I'm making the second post of 2023's Maple Month a fun one. I try to nab an extra bottle/can of the beers I discuss in November whenever I'm able, in the hope that I'm able to revisit them some Maple Month down the road. I have a small shelf in my beer cabinet dedicated to this.

Do you remember two years back when I did up Goose Island's maple-forward Bourbon County Brand Stout? I loved it, giving it my highest recommendation. Since I'm keeping things compressed this month, I figured I could break into my second (of two!) bottles of the beer today. Let's see if BCBS Special #4 is just as good at three years old as it was at one.

It seems as though New Holland stumbled upon a whole den of dragons, each slumbering atop a separate pile of treasure. Only earlier this week did I unleash my post of the series' bourbon barrel aged red ale. Now my attention's focused on the next great slumbering wyrm: Tales of Gold.

New Holland's doing a little something in that state up north. Dragon's Milk has long been a celebration of stout, barrel-aging, and (for the really good stuff) adjuncts. Yet, the brewery's been taking small steps away from that. It started with Solera (which I've yet to try). Dragon's Share was next. (I guess you could say Dragon's Milk White was the actual first step here, but it's still labeled as a stout which is why I'm not officially mentioning it; it's only here, in this typed aside.)

Today, I'm trying the next advance in this stoutless line: Dragon's Milk Crimson Keep. Let's see how this bourbon barrel-aged red ale stands against the rest of the noble lineage.

Two things: 1) You really didn't think I'd let the entire month of January slip away without providing a proper post, did you? 2) Did I really go through all of 2022 without discussing a single MadTree beer on the blog?

Good for all of us, then, that I have a remedy for both those things. Here in the bleak, chilly late days of January, I'm turning to a MadTree classic to officially ring in 2023 for John Likes Beer. That's right, I'm drinking an aged bottle of Coffee & Vanilla Bourbon Barrel Aged Axis Mundi (Axis Mundi henceforth).

I love me some Thirsty Dog. The brewery makes the best seasonal beer around (including my all-time favorite Christmas beer). Last year, I came to the conclusion that, aside from making great Christmas ales and Oktoberfest lagers, the Akron-based brewery also has a killer pumpkin ale in their repertoire. 

Earlier this fall (or late-summer, I guess) (probably sometime in August or September), the brewery posted an Instagram story featuring their Barrel Aged Imperial Pumpkin Ale. I was filled with an immediate curiosity. Where I live, I don't have access to much of the special beers Thirsty Dog puts out, but I kept my fingers crossed that I'd come across a bottle of this supped-up Pumpkin Ale. Luckily for me (and for you, reading this), I found one. Now, here at the very end of Spooky Finger Puppet Ghost Month, I'm ripping the foil off my bottle and seeing if it's as good as I hope it is.

Today's beer--the blog's first of the 2022--is one I've had in my posession for a little over three years. It was a Christmas gift back in 2019 (you, know, pre-pandemic) and came from either my dad (I think he's the culprit) or my brother. It was a beer I'd never heard of from a brewery I've only encountered once.

I hadn't meant to age it for three years (seeing as how it was nearly one when it was gifted to me). Nor had I meant to put off this month's initial post for this long (I've had two Covid scares already this calendar year--blowing my record of zero out of the water). Yet, here we are, beginning to forge ahead. Today I'm drinking Whiner's Fur Letter Word. 

Merry Christmas Eve! You might remember three years back when I drank a fresh bottle of Braxton Labs'  Bourbon Barrel Aged Kringle. I adored the beer. What I didn't mention on the blog is that I bought two bottles when it dropped, keeping one safely squirreled away in my cellar for some fateful Christmas season when the time was right for me to break into it.

As fate would have it, that fateful Christmas season is this year. Let's see how Kringle's drinking now, with a little age on it.

We've come now, to the ending of the current blog season. This is the final beer of 2021's Maple Month. I purchased this bottle on November 27th, 2020. I've had it in my cellar for nearly a year.

This beer, this Maple Month's swansong, is, of course Goose Island's Bourbon County Brand #4 Special Stout (I'll refer to it as #4 from here on out). I picked this up nearly a year ago knowing that I'd crack into it for this evening's post. Let's see if cellaring it for a year's paid off.

Welcome back to Maple Month. Before venturing any further, have you read Monday's post? If not, you might want to check it out; today's beer is an evolution of the one I featured then.

You've read it? Great. That means we can jump right into today's beer: Roak's BBA Devil Dog. Let's see how it carries through with all the mapley, French toasty goodness of its non-barrel-aged brethren.

Today's beer is another pumpkin standard that I see annually on store shelves. It's also one that I've never tried before. Why? I don't know exactly. I just know that, routinely, when I do decide to take the plunge any given year (and I always the decision to opt in) it's gone. Sold out.

I decided to shake up that cycle this year. Enough waiting and thinking about what could've been. It's time, finally, to crack into my first bottle of Heavy Seas' Great'er Pumpkin. Let's see if it's as scarily good as I've heard (because--full disclosure--I've heard some good things about it).

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.

Man, this February's been a productive month for the blog! I'm super happy (and shocked) to be here writing about this beer today, because it's a snow day for me. My employer almost never closes its offices due to inclimate weather. Yet, here we are. 

While the roads aren't super bad currently, the end of this storm should see Cincinnati with somewhere between six to nine inches of accumulation. Then, on Thursday, we'll have another dumping of the stuff. Since this is a special occasion, I'm resurrecting my Tales from the Cellar series. The beer I'll be breaking into today is Goose Island's 2019 Bourbon County Brand Stout (BCBS henceforth).

This is a bottle I've been sitting on for two years, waiting for the perfect time to break into it. Tomorrow's the last day of my vacation and I don't have any more PTO in sight (we might have a snow day this week if the weather reports are right, but I've learned to not hold my breath). As such, and especially now that we're just beyond the two year anniversary of the beer, I'm deeming the time perfect enough. Let's say goodbye to my vacation in style.

The beer is Paradise's Off Kilter. I had three bottles of it initially. I took one down to Texas with me a week after it released and split it with a buddy. After today, I'll have one left. Who knows how long that'll last in my cellar before the time is perfect enough to break into it again?

Today we have a treat: This is the priciest beer I'm consuming this holiday season. The 12 ounce bottle I'm about to break into ran me $6.39. It's a BBA version of Bell's Christmas Ale, which I drank and wrote about here (that's the new recipe that Bell's uses by the way, which they're still holding strong to here in 2020).

I won't lie to you--I was ecstatic when I found a single bottle of this being sold. This is one of two beers I'm doing this season that I didn't think I'd be able to find, so stumbling across this bottle in the wild was exciting. Let's get to it: Bell's Old Fashioned Holiday.

This post has been a year in the making. I'm excited that I've finally conceived a plan of attack to take it on. See, in the midst of the blog's inaugural Maple Month, Braxton announced their first four 2019 Dark Charge variants. Key among them was blue wax-dipped bottle that caught my eye: Dark Charge Maple Breakfast. I knew, the moment I saw its Instagram announcement post, that I'd need to talk about it here.

There were a few issues with that: First was that Dark Charge Day is in December, the month after Maple Month, but I could deal with that; I'm no stranger to aging bottles. The second issue was that I knew the BBA Maple Breakfast bottles would be limited and I needed to ensure I got my hands on one. Again, this wasn't a big deal since I was lucky to have the fifth Dark Charge Day off (it was the first time since Braxton stated hosting it that I didn't have work on the first Saturday in December). Easy.

Have you ever encountered a doppelbock that smells like exactly like the best barrel-aged stouts? Well, that's what today's beer is. I just popped the cap and whoo boy. But I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's back up for a few moments.

Today's beer is another from my favorite Dayton brewery. It's a maple bourbon barrel aged variant of Warped Wing's Abominator, which I've only had once in my life. I didn't write about it on my blog, but I did manage a quick post for it on my Untappd page. Today we'll find out how well this big boy version of the stuff holds up to my good first impression of the base beer.

This post is about a ghost. No, not an actual ghost. Those don't really exist. Instead, this post is about a ghost beer. It's a bit of a mental leap to get to that claim, so I'll walk you through it.

Around the time I was really started my craft beer journey, MadTree released barrel-aged variants of its The Great PumpCAN. Pumpkin beers and I didn't really see eye to eye at that time and the BA PumpCAN releases weren't even on my radar. It wasn't until I visited MadTree a few months after the release that I saw a poster for the beers and knew what I'd missed out on.

Now, let's pivot to talk about whales. I promise, this loops back around. A whale is a limited, rare, and highly sought-after beer. I've been lucky enough to enjoy a whale or two in my life. But, what's more important to me are my personal whales. These are beers that I'm after--still usually pretty rare--that might not necessarily be on someone else's whale list.

Beyond that, you have your white whales, your Moby Dicks, the ones that get away and, no matter how close you think you are to finally tracking them down, vanish. For five years that's what Bourbon Barrel Aged PumpCAN was to me (and it's what the rum barrel variant of it still is). Then, out of thin air, MadTree broke some beers out of their cellar last fall, BBA Pumpcan among them. My white whale had returned from the dead. A ghost, one that I managed to trap, one that's been haunting my cellar since.

Today, on All Hallow's Eve, I'm tearing into this ghost whale. Let's see if it lives up to the hype I've built around it.

Yesterday, I pushed passed the 50k mark in the draft of my manuscript, thereby completed NaNoWriMo. Meaning that today is the first day this month where I didn't set an alarm to wake up and start writing. So, I guess I ought to celebrate somehow, huh?


Since the blog's Christmas season starts on Friday, let's end the maple season on a (hopefully) high note. Again, we're dipping into Avery's Barrel Aged Series with Double Barreled Maple Stout. Let's see how this holds up.

Today, we have another one of those beers that I've been hanging onto for a few months. Really, picking this beer up was the catalyst for the blog's Maple Beer Season. See, I had had South Haven Brewpub's Brewberry Pancake before (find it by scrolling to just near the bottom of the linked page). So, when my folks told me there was a bourbon barrel aged variant of it my thoughts ran wild.


The last time Michelle and I (Lottie was there, too!) were at Lake Michigan, we swung into the brewpub and I was able to sample the ale on tap. I was pretty impressed. I bought two bottles--one to enjoy now, during November 2019, and one to squirrel away for later. If you're ready, let's dive into my first bottle of the brew.

So, winter's here now. I mean, I know that yes, technically, it's still fall for over another month. I would totally do battle with that technicality as my blade. That technicality is the hill upon which I would die. I love fall and every other season can rot.

But, it's some 33° now. This morning, on my way to work, it was 21°. It took over ten minutes and a combination of scrapping and defrosting to clear my car's windshield enough for me to safely drive. Yeah. Unfortunately winter's hitting early and swiftly here.

Sorry the background's so washed out. That random hand's Michelle holding Charlotte.

But, hey, it ain't all so bad. I mean, after all, I still have a few maple beers to get through, right? Which is why, in order to fend off the chill of the dark night without my home, I'm nestling down with Grand Armory's Barrel Aged Sap On Tap.