Cream ale, cherry lambic, chocolate milk stout ... Want a beer that doesn’t make you feel like a baby?
Well, put on your big-boy pants and head over to 1702, where they’ll pour you a beer with a special adult ingredient: After it’s brewed in-house, the Down Pourter spends a year maturing in tequila barrels underneath the restaurant.
1702’s head brewer, Austin Santos, had the barrels brought up from Hermosillo after visiting his cousins’ furniture store. There, he noticed a candle sconce made from the barrels, that “still smelled like tequila.”
The barrel treatment adds a nice oaky note to the imperial porter, and a faint taste of tequila. For something so dark, the beer is very fruity, almost like a lush, malty cabernet. It goes down like sweet syrup, but beware, it’s 13.2 percent alcohol.
Sounds perfect for a rainy day. In fact, that’s where the beer gets its name.
When Santos was brewing it in the small sunlit room behind the restaurant, it was pouring rain outside. (According to General Manager Sarah Sydloski, this kind of thing seems to happen a lot. In addition to the Down Pourter, there’s also the Rainy Day IPA, the Very Rainy Day double IPA, and the Haboob Hefeweizen.)
Because of its small production, Santos’ beers are only available at 1702, where they’re sold under the label The Address Brewing.
To celebrate Arizona Beer Week, the full range will be available for $2 off on Feb. 20. While you’re there, make sure to get the strawberry and rhubarb saison, aged in white wine barrels. It may not exactly put hair on your chest, but hopefully you’ve taken care of that already.
