There comes a point in every hobby where you have to take things to the next level. This usually involves investing more time, energy and, most of all, money. I’m someone whose always resisted that for any hobby. With craft beer, it’s been a specific price point. When I started drinking I set a price I was willing to pay for a single bottle of beer from a store. Surely, I thought, I’ll never actually cross that line. Nothing can be that good. Well Porchdrinkers, Prairie Artisan Ales finally blew me to the next level of craft-dom with BOMB!, its imperial stout.

BOMB!’s aroma is mostly the chili peppers and cacao. It’s an impenetrable black with light lacing that never seems to go away. It just changes position into new interesting shapes. It goes down like hot chocolate as well, it feels thick but not sludgy thick.

With a name like BOMB!, and the number of different notes Prairie Ales is trying to pack in here, I was expecting to be overwhelmed by the imperial stout’s flavors. BOMB! instead keeps it incredibly smooth and allows the flavors to just slowly melt into you. The jalapeno is lighter in taste than it was in the aroma – combining with the coffee to give you a nice jolted feeling. The vanilla bean also keeps the stout from diving too far into the depths of heaviness with the cacao nubs. The coffee flavor is either a little lost, or Nordaggios coffee is so f*cking delicious that my taste buds have been destroyed by the crap coffee I get for free from student affairs, and I’ve lost the ability to taste it. With how well this end product is, I’m willing to bet it’s just that good.

Oh and did I mention it’s 13%? I’m mentioning it now. It’s 13%. That’s insane. Nothing that is this easy to drink should be allowed to be above 10%. I say this after a terrible experience with apple-whiskey this weekend. That’s probably why they have to sell these babies as individuals. God knows it’d feel like a BOMB! went off in your head if you could get this by the six or 12 pack.

BOMB! is so delectable and boozy it makes a great dessert. I cracked this open after a particularly heavy meal and it cut though the greasy gravy of that meal easily to get rid of the “itis” I was feeling (definitely the coffee). All together, I bet this is the type of beer Penelope Cruz would drink at the end of a shift in “Woman on Top” (not the greatest movie, but worth it to watch Penelope Cruz spend an entire movie juggling two men when really she just loves chili peppers). And if it’s good enough for Penelope Cruz, it’s good enough for me.

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