Rich brown color, nearly black, toasted tan head, large and looming, slowly drifting.
In the nose: Incredible aromatics, peanut butter flavor wafts out and floods the atmosphere. Take it in for a closer sniff: sweet, creamy, rich, nutty, incredible. Insane. Whoa. Chocolate and other stout characteristics lurk beneath, but the peanut butter is all over it.
In the mouth: Thick and rich, lush and wonderfully rewarding. Again, there's a stout here, but the peanut butter component commands over all. Hop bitterness keeps a lid on the sweet, it's there but just to tamp down the malt and the peanut butter of it all. Some of the coffee and the cocoa of a stout creep up in to the flavor and are greatly appreciated on the palate, but there's never a moment where PB is not king in this. (Brings to mind, of course, Junkyard's other PB beer, which I've tasted once, and need to secure a crowler of ....that's the next hunt.)
I had this on my first visit to the brewery last summer, and was impressed then. Great to finally get my hands, and my lips around a full crowler (since I wasn't able to buy any then). So nice.
In time, sweetness is tempered, and the bitterness reigns over the malt, which is how it ought to be. I will not rank this against other PB beers, claim one as champion, crown a king. But I will pose a question: when you ask which is the most "peanut-butter-y", do you really want that? Do you want the most "peanut butter" in your beer? And if so, why? Do you want beer, or peanut butter? Are you an adult who drinks beer, or a child who eats peanut butter?
And I should shut up, because there are those, including this brewery who are adding jelly-like additives to the mix, because, of course, why not. And the breweries that I admire are doing the things I detest. Like "milkshake IPAs", Dangerous Man, of course, but Modist, Forager, and Junkyard are all doing them, and I can't keep from despising the infantilization of beer. I don't want to drink beers that remind me of things I consumed when I was a child. I will read my comic books and watch cartoons with a real beer in my glass, not something that tastes like candy or a smoothie. So, there.
A lot of blah, blah, blah to get out of my system. Sorry, if I'm an old grump. But, damn if this isn't good. And I'll try all of their beers, peanut butter and jelly or milkshake, etc, I'll try all of them once, at least, and try not to make the same old grumbles, and root for the real stuff. Just bring me a good ol' stout, keep the peanut butter.
(but, again, this is good!)
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