As confusing as the weather is right now for us Ohioans, I felt this beer would be perfect to drink and talk about. SweetWater’s Happy Ending is an Imperial Stout that possesses a much different taste than most others of it’s kind. It is dark in body, has a creamy mocha head and a hoppy citrus nose with light coffee notes? What? That’s right, not only do you get the full body of a stout, but also the hoppy bitterness of an IPA. Now this is not crazy punch you in taste buds hops, but enough to make you do a double take on the beer you just drank.

March can be a very confusing month for most people living in the midwest. We are not sure if we should wear a poofy coat to work and go defrost our car ten minutes before we have to leave. We find ourselves dressing in layers and seeing lows of 10 degrees and highs of 70 all in the same week. We don’t know what the hell is going on. That is why I am choosing to drink SweetWater’s Happy Ending. When I need a bold imperial stout to help me fight off the last leg of winter, but I also want hoppy citrus flavors to welcome spring, this was the beer for me.

Having an ABV of 9%, Happy Ending meets the standard for booziness of Imperial Stouts, and it’s black coffee color definitely ensures that your drinking bold dark beer. The nose is complex combination of coffee, citrus, and light toasty oats. You can feel the bite of the hops as soon as it hits your mouth, but then almost immediately the smooth chocolate flavors of the stout you’ve been waiting for. The coffee, the citrus, the malt, chocolate and smoke flavors, its all there! Even a hint of cocoa powder for a little tease. I think the secret to this wonderful creation is the dry-hopping with cascade and simcoe hops. This is what really brings out the hoppy floral aromas. So when you first look into your dark beer you get hit in the nose with hops!

One of my favorite parts of this beer is not flavor, aroma, or even mouthfeel. It’s the description on the bottle, and I quote “Happy Ending Imperial Stout: Rub figured a hopped roll by dry balanced, will stiffy body, in ending a explosive lube stout finish the huge full on resulting a mom.” I’m not sure if I need to mark this article NSFW or not now, but I did get a good laugh out of this. What kind of language that is, well that’s saved for another day. The real icing on the cake though is the picture of Drew from Office Space played by Greg Pitts, and he’s doing the classic “O-face.” In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, first, shame on you, second, here’s the clip. After watching you’ll immediately understand why Happy Ending just got that much better.

As the weather continues to painstakingly forge ahead into spring, Happy Ending reminds us of the delicious hoppy beers we have to look forward to while letting us not forget the bold stouts that helped us get through winter. The name almost guarantees spring is right around the corner. I mean come on, with a name like Happy Ending, well I’m sure we can think of a few things, but let’s keep it PG and think of the happy end to winter and cheers to the beginning of spring. I can almost smell the fresh flowers of spring … and hello allergies.