Beer of the Week: Barrel-aged Baba Yaga

From the Beer Writer: From the Beer Writer: What’s in a name? If you’re a brewery in a county awash in suds sporting over 150 operating brewhouses and even more brewery-owned public venues, the answer is a lot. While San Marcos’ family-friendly My Yard Live was a hit from the day it opened back in 2019, most people who’ve never been there—and even some who have—Are unaware of the fact it’s not just a restaurant with an indoor arcade, all manner of patio games, a live-music stage and a massive outdoor kids’ area…it’s also a brewpub headed by a brewer with deft skills honed at Mason Ale Works and Port Brewing / The Lost Abbey. So, last month when the business emerged from a temporary shutdown with a new name, My Yard Live Beer Co., I smiled, because, frankly, the beer there is too good to go unnoticed. This week’s spotlight attraction, Barrel-aged Baba Yaga, should not fall victim to such a fate. An industrial-strength imperial stout aged in what must have been sopping-wet bourbon barrels, it is a thing of burly beauty; picture the Incredible Hulk in the most elegant sequined, backless silk gown. Onyx in appearance, it presents as Raisinets coated in a whiskey chocolate ganache on the nose. On the palate, it’s surprisingly light in body for being 10.5% alcohol-by-volume and rich with whiskey vanillins and sour-mash essence. The base stout is the unifying canvass for big bourbon expression. My Yard Live is most certainly a beer company.

From the Brewer: “Baba Yaga was probably the first beer that I actually named before writing the recipe. Most other beers start out as IPA #1, Amber, Hazy v.4.0, etc., and are named when they get tapped, because naming beer is the hardest part. Baba Yaga was always one of my favorite characters from the Hellboy comics and gave Grigori Rasputin his immortality, so it was destined to be a Russian imperial stout from the get-go. The only thing that can make any imperial stout better is aging it in barrels, so this beer was aged in freshly emptied bourbon barrels from Cutwater Spirits for one year. In an age where barrel-aged stouts are laden with lactose, muddled with maltodextrin, barraged with brown sugar and victimized by the voracious use of vanilla, this beer is meant to showcase the complexity of flavors and balance without being overpowering in any. It’s the perfect beer with which to stroll through the forest searching for the house on chicken legs.”—Ben “Shaggy” Blaney, Head Brewer, My Yard Live Beer Co.