Can you believe that it's been nearly six months since I've discussed a cider on the blog? Truth be told, I haven't had much cider (apart from some homebrew) in that time. Now that spring's sprung and I'm looking forward to blossoms adorning my apple trees (hopefully they finally fruit this year), I have cider on my mind.

Luckily Rhinegeist's Cidergeist brand seems to have just the thing for me in Bloom, a cider bursting with springtime-inspired floral notes. Let's see how it's drinking on this fine Easter Sunday.

Happy Saint Patrick's Day! Normally, I don't do up St. Paddy's too much--just add a few drops of green food coloring to a lager or two (what can I say? I'm an OU grad). This evening, though, I have something a little special.

See, I happened to run into a sixer of Warped Wing's St. Patrick's Day stout at a local bottleshop a week or so ago. It's a variant of the brewery's 10 TON Oatmeal Stout (which I briefly mentioned in this post but have never done a full writeup on). I had some of the original 10 TON within the last month and figured now would be an incredibly opportune time to crack into some 10 TON Irish Cream Stout on the blog; not only have I refreshed myself on the base beer it's, y'know, seasonally appropriate.

Did you read my post yesterday? If you haven't, I highly recommend you do so. Today's post won't be heavily reliant upon it in any way (you can definitely read this one as a stand-alone) but I might touch upon topics you'll understand more readily if you've read yesterday's.

Now that I've said all of that, let's get to today's beer: New Holland's first Dragon's Milk Reserve of 2021 (21R1 from here on out), featuring peanut butter and cocoa nibs. I love Dragon's Milk and I love Reese's Cups, so this seems like a beer tailor-made for me.

Peanut butter is one of my favorite flavors. I'm not just talking about on a sandwich with jelly, no, I'm talking in ice cream, in milkshakes, enveloped in a chocolate cup, in smoothies with bananas, on toast with honey, on celery with raisins, and everything in-between. Have you paired a Reese's with a pumpkin ale? Try it this fall--it's luxurious.

Yet, if you searched for "peanut butter" here on the blog, you'd probably never realize this about me. I've written about one peanut butter beer on here and rated it more highly then than I would now. That's because peanut butter beers haven't really ever clicked for me. Like, once in a while I get a pint of some peanut butter stout at a taproom that's amazing, sure, but that's an rare occurrence. Most of the time it seems this adjunct is either under-utilized or used in a way that shows the brewer doesn't quite know how to add it into their beer.

This weekend will (very hopefully) show how that can be done. I was able to nab two peanut butter-infused stouts from New Holland. If any brewery can show how to best use this adjunct, it's these guys. Today, I'm drinking and writing about the first one: Peanut Butter Poet. I'll dive into the second tomorrow. At the end of this short series, we'll see (again, very hopefully) just how well peanut butter can work in a beer.