with Schlafly's. Because Schlafly uses a dark, French roast coffee to deepen the richness of the stout, where Three Floyds uses an espresso to brighten it, I declare them equal, but different.
After making my assessment of this beer, I was determined to try the espresso that was used in the brewing. A little detective work by my husband revealed the winner as Unicorn Blood, an espresso blend by Dark Matter Coffee out of Chicago. I promptly ordered myself a bag and spent my time waiting for my freshly roasted beans to arrive in the mail by acquainting myself with the coffee company via their website.
Like Three Floyds, Dark Matter Coffee is known for creating funky, unique blends. They are committed to great coffee, but they are also committed to creativity, instead of the typical stoic, black-and-white approach that many seriously scientific coffee companies take these days. The fact that their espresso blend is called Unicorn Blood, for example, is simply awesome. In the Harry Potter world, unicorn blood is known for its magic healing properties, that it can save a person who drinks it even if they are a breath away from death. Isn't that how we all feel about our morning coffee?!
And come on, check out this bag:
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| IT'S A UNICORN PRANCING IN A PORTAFILTER. |
I wasn't able to try this coffee as espresso, but I tried it both hot and cold brewed. I expected it to be sweeter than it was (maybe because of the sweet, happy face of this unicorn prancing around in a portafilter), but it was nutty and fun, kind of like this whole absurd experiment.
In any case, I enjoyed tasting these creative coffee concoctions. And if you learned nothing else from this post, let it be a lesson as the adult version of the children's book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie:
If you give your wife a coffee beer...she'll spend a week analyzing it and the coffee used to brew it so she can write a long, rambly blog post about it, complete with pictures.
Thank you, and you're welcome.
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