Verboten Brewing

Happy Saturday!  I just woke up to a little mini-blizzard outside, and decided that now was the perfect time to tell you about our experiences with Verboten Brewing, the third stop on our brewery tour.

The first thing we noticed upon arrival was the sheer variety of beers offered.  They are offering 7 beers at a time, some of them rotating weekly!  Being the adventurous sort, we ordered tasters of each.  With tasters starting at $1.50 each, they are so great for the indecisive mind, and the pour size at Verboten is fantastic.  Perfect for sharing and discussing.

From L to R: Blue Steel, I'm thinking of Something Orange, Five Second Frencher, Where's Carl?, Killer Boots, Make My Day, and Mantooth.

I really enjoyed the variety that this tasting tray offered.  As we try more breweries, I find myself surprised that each can make such unique brews using a limited number of ingredients, and that I may really enjoy something at one brewery, but not at another.  For instance, I 100% fell for the Killer Boots, a Caramel Porter.  I am not a dark beer girl.  They always are too toothy, or have too high of an ABV for me.  However, I feel like this was lighter than the average Porter, with very well balanced flavors.  It's naughty cousin, the Make My Day, a Chai Porter on Nitro spoke to Ammon and Ross.

Tasters down!  Tasters down!

I learned something new yesterday:  All beers can be measured on a scale of IBU's, the International Bitterness Unit.  The really helpful thing that Verboten does is that they tell you exactly where their IPAs stand on the IPA scale.  Their Where's Carl? with a score of 61 was another favorite for us, while the Mantooth, clocking in at a whopping 97 was not for us.  Perhaps as we get more used to beers we will learn to appreciate beers that are this hoppy.

Overall, there are a lot of things about Verboten that I really like.  It's a brand spanking new brewery that only opened its doors 2 months ago, so we're sure they are still ironing out the kinks to some degree.  The wheat and wit beers were alright, but we all felt they might be a little too subtle for us, and so we all naturally gravitated towards the Porters and the IPA.  Ross also pointed out that while the lighting in the tasting area is spectacular, the fluorescent bulbs in the brewing area seemed rather harsh, and that putting up a curtain that ran from the ceiling down about 10 feet would make a huge difference in creating more of a cozy ambiance.  Since Verboten is a 10 minute walk from our house, we will be going back, eager to try some of their rotating seasonal beer choices, and full pints of our personal favorites.  We hope that you will check them out too!