Welcome to the Dark Side

[Chipper Dave]

The colder months are typically the most popular time to drink a darker brew. Fans of porters, stouts and browns unite! Share your most favorite brews from the dark side with your fellow Aleuminatians.

[Eli the Mad Beer Man]

Absolutely LOVE the name and logo! HAHAHA! That is frickin' sweet (as one Dr. Evil would say)! I love me some dark brews in the winter and love Star Wars (ask me about my Star Wars celebrity-ness sometime)... so it's perfection. ;)

An ode to the Dark Side:

Once there was a brew from Widmer called Snowplow.
So stout and tasty, every time I imbibed I cried - WOW!
It was my favorite winter-time brew, I'd even drink it in the hoosegow.

Then one day I met a Tommyknocker made of cocoa and porter
I sipped long... and immediately adored her.
Now that Tommyknocker is my favorite fo' sure!

[Corbin Choate]

A fitting image indeed of our dark lord.

I've always been drawn to the dark side of the craft beer universe. It started with Guinness and my Irish heritage. There is something terribly, irresistibly seductive about the dark brew as it sits in a beautiful glass, calling and beckoning you to sip and enjoy.

The darkest brew I've had is the Yeti Imperial Stout from Great Divide in Denver. That was a intense. Samuel Smith makes a good Imperial Stout. So does Old Rasputin.... may he live long. Saint Arnold's in Houston make a nice little Winter Stout.

I also love a good porter, brown ale, dark ale......... you name it.

I've been able to get my wife to enjoy porters, stouts and imperial stouts.

[Rraisch]

Have you ever tried Stone's Russian Imperial Stout? Delicious, but strong! Fort Collins Brewery makes an incredible Double Chocolate Stout if you fancy.

[Chipper Dave]

I loved the FCB Double Chocolate Stout, much better than their regular Chocolate Stout. Served on a nitro tap is an extra special treat! I've reviewed the Stone IRS before and thought it was outstanding. It takes a little getting used to but by the end of the bottle it was one of my favorites.

[Rev. Bobby Beerman]

I think everyone's journey to the dark side starts with the utility stouts: Guinness, Murphy's, and Beamish. All are good utility starter stouts. I thought I was in heaven when I came across Young's Double Chocolate Stout.

I was able to make it up to Corral Liquors in Wood River, IL. They have a wider selection that what I can find in Carbondale (a university town that normally panders to the typical college student level of beer). I loaded up on a bunch of stouts, porters, and dark ales. The only problem is that I want to share these with some of my drinking buddies but we don't all get together really. One guy moved out to CA and the others have all gotten busy. I guess I'll just have to enjoy these good ones on my own. Muhahahaha!!

[Chipper Dave]

Guinness was certainly my first stout years ago. It was quite a change from the lighter fare and in some cases I mixed it in a Black-n-Tan to get used to that style. Now i go for them any way I can get them. I've yet to try Young's Double Chocolate Stout - will look for that. I did recently have a Double Chocolate Stout out of a nitro tap from the Fort Collins Brewery. It had the same cascading bubble effect that Guinness has and it was simply wonderful. I tasted it side by side with their regular Chocolate Stout, but the Double was soooo much more creamy and delicious. I keep a few stouts in my cellar for emergencies. And in my case, an emergency can be declared anytime!

[Rraisch]

If you are in the Fort Collins area, try Nitro Cutthroat Porter on tap from Odell Brewery. wow!

[Eric Bow, Stoutmaster]

Young's Double Chocolate Stout is an excellent beer. I went to an event in Baton Rouge that they called Beerfest. While I didn't get the chance to try it, there was a group of homebrewers there out of New Orleans that had a beer they called the Chocolate City Stout, on account of the mayor calling New Orleans a chocolate city right after Katrina hit.

[Freya the Wanderer]

My favorite dark beers include Young's Chocolate Stout, Old Rasputin, and Shakespeare Stout. I admit that, when I rate beers, I am prejudiced in favor of darker beers; if you look at my ratings on a site like RateBeer.com, BeerPal.com or Beer Advocate, the stouts and porters tend to get higher marks.

[Chipper Dave]

You sound a lot like me around 7 months ago. I was and still am a huge dark beer fan. I stuck with the dark beers for a long time. It really wasn't until November of last year that I started branching out beyond the stouts, porters and some ambers and tried to enjoy a wider variety of beers. Darker beers get my thumbs up in the fall and winter and early Spring when it's still cold out. Once it warms up, I switch to lighter beers like wheats, kolschs, pale ales and some IPAs. You'll probably notice that this board gets a lot less attention this time of year but not entirely dormant.

[Chipper Dave]

The hot dog days of summer are upon us. The 90 degree heat keeps me from wanting to enjoy my favorite dark ales, but don't let the heat stop you. Crank up the A/C and cool off then open up a dark brew anytime! After sipping on a Tommyknocker Imperial Nut Brown Ale the other day, I'm starting to believe the dark side is good any time of year.

[Eric Bow, Stoutmaster]

It was stouts that first drew me to the world of real beer (the kind of beer that's made by breweries, not corporations). Before me and my friends were just guys who liked to get drunk off cheap shit on account of the cheapness. One day my buddy tells me he's heard of a beer called Old Rasputin's Russian Imperial Stout. We have no idea what it is but decide we have to try it. At the time I was living in Baton Rouge, LA. So we go to this liquor store called Southdown's, cause their commercial siad if they didn't have something they'd order it for you. Well it turns out the company would ship to Louisiana at the time. So we didn't get the Old Rasputin (yet), but we did notice their incredible selection of real beers. We began collecting and trying as many as we could. We got to the point where we had tried everything available in Baton Rouge, and would pop in on Tuesday when their new shipments came in. Eventually he moved to New Orleans, and I moved to Nashville so we had to have a draft of the beer bottles we had collected. I'm still collecting beers, but not as much as I used to due to finance reasons.