Jester King – Mikkeller Beer Geek Rodeo

I tried the Beer Geek Rodeo at the Big Texas Beer Fest and and I am pretty sure I loved it. I am not positive because I sampled it at the end of the day, when I was drunk, tired, and overwhelmed by all of the beer I had consumed up to that point. Also, as anyone who is a regular reader of this blog has concluded, I am a Jester King fan boy, and taking into account my state of inebriation, I would have given Bud Light Lime high marks if it had been handed to me by the Jester King folks.

Needless to say, I was looking forward to trying this in a more or less sober state so I could give it a proper review. I was right to love it when I was good and pickled at the Beer fest.  The Beer Geek Rodeo is a collaboration with Mikkeller, their second such collaboration. It is an oatmeal stout brewed with Vietnamese coffee and chipotle peppers, so it combines several of my favorite things: breakfast, beer, coffee, and hot peppers. It pours a deep opaque brown with some ruby highlights, and as you can see from the photo, has a nice tan head. The oatmeal gives this beer a chewy and velvety mouthfeel. The coffee is subtle, more of a background note. Most coffee stouts punch you in the mouth with coffee flavor, but not this one. The chipotle peppers add a smokiness to the flavor. I did not pick up much heat from the peppers at first, but as the glass warmed, the spiciness picked up a bit. The smoke and heat from the chipotle peppers do a nice job of masking any burn from the 10.1 % ABV. This is definitely a beer for beer geeks, and while I prefer the term ‘beer dork’, I can roll with beer geek too, especially when the beer is this good, 9/10.