Today’s beer selection for the Advent calendar is a departure from the normal Christmas and winter beer theme—for today is my birthday, and my “tradition” nearly every year I’ve been doing this calendar is to select a “birthday” beer for the day, typically something big and special.

After much thought I picked Decoherence from Florida’s Cigar City Brewing, their “Double Barrel-aged Coffee Coconut Imperial Stout.” I first got a taste of this beer at the Beer Bloggers Conference that was held in Tampa, Florida earlier this year—and it was amazing, just staggeringly good. This is a beer with a lot going on:

Decoherence is a 50/50 blend of two distinct beers: an imperial porter aged in bourbon barrels (Outskirts), and an imperial stout aged in brandy barrels (brewed only for this beer). Then, because we like to have fun, we aged it on coffee and coconut.

The coffee blend for this beer was crafted by our brewmaster Wayne with our friends at Buddy Brew. Wayne wanted the blend to focus on rich chocolate notes to help accentuate the coconut.

We used what can only be described as a “very large” amount of toasted coconut for this beer. We consulted some of our brewery friends in the industry and spent months in our lab dosing the proper amounts to ensure the final result was perfect.

Decoherence weighs in at a modest 12.9% ABV

Back in July during the Live Beer Blogging session is when I’d first sampled Decoherence, and at that time I wrote:

Boozy, chocolate, almond, coconut, like an Almond Joy candy bar in a glass with a generous boozy bourbon character. Coffee comes out in a sweet Turkish style. This is an amazing beer.

If anyone reading would like to send me a bottle for my birthday, I wouldn’t turn it down…

Cheers!

Find Cigar City Decoherence on:

• Untappd
• BeerAdvocate
• RateBeer
• Facebook