FanPost

Bolts & Beers Volume 3: @ Buffalo Bills

It's only the third week of the real season, but this is already the seventh post in this series in which I am trying to introduce some new craft beers and breweries from the home of the San Diego Chargers opponents throughout the season. (Time is flying!)

Ahh, the Buffalo Bills. Where the tailgate is like a combination of Woodstock, a Nascar race and Canada. Where some people will refer to "craft beer" as a Labatt Blue or a Genessee Cream Ale. Where I will likely be pretty drunk this Sunday. (Only about half of this is true but I like giving my Buffalo friends a hard time).

Yes, Buffalo is not exactly the biggest craft beer city. There are several smaller breweries & brewpubs, but no behemoth to speak of. The most notable of these smaller breweries is probably Community Brew Works, which was just founded in 2012, and has been getting some good reviews. I plan on visiting there on Saturday and am hoping to be surprised. There really is only one large craft beer brewery that makes a lot of solid beers and is often associated with Buffalo (even though it is almost an hour away).

Southern Tier Brewing Company

Southern Tier opened about twelve years ago and has grown into one of the largest breweries in the state of New York. They bottle more than 30 different beers annually and they have quite a large footprint with distribution in over 30 states. Unfortunately they are not in California yet, but if you ever travel it's likely you will come across their stuff.

These guys make way too many beers to list, so I will just say that most of their "standards" from IPAs and pale ales to stouts and porters are solid and mostly worth trying, but nothing to get super excited about. Same goes for the large variety of seasonals throughout the year. Their DIPA called UnEarthly is solid and can compete with some west coast stuff, but again it's nothing I would go crazy trying to find.

St_beers_medium

What Southern Tier is really known for amongst the craft beer geeks are two things. The first is their series of flavored imperial stouts: Choklat, Jahva (now discontinued), Mokah, and Creme Brulee. As the names would indicate, they are chocolate and coffee stouts that are consistently highly rated. Choklat in particular is one of the best chocolate stouts I've ever had. It is full bodied, and bursting with chocolate flavor and hints of vanilla, although it does have a nice malt balance. You would never even know that the beer is 10% ABV. Warning, these do run a little sweet though. They really are like dessert in a glass.

Southern-tier-22oz-bottle_medium

via beerpulse.com

Lastly, what is probably their most famous beer is an imperial pumpkin ale called Pumking. This beer gets consumed by the truckload on the east coast in the fall. It is constantly sought out and pumpkin beer lovers get pretty excited about its release every year. My opinion is that it is pretty good as far as pumpkin beers go, but I'm just not a huge pumpkin ale fan in general so my opinion is kind of biased. If you like Pumpkin spice flavors you will probably love this beer (and their Warlock which is a pumpkin stout).

WEEK 2 MATCHUP - SOUTHERN TIER MOKAH vs. STONE XOCOVEZA

This was a tough week to decide a matchup. As I'm trying to pick beers that match up in my mind with similarities to the actual game, I really wanted to find two beers that would have some differences but come out pretty even. This week's game now looks like a much more even matchup than most Chargers' fans would have predicted before the season. Despite a long stretch as a below-average team, this year's Bills are looking different. Kyle Williams, Marcell Dareus and Mario Williams star on one of the best defensive lines in the league and they now have playmakers all over the field like C.J. Spiller and Sammy Watkins. Most early season metrics and rankings put the Bills and Chargers as a very even matchup. So does the Vegas spread.

I don't think any of the Southern Tier's IPAs would hold up well enough to match most good SD IPAs so I'm not using one of those. If there was a San Diego brewery with an excellent pumpkin beer, that would have been the perfect match for the week, but unfortunately SD is not strong in the fall seasonals. So, to find a good balance I'm gonna have to go with a flavored stout since that is the strongest group of Southern Tier beers.

TALE OF THE HOP

Southern Tier Mokah

Stone Xocoveza Mocha Stout

Imperial Stout

Beer Style

Imperial Stout

10.0%

ABV

8.1%

Very dark brown

Color

Black

Coffee, syrupy chocolate, toasty malt

Aroma

Cinnamon, cocoa, coffee, peppers

Sweet chocolate, balanced by bitter espresso & malt

Taste Profile

Cocoa & Cinnamon, followed by coffee, vanilla & hot peppers

Limited

Availability

Limited

94

Beer Advocate Rating

98

Bs_drq0m_cmaa120_p_medium Xocoveza_medium

Winner: XOCOVEZA

Mokah is a delicious beer with great flavors that mask the 10% ABV amazingly well. The only problem with the beer is it is really sweet and is limited to more of a dessert beer in my opinion. It comes in 22oz bottles, but you never really want more than about 8 ounces of it. Make sure you share with friends.

Stone (and Chris Banker, the homebrewer who won the collaboration contest) really knocked it out of the park with Xocoveza. The best way to describe the beer is complex. The taste and flavors are truly varied, yet they work well with each other and the pepper-finish balances the sweetness almost perfectly. This is right up there with Hunahpu, Mexican Cake and Prairie Bomb. The only way I could see someone not liking this beer is if they hate anything with any sort of spice and/or pepper. Otherwise, go out and get a couple bottles to drink now and save for later.

The Beer Advocate community has rated Stone's new Xocoveza about 4 points higher than the Mokah, which is about the score I am hoping to see at the game this week!

Season Disclaimer #1: I would like to state that I do not proclaim to be any sort of "expert". I am just a lover of good beer, and I try to sample as many new beers as I can get my hands on. I will be talking about what I know from my own tastings and discussions with other beer lovers. Please feel free to comment on any other good beer from these areas as we go through the season. I hope at least a few people read these posts and we all learn a thing or two.

Season Disclaimer #2: I do not, I repeat, DO NOT support drinking any beers from an enemy city (or even State in some cases) on game day. I stick firmly to S.D. beers only during games and hope that you all do the same :)

This FanPost was written by a member of the Bolts From The Blue community and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Bolts From The Blue editors or SB Nation.