Right, let's talk about Port Barrel Aged Growl, because Off Color Brewing has built something here that reads less like a beer and more like a dare. This is a Belgian Quadruple, already the heavyweight division of Belgian brewing, then aged in port barrels until it stopped being merely strong and started being genuinely theatrical.
The brewery's own tasting notes read like they were written at 3am by someone who'd had one too many, and I mean that as the highest possible compliment: cherry-filled dark chocolate bonbons, port wine infused marshmallows, apricot jam, tobacco leaf, espresso powder. That is not a beer description, that's a dessert menu that got into a fight with a cigar lounge and somehow both parties won. At 10.5% ABV, decadent and indulgent are doing a lot of honest work in that sentence.
Here's what impresses me most: for all that richness, Off Color claims a perfumed, bone dry finish, which is the brewing equivalent of a car with enormous horsepower that somehow still handles like it's on rails. Getting a beer this loaded to actually finish clean rather than collapsing into syrup is not easy, and it's the difference between a beer you respect and a beer you merely survive.
Chicago's Off Color has never been shy about pushing a style past its comfortable edges, and Growl is that instinct at full throttle. Releasing on draft and in 375ml bottles to go, exclusively at Mousetrap, this Friday at noon, for sixteen dollars a bottle.
This is not a beer for a casual Tuesday. This is a beer for the one night a year you decide to be dramatic about it.