The Year in Beer

Name: Wilco Tango Foxtrot

Brewer: Lagunitas Brewing Company, Petaluma, Calif.

By the numbers: About 235 calories per 12 oz.; 7.8 percent alcohol by volume

Notes: Lagunitas is one of my favorite craft brewers. They mix an odd sense of style with great beer that often tends toward the malty side and even with strong styles they strike a good balance. This limited release was brewed, so says the brewer, as a follow-up to 2009’s Correction Ale, which marked our economic troubles. It was supposed to be called Recovery Ale, but with the economy looking as shaky as ever they went with Wilco Tango Foxtrot, which I guess they meant as the phonetic alphabet equivalent of WTF (though “w” is Whiskey in that sense). Anyway, enough obscure trivia, on to the beer. It poured a rich reddish brown from the 22 oz. bomber and the aroma was very malty, like caramel and toffee. The taste followed through with a smooth caramel sweetness and slight grapefruit finish from the well-balanced hops. The high alcohol content makes this seem like a boozy version of Lagunitas’ The Censored Rich Copper Ale, which is one of my favorites.

Try it with: A milestone or two. I sampled this beer with Ryan Denham on a homebrew bottling day which marked our return to brewing after 6 months. But this entry also marks a milestone as WTF is the 400th different beer reviewed in the continuing “Year in Beer”. I’ve been doing pretty well to average 4 to 5 beers a month on my own and still no shortage of beers to write about.

    — Posted by Mike Freimann