Beer Review: Commissar

The first beer I’m reviewing is actually the one that inspired me to start this blog in the first place.  It’s also become one of my favorites.

Commissar, brewed by the Real Ale Brewing Company in Blanco, Texas, is something special.  It’s a Russian Imperial stout, so if you don’t like stouts, maybe find something else.  Extraordinarily robust, dark enough to look like ink, and possessing a phenomenally rich flavor, it actually took me a few tries to really figure out what I was tasting.

I’ve had drinks that had fire to them.  Commissar doesn’t.  It has the aftermath of fire. It tastes like smoke and char, but in a good way.  Hints of a thickness that remind me of oil combine with that taste to make me think of Industry (definitely with an uppercase “I”).  I drink it, and my mind is full of the hammering of iron, furnaces belching smoke towards the sky, and great factories producing wondrous things.

It’s definitely not a beach-party fratboy beer.  I would only recommend Commissar to someone who’s going to enjoy it for its own sake, rather than enjoying it for the experience of getting messily drunk.  The richness will definitely scare away some people.  It’s not a crisp, refreshing beer, but enough of it would probably get you through a Siberian winter.

All things considered, it tastes the way the Soviet anthem sounds.