Stone and our favorite comedy It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia have combined minds to come up with Dayman, a coffee IPA that will help you fight the Nighman in your life.

Dayman Coffee IPA is a collaboration with Illinois-based Two Brothers Brewing Co. and Chicago-based Aleman, a brewing collective that first made the beer earlier in the year and won the 2012 Iron Brew homebrewing competition with it. Greg Koch of Stone was a judge at that competition, and so the partnership began.

Dayman is a recurring theme in Always Sunny. It’s first mentioned in an episode called “Sweet Dee’s Dating a Retarded Person.” Charlie writes a song called “Nightman,” which then turns into a collaborative song celebrating “Dayman,” played by Dennis. The song is reprised in an episode called “The Nightman Cometh,” about an entire musical produced by Charlie to woo the ever-fickle Waitress, the woman of his dreams. As might be surmised, the gang mangles the play, which was fraught with absurdity to begin with.

You know what goes well with extreme physical exertion? Just like any other situation, the answer is beer. To that end, Sam Adams is developing the perfect product for the 2012 Boston Marathon.

In Boston today, The Boston Beer Co. will release “Sam Adams Boston 26.2 Brew.” From The Boston Globe:

The Boston Beer Co., best known for its Samuel Adams line of craft brews, said it is preparing a special commemorative beer to mark the 2012 Boston Marathon.

The company is planning to unveil “Samuel Adams Boston 26.2 Brew” at a news conference scheduled for Thursday at the Samuel Adams Brewery. At the conference, Boston Beer is expected to formally announce its first-ever partnership with the Boston Athletic Association, which manages the Boston Marathon.

The association’s Joann Flaminio and marathon veteran Bill Rodgers are expected to join Boston Beer founder Jim Koch at the event.

A quick bit of Googling tells us that a 150 pound runner will burn 100 calories per mile during a marathon, or roughly 2600 total calories. If the new Sam Adams marathon beer comes in at 160 calories per bottle, which is how many calories Sam Adams Boston Lager has, you’d be free to chug 16.25 beers, run the marathon, and not gain a pound.

Runners high, 16 beers, and no beer belly? Why not? It’s already been reported that non-alcoholic beer speeds marathon recovery.

From flickr user epic ever

It’s February, and Bell’s Hopslam and Troegs Nugget Nectar are hitting shelves as I type this (Troegs just rereleased Nugget Nectar in their tasting room today). As hoppy beer arms race rages on, just as it has for years, some breweries are rethinking what it means to write an IPA recipe.

From the Washington Post:

Wildeman Farmhouse IPA, from Flying Dog Brewery in Frederick, is an IPA fermented with a Belgian saison yeast and seasoned with a secret spice that the brewery declines to identify. It was originally brewed for In de Wildeman, a beer bar in Amsterdam. The reintroduction of the beer, this time as a year-around brand, gives Flying Dog two Belgian-style IPAs. Raging Bitch is fruitier; Wildeman has a dry, peppery, almost tannic finish.

Widmer Brothers Brewing Co. in Portland, as part of its Rotator series, has released Spiced IPA, a collaboration with Paul Sangster and Chris Stawney of the San Diego-based homebrewers club QUAFF, Quality Ale and Fermentation Fraternity. “A year ago, we asked the members to develop a new IPA. We didn’t tell them who we were, just that it was a big national brewer,” said Widmer brewmaster Joe Casey.

The winner, chosen from among 25 recipes, includes malty Assam black tea, ginger, cinnamon, clove, star anise, black pepper and cardamom. The flavorings are blended by a Portland company called Tao of Tea. In their raw form, the ingredients are immensely fragrant, like a freshly baked fruitcake. In the beer, the ginger emerges strongly up front, the black pepper dominates the finish.

Sam Adams Tasman Red is one of the better beers in this class I’ve had. A fantastic red IPA, it takes the bucketful of hops in each bottle and pairs it with a thoughtful approach to malt. Nugget Nectar gets it right for similar reasons, even if it’s closer to an IPA than the new breed of spicy beers (though it is billed as an imperial amber).

All of this raises the question many brewers have long asked: where does one style begin and another end?

In February, the question we hear slightly less than “When will Bell’s Hopslam be released?” are from people wanting to know what the Troegs Nugget Nectar release date is.  We wonder ourselves, given that we’ve wondered whether it’s the best beer we’ve ever had.

We had heard rumor that the brewery was running behind schedule, possibly due to their recent move from Harrisburg, PA to tourist-destination Hershey, PA.  That appears to be true.  Troegs has announced that Nugget Nectar will be sent to wholesalers between February 16 and February 24.  Many retail outlets have been saying to expect Nugget Nectar to hit the shelves in March.

So, there you have it:  You may be able to find it the last week of February or the first week of March.

From flickr user Bernt Rostad

The Phoenix New Times assembled a list of the worlds 10 strongest beers (even though the list is 11).  Most of these are OK for the novelty, but brewing for the sake of alcohol doesn’t usually result in good beer.

1. Brewdog The End of History (55% ABV)
2. Schorschbräu Schorschbock 43% (43.38% ABV)
3. Brewdog Sink the Bismarck! (41% ABV)
4. Schorschbräu Schorschbock 40% (39.44% ABV)
5. Brewdog Tactical Nuclear Penguin (32% ABV)
6. Schorschbräu Schorschbock 31% (30.86% ABV)
7. Sam Adams Utopias (27% ABV)
8. DuClaw Colossus (21.92% ABV)
9. Sonoran 200 (19.37% ABV)
10. The Bruery Black Tuesday (19.5% ABV)
11. Dogfish Head Worldwide Stout (18% ABV)

The team at Denver Westworld put together a list of 10 beers you should stop drinking by age 30.  It’s hard to argue with any of them, even the ones I’ve never heard of before.

But as I was reading this, I felt like it had to be missing at least a few beers.  Busch Light comes to mind, Four Loko would have been another had the government not taken care of that for us.  But what others?  Surely there’s a list that’s at least a few beers longer.

1. Natural Light
2. Stroh’s
3. Olympia
4. Meister Brau
5. Hamm’s
6. Milwaukee’s Best
7. Steel Reserve
8. Coors Extra Gold
9. Keystone Ice
10. Stag

From flickr user matt. mania

Of the many styles of beer we come across or write about every day, the dunkel is rarely mentioned.  Why is that?  We’ve written about black lagers, love Shiner Bock as a session beer, and will try just about anything put in front of us, but dunkels seem to exist on their own plane in the world of dark lagers.

The New York Times enlisted Garrett Oliver from Brooklyn Brewery and set out to explore the world of dunkels.  The resulting article is worth the read, even if it’s just for a quick bit of beer-style enlightenment.

Dunkel-style beers are perhaps not the easiest to market to the American public. Even as American beer drinkers have learned to navigate a range of stylistic terms — stout, pilsner, hefeweizen, India pale ale and the rest — dunkel mystifies. What’s a dunkel? We might as well be talking about doughnuts.

Simply, dunkel is a German term for dark. It refers specifically to dark lagers from Bavaria in southern Germany, especially around Munich. That’s easy enough, right?

Not so fast. Germany, and Austria, too, have more than a few dark lagers. Some are better known than dunkel, like bock, for example, which is more assertive, higher in alcohol, fuller bodied and more broadly malty than dunkel.

From flickr user yumievriwan

It’s the dead of winter, the east coast is covered in snow, and you’re probably still coming out of your Christmas food coma.  But the brewers at New Belgium and Allagash have something more springy and lively in the works — a beer inspired by the hibiscus-inspired ale called Vrienden.

What does a hibiscus-inspired ale taste like?  Thanks to some culinary wizardry and some special bacteria from Allagash, it’s interesting.  From Slashfood…

From flickr user Rakka

The hipsters at Paste magazine love to rate things, so they took a cut at rating the top 25 new American beers for 2010.  The list is actually pretty well rounded, though without trying every single beer, it’s hard to fully judge.

Their top five are below, but check out their website for the complete list of 25.

5. Little Sumpin’ Wild – Lagunitas
4. Bourbon County Vanilla Stout – Goose Island
3. Provisions Series: Premiere – The Bruery
2. Nemesis 2009 – Founders
1. Surly Four – Surly Brewing

From flickr user there's no way home

We’re in the middle of the holiday season, and as you get closer to Christmas, you may be wondering which beers to take with you to your various events.  The Washington Post has assembled a guide for nine beers that will get you through the next few weeks.

Up first, a beer we’re written about before, Boston Beer’s Infinium.  

To make a long story short: Koch and team devised a unique mashing regimen that takes place at unusually low temperatures and lasts over a week (normally, mashing — mixing the grain with hot water and heating — takes an hour or two). This allows the barley to generate plenty of its own natural enzymes, which break down complex carbohydrates into simpler molecules that the yeast can digest. Infinium also undergoes the methode champenoise, which involves provoking a secondary fermentation in the bottle, tilting the bottle to allow the yeast to settle in the neck, then removing the plug of yeast sediment.

The result is indeed spritzy and light on the palate for a 10 percent alcohol-by-volume beer. It’s got a subtle, sherbety fruitiness and a hint of spicy hop. “Imagine a space between a champagne and a good dessert wine crossed with a Samuel Adams Noble Pils,” is how Koch describes it. It’s not nearly as radical a departure from existing beers as Koch’s Utopias was, but it should make an interesting substitute for Champagne this New Year’s Eve. Suggested retail price is $20 for a 25-ounce corked bottle.