Cross-promotion is good marketing, something the folks down at West Flanders Brewing in Boulder are clearly trying to take advantage of with a newly released American style porter, Recreational Smoke.
“Many of our customers have told us they wanted to be able to enjoy recreational smoke here at our brewpub,” head brewer Brian Lutz said in a press release. “In light of recent events, we decided the time was right for us to make that happen.”
Recreational Smoke is an American style porter made with beechwood smoked malts the brewery claims has notes of, ahem, “brownies.” Keeping to the theme, they’re also selling it by the ounce.
If you’d like to ditch the smoke, but maintain the dark and snackalicious, there are plenty of other new brews to try around Boulder County this week.
Twisted Pine Brewing is rocking a small batch of its Rhesus Peanut Butter Stout, which tastes about as delicious as it sounds, with a sweet, nutty flavor totally free of the odor of the monkey for which it is sort of named.
At last report supplies of RPBS were running low, but another batch is on the way.
You can also race out to Front Range Brewing in Lafayette and hope to catch the closing drops of the Vanilla Coconut Porter they started pouring this month. But when BW called Front Range to confirm that this unicorn of a porter existed, we were told the supply was running low. So don’t dally. Put the vanilla porter in the coconut and drink it all up before someone else beats you to it.
But if you want your local dark beer a little more dark and a little less local, then head over to Fate Brewing and get a taste of its recently released Foreign Extra Stout, with a bright, bitter-roasted flavor packed into a jet-black brew that clocks in at 7.6 percent ABV. Yeowza, that’s a great way to jet-black out!
And if you’re still awake on Friday night, you might want to consider heading over to Upslope Brewing’s Lee Hill location, which has started a new “Firkin Fridays,” for the new year.
A Firkin is a two-and-a-half-gallon, self-carbonated vessel that can be used to make micro-micro-batches of beer, and every Friday, Upslope will be going nuts and brewing something impulsive and nutty, then pouring it until there’s no more to pour (usually sometime that night). This year has already seen a chili stout, and a milk stout with vanilla beans, cocoa nibs and cinnamon. This week’s batch will be a Lemonhead Whit made with real pieces of Evan Dando. … Evan Dando? Singer for The Lemonheads? Anybody?
Moving on. But perhaps the coolest part of the new Firkin Fridays at Upslope is that the first Friday of every month will be a people’s choice brew, in which Upslope will announce a basic style of beer on its Facebook page and then take suggestions from commenters about how to gussy it up. For example, they’d say stout, and you could comment with “blood of thine enemies,” and they could then choose between brewing it for Friday night’s party, or calling the FBI and reporting you. Either way, delicious.
Crowdsourced cannibalism or otherwise, Upslope will announce each Friday’s Firkin via its social media accounts, so you might want to firkin follow them.
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