Sixpoint: 3 Beans

If you've never had a Sixpoint beer before drop what you're doing right now and go find a nice boxed 4 pack and crack into it. I first found Sixpoint when I started my new job. Clearance section, $7.99 while supplies last. No one was buying it. I have no idea how long it'd been there, or how fresh it was or anything, but I decided to give it a shot. I bought a 4 pack of Belgali Tiger, their "homebrewed" IPA and their german Style Pilsner The Crisp. The crisp was good, and it was what it was, a nice lager, but the Bengali Tiger was a beauty on the tongue. After that I was hooked, a good IPA can make or break a brewery for me, and Sixpoint delivered. After that it was a slew of releases that I just loved. Diesel Stout, Brownstone Brown Ale, Resin double IPA, they all deserve paragraphs and I might write them one day but today I wanted to write about the newest release from the self described "mad scientists."

3 Beans Imperial Stout.  It's impressive when I get a beer that the Oxford Companion to Beer has no information about a brewing ingredient. The ingredient list for 3 Beans reads more like a delicious smoothy than a beer. Brewed with Cocoa, Coffee and Romano Beans? What the hell is a romano bean you might ask, as I did too. Romano beans are a flat snap (It snaps when it's ripe) bean that most likely originated in Italy, and was probably cooked into alcoholic beverages many centuries ago in the early days of finding out how to get drunk and now it's in Sixpoint's newest concoction. 
3 Beans pours a midnight black that sucks any sun from the room, leaving nothing but a cold chill that requires me to drink it so I can be warm again. The smell is of cowboy coffee and some hints of chocolate. Once it hits the tongue though is has an almost mocha nuttiness and natural smoothness that makes this beer go down so much easier than the 10% would ever be expected. It's definitely the most unique imperial stout I've had to date, adding a nice new touch to a growingly flooded market of high ABV stouts, and it's a beer I am very excited to be able to drink again. It is, without a doubt, worth the high 4 pack cost, and will be worth going to buy another 4 pack before it's gone.