A FoBAB Beer!

A ‘beer flavored’ beer

This weekend was the Festival of Barrel Aged Beer. Which basically means a giant party of bourbon barrel aged stouts, bourbon barrel aged porters, rum barrel aged stout, and even double barrel aged double stout (probably). It was delicious, but it was also a lot of big, boozy beers that were then put in booze barrels to become bigger and boozier beers. One of the fun parts of the festival was the brewers’ lounge, which had a lot of guest beers, many of which were ‘beer flavored’ beer! Amongst the striking cans, there was a dark Mexican-style lager: Cerveza Seedz Negra.

Tasting notes:

Visual: this beer pours a slightly dark copper with a lovely white foam. The foam retention is strong with good lacing. I was hoping for something darker, but ‘dark’ Mexican beer is often not all that dark. Before I bemoane the perceived lack of roasted malt, let’s get to the aroma.

Aroma: any malts I thought were missing from the color are there in the aroma. There’s some lovely malty notes, with just a touch of crisp hops. There’s traces of coffee, nuts, and a strong amount of caramel in there.

Flavor: the beer isn’t as sweet as you would think. It finishes a touch sweet, but nice and crisp. There’s a low hop bitterness for balance as well as notes of brown bread, slight toastyness and overall, this beer is clean. It has a bit of a pilsner sweetness as it warms up, which is a nice touch.

Overall: So this beer is a good option if you like Mexican Dark Lager (i.e. Dos Equis or Modelo Negra), but this beer isn’t quite hitting the spot for me. While I love those touches of roasted malts, I find myself looking for more nuttyness or chocolate, or coffee. But given this is a restrained beer, I’d also be fine with a bit more delicacy. This beer is giving me dunkel vibes that it just can quite deliver on.

Ultimately, it’s in between the sweet spots for me, but that’s more of a flaw in the beer style as far as my personal preferences are concerned. I’m certain a lot of folks will like this beer, since it’s a very well made beverage! I think this is a fabulous example of the style, so if this is your thing, than you can’t go wrong. More importantly, as a member of the ‘beer flavored’ beer category, it certainly isn’t a triple toasted gin barrel trickle trippel, so dubble success!

Some other FoBAB ‘beer flavored’ beers