Summer is the perfect time to turn up the heat, and these three Mexican stouts from our cellars bring the fire.
Remember, we hope you’ll join along at home, take advantage of this signature week to open some of those special beers you’ve been saving, share them with friends, and let us know what you think of them by tagging them with #whalezweek on social media.
Perennial Artisan Ales Abraxas (2014)
St. Louis, Missouri
It’s thick and inky with a soft palate that feels like sliding on a velvet smoking jacket and firing up a fine Cuban cigar. Layers and layers of flavors have been artfully constructed to hang in perfect balance, and as you peel through the chocolate you find a bit of cinnamon kick, then a layer of green pepper flesh, a bit of roast, and the faintest of pepper heat hanging out in the background. Abraxas is a quintessential beer—one we’ve had plenty of times but that we still seek out because we remember every time we’ve had it and will remember every time we drink it again. — Jamie Bogner
Westbrook Mexican Cake (2015)
Charleston, South Carolina
If Abraxas is a 50 percent cacao chocolate bar, Mexican Cake ratchets it up to the 75 percent range, with a more intense cacao bitterness, a similarly smooth mouthfeel, a touch drier body, and a creeping habanero heat that sits in the shadows and sneaks up on you, building with each additional sip. Like El Corazon, it’s an arrow through the heart, dripping with cocoa bitterness and tingling spice that seems like a prehistoric and mystical connection to another realm. It’s exquisitely good, definitively unique, and blends dessert into a glass, no utensils required. — Jamie Bogner & Austin Grippin
Copper Kettle Mexican Stout (2013)
Denver, Colorado
Truthfully, this one has been sitting in the cellar as a bit of an experiment. Fresh, this beer was “muy caliente,” pushing a level of heat that was anything but subtle. Would two years soften that jackhammer-strength pepper hotness and yield a beer that played up more subtleties? The resounding answer is, “Nope!” This Mexican stout might be two years older and wiser, but it’s still a hot-tempered firebrand that’s poised to fly off the handle at any moment. Remove the word “balanced” from your lexicon, embrace the chaos, feel that burning passion coursing through your veins, and celebrate the untamed spirit of Copper Kettle’s Mexican Stout. — Jamie Bogner