As we missed a week for Thanksgiving, we are back with a bumper edition.

Heading into the dark winter days, we select 6 hearty stouts that we think are good selections for either go-to or treat beers from the dark side.  Joining Mark and Phil is Chuck Fort, assistant brewer from Church Street. As all the beers are great in their own right, we won’t be rating them, but instead we select our top 2, based solely on personal preference.  Chuck brings their Holy Cow! Milk Stout as our starter brew.

To break up the Stout session, we cleanse our palate with a short interview with Brandon Wright, head brewer at Plainfield’s Werk Force Brewing. He won a gold medal at FOBAB 2016 for his Beautifully Broken, in the Fruit Beer category, and we caught up with him to find out all about his win and the beer.

Here are the stouts we reviewed, plus the timings if you want to skip around:

2:41 Holy Cow! – Church Street Brewing, Itasca, IL – Milk Stout, 6%
13:51 Double Cream Stout – Bells Brewing, Kalamazoo, MI – Sweet Stout, 6.1%
21:40 Dark Truth – Boulevard Brewing, Kansas City, MO – Imperial Stout, 9.7%
32:34 Black Note – Bells Brewing, Kalamazoo, MI- Bourbon Barrel-aged Stout, 10.8%
51:41 Turbulence – Sketchbook Brewing – Imperial Stout, 9.7%
63:06 Ten Fidy – Oskar Blues, Longmont, CO – Imperial Stout, 10.5%
73:33 2016 Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Oatmeal Stout – Pollyanna Brewing, Lemont, CO – 10.5%

Play the show from our player below, or from SoundCloud…