Each month, we list our favorite beers from the previous month. Because we focus on the Houston Beer Scene, we will always list our favorite from the Houston area/market, but will occasionally include beers from outside of Houston.
Follow us on our beer drinking adventure!
Peter’s Favorites:
Copperhead Brewery (Conroe, TX) – Copperhead III
One of the things I love about Copperhead is their appreciation for Trappist and Belgian Style beers. They also brew some damn good Stouts, which I also happen to love. Then for their 3rd Anniversary, they decided to brew a massive Belgian Imperial Chocolate Stout! I probably could have told you how much I loved it before I tried it.
Copperhead III is an Imperial Chocolate Stout brewed with Trappist yeast. But on top of that, they aged the beer on cacao nibs. Heaven!
As you would expect for a 12.4% ABV Stout, the beer is super thick and malty. Even if you open a 12 oz bottle, I recommend sharing the beer. Not because you won’t want to finish it yourself, but hopefully because you realize what you have and want to share.
The aroma and the flavor are pretty much identical. Loads and loads of chocolate, with roasty notes of coffee and cherry, although the last two are not ingredients in the beer. Those notes come from the massive grain bill and the Trappist yeast.
Normally, I would expect a beer like this to be extremely sweet. While it is sweet, there is enough bitterness from the hops that make the chocolate notes much more dark chocolate than milk chocolate.
I wish I had purchased more of this beer, because I would love to see how it ages over the next year or three.
Tupps Brewery (McKinney, TX) – Day of the Dead
This beer is exactly what I want out of a Juicy Pale Ale. I thought when I visited WeldWerks recently that hazy pale ale wouldn’t get any better than what I found there. No offense to Weldwerks, but I was wrong. Tupps is kicking ass and taking names in their brewing of hazy beers recently, and Day of the Dead might be their best hazy yet.
Day of the Dead, brewed to celebrate Dia de los Muertos, is a hazy, juicy pale ale brewed with Galaxy, Citra, and Mosaic. The beer is filled with loads of citrus and stone fruit on the palate, slightly heavier on the stone fruit. The aroma is reversed, as I get more citrus on the nose.
The beer is a beautiful hazy, yet shiny, straw color. It looks great, but it tastes even better!
The mouthfeel is what you would expect. Much lighter than its IPA big brother (DDH), and super crushable. I love hazy IPAs, but sometimes you just want a lighter, lower ABV beer. Enter Day of the Dead.
Todd’s Favorites:
Holler Brewing Company (Houston, TX)
I’m going to bend the rules again on my picks this month. I chose one brewery for their entire month of releases and then my favorite single beer of the month. Holler Brewing Company racked up one great release after another this month. The following brews are all excellent:
- Tank It to the Limit – A hazy double IPA brewed with oats and Citra and Mosaic hops, with additional cryo Citra pellets when sampled fresh from the tank.
- Good Hops – An American fresh hop Pale Ale brewed in collaboration with Sigma Brewing Company.
- Stairway To Helles – A Munich Helles Lager brewed in collaboration with Flatfender Homebrewing Duo.
- Houston Triple Craft – A smoked espresso Märzen brewed in collaboration with Greenway Coffee & Tea and Feges BBQ. Feges BBQ smoked German malts over apple and maple wood which were part of Triple Craft‘s grain bill. Greenway added an espresso made with freshly roasted Brazilian coffee beans into the mix.
- Apri-quat Sour – A kettle Sour Ale brewed with apricots and kumquats. This is another collaboration brew, this time with Hughie’s Tavern and Vietnamese Grille.
I’m sure these brews are still excellent on any tap in town, but I had all, with the exception of Apri-quat Sour, fresh from the tank at Holler, which always seems to take their brews up a notch or two. All five of these brews are still currently available, so search them out while you can.
Baa Baa Brewhouse (Brookshire, TX) – Xennial
My absolute favorite single new beer for September is Baa Baa Brewhouse’s Xennial. Baa Baa has been making a name for themselves with their hazy IPAs for a while now, and this is probably my favorite of theirs. Xennial features two hops frequently seen in hazy IPAs, Citra and Galaxy, but surprised me a bit with the heavy use of Centennial. The flavor is juicy citrus, as expected with a profile that stands out amongst a sea of similar haze bombs. In addition to the excellent flavor, the feel is amongst the best I’ve had. It’s ever so soft, creamy and flows well with the ultra-low bitterness. Xennial had a limited draft release, so if you happen to see it, you may be looking at the last keg in town. It looks like Baa Baa is currently working to expand as they just finished raising money for a new 7 BBL fermenter. Hopefully with expanded production it’ll be easier to get your hands on quality beers such as this one.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to hit us up with any questions or comments.
Peter: Peter@houstonbeerscene.com
Todd: Todd@houstonbeerscene.com