The Session #21: My Favorite Beer

Its the first Friday of the month which means its Session Time. For the unitiated here's a link to what the session is. The theme for this month's session is "what's your favorite beer and why", the host is A World of Brews. There are many fellow beer bloggers that weren't thrilled about this month's theme because it's so hard to narrow down one single beer as your favorite. Initially I thought this was absurd, because surely everyone has a favorite 'go-to beer.' Alas, they were right. While I may have a go-to beer that I love (Saint Arnold's Lawnmower) I wouldn't call it my favorite all time beer. While I love barley wines, there probably isn't a single one that I've had that I'd call my favorite beer. So what to do you ask? Of all the beers from all the breweries I've stated I can say that I do have a favorite brewery. A place where they make amazingly different beers. From simple subtle pleasures to ones that are made to literally knock you out. While none of the beers may be classified as my all time favorite beers, there are many that are in my top 10. The brewery is Dogfish Head. From my first sip of Midas Touch, I was hooked to them. To make something that was so completely different from any beer that I had ever had, really opened my eyes to what beer could be. Almost every beer that I've had has continued to challenge that concept. Just when you think all they do is hoppy extreme beers (90 and 120) they make a wit style beer mixed with Pinot Noir and aged partially in Pinot barrels. Beer mixed with wine? How does that work? I don't know but it did. These are just a few of the reasons why Dogfish is my favorite brewery and anytime I see a beer of theirs I haven't tried I always pick it up. Even if that beer isn't my favorite it always challenges my senses. Recently I was walking through a liquor store and found a new beer from Dogfish that I hadn't had but had eagerly been looking for, the Palo Santo Marron. As with most Dogfish Beers, this is not just some regular beer. Sure its called a brown ale, but come one, you just know there's more to it than that. This brown ale is aged in Paraguayan Palo Santo wood tanks. Palo Santo means 'holy wood' and this wood adds some flavor characteristics different from any other brown ale out there.
The Beer: This brown ale weighs in at 12% so yeah you know this one's going to be different. It pours a deep dark brown, that's thick like molasses syrup. Its capped by a thin cafe colored head. The nose is vanilla, caramel, molasses, roasty malts. The mouthfeel is chewy, and thick, coating your tongue. There's extreme woodiness here, layers and layers of wood, with notes of caramel, honey, sweet chocolate, coffee, and spice. Its rich and complex, a beer I'd love to have with snow on the ground outside huddling around a fireplace. inside. This is an amazing amazing beer. It gets an A from me. Here's what the folks at BA think.

The folks at A world of Beers should have a round up posted shortly.