1001 Beers

Beer No: 50/1001
Page No: 694
Category: Dark

Wow, 5% done with all 1001 Beers...I can't believe I'm at 50 already and I easily have another 50 beers sitting in boxes around my room and in the fridge just waiting to be tasted, reviewed, and rated.  For #50, I picked a good one - the Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter.  According to 1001 Beers, it was first brewed in 2005 after Hunter S. Thompson committed suicide.  It features artwork from Ralph Steadman who did much of Hunter's illustrations, and also won the gold medal in the World Beer Cup in 2008.  So this is no slouch of a beer.

I usually don't drink porters or stouts on a daily basis as they're usually just too heavy for a mid-day drink, but this Imperial Stout was right up my alley.  Heavy on the hops (as the Imperial would imply) and the coffee, this complex beer is balanced nicely and made a nice addition to my chicken sandwich dinner.  That being said, come June, I'll have tons of stouts and porters lined up to discuss here.  June 12th I'll be hosting a Stout/Porter party at my place and I have a lot of nice beers lined up to taste that day.  I'll be starting with a blind tasting of barrel aged stouts/porters and then move into a blind tasting of smoked stouts and porters.  After that, if people are still up for blind tastings, I'll break out some other stouts and porters that aren't barrel aged or smoked and we'll go from there.  As of now, the stout/porter list stands at:

Barrel Aged:
BrewDog Paradox (whiskey)
North Coast Old Rasputin XII (bourbon)
Haand Bryggeriet Norwegian Porter (aquavit)
Deschutes Abyss 2009 (bourbon)
The Bruery Black Tuesday (bourbon)

Smoked:
Alaskan Smoked Porter (2005)
Alaskan Smoked Porter (2009)
Stone Smoked Porter

More:
Brew Dog Rip Tide
Lost Abbey Serpent's Stout
Dieu du Ciel Peche Mortel
Alesmith Speedway Stout (2005)
Alesmith Speedway Stout (2009)
Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast
Mikkeller Black
Nogne O Imperial Stout
Requiem Espresso Stout
Sierra Nevada 30th Anniversary Stout
Stone 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout
Three Floyds Dark Lord (2009)
Victory Storm King (2002)
Victory Storm King (2010)

Not a bad line up if I say so myself...

My review, cross-posted at RateBeer.com:

Flying Dog Gonzo Imperial Porter from Flying Dog Brewery

Aroma: 8/10
Appearance: 3/5
Taste: 8/10
Palate: 4/5
Overall: 15/20

Rating: 3.8 / 5.0

Had from 12 oz. bottle from Total Wine. Pours brown with huge tan head, good lacing, and slight head retention. Aroma is heavy on coffee and hops. Slight aroma of chocolate and caramel. Taste is full of hops and coffee. Hints of malts, sugar, chocolate, and citrus. Very well done imperial porter with heavy hop flavor that balances the coffee nicely.

This is why I love Amazon.com.  I have their Prime membership and everything ships with 2 day delivery free (well, I pay for Prime...).  But I ordered 1001 Beers You Must Taste Before You Die yesterday at 9:01am and it arrived today while I was at lunch.  How wonderful is that?  Next day delivery even though it was supposed to come tomorrow.

But the book, in short, is beautiful.  It is gigantic with 960 full color, glossy pages and the beers are organized first by type, then alphabetically.  It breaks beers up into the following categories: Amber, Blond, White, Dark, and Specialty.  After the preface, they have an Index of Beers by Country and then at the end, after a short glossary, they have an Index of Beers by Brewery.  This makes it especially easy to pick out beers that will be included in the beer.  For example, I figured the Aprihop wouldn't be in the book, and looking at the index, I find these are the only beers from Dogfish Head Brewery: 90 Minute IPA, World Wide Stout, Midas Touch, and Raison D'Etre.  Similarly, I can go to my favorite brewery at the moment, The Bruery and see that they have two beers listed: Orchard White and Saison Rue (I'm assuming this book went to print before both Black Tuesday and Oude Tart were released - especially Black Tuesday since Three Floyd's Dark Lord Imperial Stout made the list).

But either way, I'm immediately going to go make a photocopy of the beers by brewery, shrink it down to a wallet size, and then carry it with me wherever I go to make sure that if there's a beer on tap, in a bottle, or in a can that is on the list, I'm going to try it.  I will try beers I know I won't like (Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier) and then try everything else I hope I will like.  It'll be tough to track a lot of these down I reckon, but with some determination and hopefully trading via the Internet, I will find a way!  It is my destiny!