“Big ass knife”. Were you expecting a poop knife?

I received my BIF package a couple weeks back, and this was certainly a good one.  (H/T to that magnificent bastard:  IoBot).  Extra props for the packing, I had to get the “big ass” knife out to get these out of the packaging.  I will eventually go through all but wanted to focus on one in particular.

This is my review of Rockaway Brewing Company “Bungalow Nights” Habanero Imperial Stout.

This shoudn’t go together, should it?  Maybe.

Chilies are believed to be first cultivated in Mexico or Central America and were eventually cultivated and incorporated into various cuisines around the world due to the Columbian Exchange.  The Columbian Exchange in this case is not drug related, other than perhaps tobacco or if you happen to be one of those freaks that eats chillies to polish their rocks.

These people do exist, and there are a variety of reasons for doing it:  people get pleasure out of pain which results in an endorphin rush, they might simply like the taste, the health benefit, or just for the challenge between friends.  In my case it was typically for bragging rights between me and several cousins as to who could drink the most hot sauce.  A custom recently alluded with regard to a certain fake Mexican.  Unfortunately, that tended to leave us devoid of hot sauce and left the adults in a precarious position. Due to my grandmother’s  allergy to chillies (it closes her airway) if anybody wanted a hot taco at a family gathering it could only come in the form of hot sauce added after the fact.

There are two ways to determine how hot a chilli pepper can be.  The first are Scoville units, which is an objective measurement of the amount of capsicum in the pepper.  The other?  Eat it and find out if one is hotter than another.  For reference, the common jalapeño is around 3500 Scoville units, while a bell pepper is 0–an habanero is a rather intimidating 100,000…

Classic.

On that scale we find this pepper isn’t the highest or even particularly high.  That honor goes to the Carolina Reaper, which is a hybrid of the ghost pepper and the Red Habanero.  While it may sound like weapons grade pepper spray at 1-2 million Scoville units, the cops spray people with 5 million.

While I have reviewed a chilli beer before, this one is quite a bit different.  Unlike the Sriracha beer, this one has a heavier stout to back it, and much as I found out when I experimented with habaneros in salsa, a little bit goes a long way.  The imperial stout is heavily roasted with a lot of chocolate and and notes of dark fruit.  The peppers give it an interesting mouthfeel with a tingling sensation on the tongue followed an overwhelming stout.  Even though it may not be my first choice, I might even go so far as to say I enjoyed drinking it but beware—this is not for everyone. Rockaway Brewing Company “Bungalow Nights” Habanero Imperial Stout:  3.5/5.