Beer of the Week

The beer: Hotbox Coffee Porter

Brewed by: Oskar Blues Brewery, Longmont, Colorado

Description (from the website): "This roasty, wake-up-call of a porter (6.5% ABV, 30 IBUs) is based on a robust malt bill that highlights chocolate, fig, plum and espresso flavors; led by nutty, drum-roasted CaraAroma malt. Then, Hotbox Roasters crashes the party and infuses potent, cold brew coffee from a blend of South American beans, roasted to reflect notes of chocolate, tobacco, wood and earthiness."

Would I buy it again?: No. You would think that a coffee porter would be a memorable sort of beer, but this was surprisingly forgettable. It was heavy, I mean, duh, but not a whole lot of actual taste. The thickness was really all this beer had, making it pretty one-dimensional.

Another Post From My Actual Job

This one's about beer, which is always fun.

An OTC beer keeps the doctor away

There’s plenty of evidence that a beer or two every now and again is good for your health. But the owner of the Seery Athlone Brewing Company in Addison, Ill., may have taken things too far.

While the reason of its closure just a few months after its grand opening in December 2018 is technically still a mystery, we feel fairly safe in speculating that it had something to do with the fact that brewery owner James Stephen was making his beer at the same location as his main business – a pharmaceutical company engaging in testing of over-the-counter drugs.

In fact, the Food and Drug Administration sent Mr. Stephen a letter in August 2018 warning him that, among numerous other transgressions, fermenting beer literally 10 feet away from where drugs were being tested is a health hazard, for both the beer and the drugs. The FDA ordered the brewery shut down, but the intrepid Mr. Stephen soldiered on, to obviously limited success.

Our advice to Mr. Stephen? Go all in with the pharmaceutical theme. Who wouldn’t want to drink an ibuprofen IPA, ranitidine red ale, loratadine lambic, pseudoephedrine porter, or diphenhydramine doppelbock? You’ll make millions!