Bell’s Brewing Company in Kalamazoo, MI
I think I’ve been too kind lately. I really can’t remember throwing two glowing reviews up on the site before now. I try to be more than a little critical when it comes to beer. After all, there are a lot of brews out there, so there’s no reason for me to waste your time with saying, “Yeah, this beer is just fine; you should drink it,” when I really think it’s bad. Mediocrity has no place in the beer tasting world. Take a look at any great beer store and count the number of beers you’ve never had. Hopefully that number is in the hundreds, and hopefully, I can pick out 10% of those that are significantly better than OK. The rest we shouldn’t have to deal with. So when I find a beer I really like, I have a need to share my love with the world in the form of an overly verbose feature on said fantastic beer. Enter Bell’s Batch 9000, the newest edition to the Bell’s x000s series correlating to the number of batches of beer they’ve made. I remember trying Bell’s Batch 8000 at Ashley’s in Ann Arbor with who would eventually become my girlfriend. She loved the Imperial Witbier; I thought it was beyond disgusting. So when I heard about Batch 9000 and how it was to be a Imperial Stout-esque beer, I was a little worried about the flavor. Was the Batch 8000 a one-off or just the norm for their Batch series? Well, after snooping out a six-pack, I can more than confidently say that Batch 9000 tops most other Bell’s beers, and many other beers that you will ever discover.
