Wanna get down but feeling a little… down? Memphis’ Wiseacre Brewing Co. has the solution for you. Gotta Get Up to Get Down Coffee Milk Stout is the perfect solution for giving you a bit of a beer buzz while also waking you up enough to get down.

Gotta Get Up to Get Down’s story begins in Chicago, where Brewmaster Davin Bartosch was brewing primarily English-style cask ales for the taproom at Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery. “I started putting coffee in some of those and they turned out pretty good, so I decided I wanted to make a larger amount of it,” said Bartosch.

He had always enjoyed the coffee from Metropolis Coffee, so he decided to give them a call. “…the president of the company [Tony Dreyfuss] called me back like ten minutes later, which I was really blown away by,” said Bartosch. “He liked beer a lot too and had tried to get people to use coffee in beer before but it hadn’t really worked out.” With both Bartosch and Dreyfuss enthused about getting the project moving, they began experimenting with different coffee brews.

“It turned into a symbiotic thing with him suggesting different types of coffee to use and us going through a bunch of different methods to produce coffee beers, ” said Bartosch. “At some point we made a couple of different versions of what would become Gotta Get Up to Get Down.”

Gotta Get Up to Get Down uses Ethiopian natural-processed coffee, which is a uniquely processed coffee in which the cherries are left on the seed to dry rather than being stripped off right after picking. This allows the sugars in the fruit to ferment along with the seeds. Once dry, the desiccated cherries are processed and sorted for roasting. “This process infuses the bean with a super fruity flavor, almost like blueberry pie…a very distinct blueberry fruitiness,” said Bartosch.

This flavor translates into a blueberry fruitiness in the beer as well, even though no fruit is added. To ensure the coffee in the beer shines through, Bartosch goes light on the roasted barley, as he feels too much roasted barley can make the beer come off as almost smoky or acrid. With both the coffee beans and malts in the beer being lightly roasted, Gotta Get Up to Get Down is a very smooth-drinking stout, with a coffee flavor that comes through strong without being overwhelming. In addition, lactose (milk sugar) and oats are incorporated, resulting in for a silky smooth finish.

As it says on the can: “Red Bull and vodka done the long way for old men, not teenagers.”

If Gotta Get Up to Get Down had a Tinder profile, this is what it would say:

ABV: 5%
Original Gravity: 13 plato
Final Gravity: 3.7
IBU: 15
Bittering Hops: Bravo
Malts: Two Row, Roasted Barley, Rolled Oats, Lactose Sugar
Yeast: Ale

Feature image courtesy of Wiseacre Brewing Co.

---

Can't visit the site everyday like us? Bummer! No worries, we've got you covered. Submit your email below to receive our monthlyish newsletter on reviews, tours, events and more!

Email address:

Leave this field empty if you're human: