Beer Spotlight!

Collective Arts / Burial Origin of Darkness

$26.99 for the four-pack 12oz cans
Madeira Whiskey Barrel-Aged Imperial Coffee Stout with Pecans

This beer contains a number of different components that have been floating around our recently featured beers. There’s barrel-aging, collaborations, and musicians all in one package. It almost feels if we should drop the mug and walk off after this one. ;)

Collective Arts Brewing in Hamilton, Ontario has just released a few Origin of Darkness beers — barrel-aged imperial stouts that are collaborations with other breweries. This one is a collaboration with Burial Beer Company in Asheville, NC. (How they skipped over not only Charlottesville but the entire rest of the state, we don’t know.)

Burial Beer Company started in 2013 after Doug and Jess Reiser left New Orleans (with its famous cemeteries … which makes their brewery name ironic since New Orleans is known for its above ground mausoleums) and moved all the way northwest to Seattle. In Washington State, they met Tim Gormley, who introduced the Reisers to the world of craft beer. After falling headlong into that rabbit hole, the trio decided to open their own brewery prompting another move, this time to Asheville, NC.

For this brew, Collective Arts and Burial have made an imperial Stout to which they have added coffee and pecans before aging it in Madeira Whiskey barrels from Blackened Whiskey. What are “Madeira Whiskey barrels?” Well …

Blackened Whiskey is the brainchild of the founder of craft distilling, the late Dave Pickerell. Having been fascinated with the effects of sound, Pickerell started wondering how sound bombardment would effect distilling. Upon hearing that Meyer Sound had modified a subwoofer for Metallica to kick out sound in Pickerell’s range of interest, Pickerell and crew developed a sonic enhancement process (using Metallica songs) to disrupt the whiskey while in barrel. Metallica says they curate a unique playlist for each Blackened whiskey. One such whiskey was finished in Madeira barrels. Collective Arts and Burial used those barrels for this beer.

Craft drinks, are we right? We swear we couldn’t make all this up.

The Collective Arts / Burial Origin of Darkness is a “pours like motor oil,” full-bodied imperial stout with little or no trace of head. Very pleasant on the nose, it presents a stunningly harmonious symphony of pecans, dark roast coffee, and rich, earthy malts. It’s like a pecan pie baked with blackstrap molasses. Though not sweet (or maybe the sweetness and coffee bitterness just mellow each other out), you could definitely have it as a dessert beer or an after-dinner drink in place of your glass of port.