Stout Challenge XI: The first winner reclaims the title in Smooth fashion

There is no such thing is a perfect beer tasting event.

Whether it is the annual IPA Challenge, or even the Brew Crew’s own Stout Challenge, something usually comes up that throws it all for a loop; sometimes it’s big, sometimes it’s small. In our case on Saturday night, we were all a bit surprised when one of the adjunct-free stouts tasted like pure coffee.

After a bit of an investigation, we confirmed that despite the crowler label saying it was Brickie American Stout, it was actually the Pour Vida Coffee Porter from Steel Bender. It had just come in second out of the 24 stouts in our annual blind taste test. Whoops. So, yeah, it was disqualified, which sucks, because Brickie came in second in 2021, so we were eager to see if it could take that next step forward.

Anyway, other than that, we survived the biggest stout f

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