Once again I am the beneficiary of being on “The List” at Flying Dog. Delivered to my door were a couple “project” beers and their winter seasonal: Collaborator Doppelbock, Wild Dog Barrel-Aged Horn Dog, and K-9 Cruiser Winter Ale.

The first beer of the bunch that I tried was the Wild Dog. If you’ve ever had the Horn Dog, you know that it is a potent, malty barley wine. It is pretty much like drinking wine, except it’s beer. Well, imagine taking some Makers Mark and pouring it in a Horn Dog. That’s Wild Dog. They aged the Horn Dog in Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey barrels for 13 months. If you like whiskey, you would really like this beer. I like whiskey :)

The next one up was the K-9 Cruiser Winter Ale. This one was a dark and malty brew. It was well-balanced and not overboard with sweetness. It definitely works as a winter ale.

And lastly I tried the Collaborator Doppelbock. The brewers of Flying Dog created a blog to gather ideas and suggestions from amateur brewers to create this beer: (thus the “Collaborator”) www.opensourcebeerproject.com. The results from the collaboration were quite good! The doppelbock had a nice malty roasted character and nice body. I might have to start my own Open Source Beer Project to start collecting ideas. If the community can produce this, I could use their help!

I also just got an email from Flying Dog announcing a couple new beers they are releasing this year, Cerberus Belgian Tripel and the Biere de Garde, their spring seasonal. So be on the lookout for these labels:

And I promise to start writing more. December has been a crazy month, so please don’t give up on me!