Reply To: Got Beer?

Few weeks ago I went down to Shorewood liquor to look around. tRube showed me the infamous Wall of Stout which included a bunch of cellared beers. One I bought was a 2009 Avery Mephistopheles Stout that I opened tonight.

There is no way you’d put this in a glass and someone would tell you it was bottled 12+ years ago (bottled Dec 2009). Pour still had a good amount of head, especially for a beer pushing 17% abv, and still a complex set of flavors. I haven’t had this beer for a really long time and it was ‘fresh’ then but I don’t think it’s lost much at all.

FTR, IIRC, Avery stopped producing this beer in 2016, due to the fact that some states will not sell a beer that strong (see also: Sam Adams’ Utopias). So, Avery said screw it, and stopped making their heavy hitters.

I knew they stopped producing a lot of their big beers but didn’t know why. They made some great high ABV beers and I still occasionally see them around.