Luxurious ’22 holiday stout brings massive nuttiness to fudgy dark chocolate creaming. Sweet bourbon pecan and toasted coconut-marshmallow adjuncts surge alongside chewy cacao nibs resilience. Silken smooth mocha nuttiness gains vanilla creme brulee resonance as well as tertiary hazelnut-pasted maple oats sugaring and teasing black cherry, raisin and prune illusions.
GUILDERLAND CENTER, NEW YORK
Established in 2020, MIXED BREED BREWING occupies the mid-space of a tan-bricked mall in the tiny hamlet of Guilderland Center fifteen miles west of Albany. “Founded by individuals who enjoy brewing, drinking and celebrating the diversity beer,” Mixed Breed’s neo-Industrial space includes an art deco black ceiling, metal-aluminum-wood furnishings and sturdy cement floor.
A metal furnished front deck leads into the arch windowed pub. The twenty-seat concrete-topped, aluminum-sided central bar features twelve-plus aluminum-backed tap handles with several shelved steins. There are six left-walled slate tables and two white plastic tables at the front window. Several brew tanks are staged right.
My wife and I gathered at Mixed Breed at noon on a cold Saturday in January ’23 to try all ten available draughts.
Buttered brown breading soaked up mild toffee sweetness and subtle nuttiness for mellow altbier, Toast, a German-styled moderation with wispy Noble hop herbage.
Effervescent yellow fruited spicing and mild white wheat flouring graced blanched witbier, Shorty, a grassy-hopped moderation with soapstone sudsing.
Engaging tropical fruiting juiced up Tremors IPA, letting lemony orange-grapefruit bittering softly caress salted mango, tangy tangerine and sweet peach above sugary pale malting.
Yellow-cleared Endo NEIPA may’ve lacked stylish haze but its emphatic yellow grapefruit bittering and tangy mandarin orange, clementine and tangelo zesting never relented as sour gooseberry-guava tartness ascended alongside mild pine tones above vanilla-creamed oated wheat.
Another non-hazed NEIPA, In Case Of Emergency, brought floral-perfumed yellow grapefruit and peachy mango-guava to the fore as its woody dryness increased.
Today’s best seller, 3 NEIPA, allowed mildly spiced lemony orange and grapefruit tanginess to reign upon oily pine resin.
Tart mango pureed pineapple tanginess and milky coconut sweetness fortified fab fruited sour, Bingo Bango, allowing pulpy orange juice to infiltrate its tropical serenity.
Dry chocolate malted Benny Brown, a traditional English brown ale, countered gentle roasted chestnut-almond sweetness with slightly seared walnut bittering.
Fudgy brown chocolate and bourbon vanilla guided cocoa nibbed Imperial Stout, Aces, a rich Graham Cracker honeyed confection.
Chocolate-sweet cocoa nibs also imbibed French’s Hollow Dessert, a fudgier pastry stout.