Dark Horse

A barley wine style ale brewed to 15% alc with hints of raisin, chocolate, carmel, sherry, cherry, and alcohol, just to name a few and this beer will only get better with age. Not Available for 2006 release

A spiced Winter Warmer brewed with nutmeg, clove, allspice and other holiday flavors.

Let us introduce the “red headed step child” of our beer portfolio. This beer is commonly over looked and is a true Ninja of a beer. While the malt and hops give this beer an amazing copper color, medium body, and a smooth mouth feel, it’s the yeast that sets this one apart from other amber ales. Inspired by almost everything from Belgium (beer, women, mussels) we thought it would be cool to give our Amber a little Belgian love. So we used a yeast that is ALMOST like a Belgian yeast strain. You’ll notice it in the aroma but mostly in the flavor. Mild hints of light fruit and clove are present at the very end of the sip, just enough to keep you coming back for another sip.

Crooked Tree Malt using Citra as the single hop showcase.

This beer is a big and full bodied Imperial Stout aged in bourbon barrels with lots of roasted malts, but very balanced with heavy hops. Brewed with a top secret root, this beer has an amazingly complex flavor that you must wait for.

The Boffo Brown ale is a beer that we brewed years ago and then put it in semi retirement for a couple years while we focused on other brands at the brewery. We have recently put it back onto active duty and are brewing it all year. The beer itself is delicious and is a favorite to many of us here at the brewery. Just as most of our beers it’s on the “full body” scale pushing the envelope of what an American Brown Ale is to most people. The beer is a very deep/dark color of brown with a nice creamy tan head. The mouthfeel of the beer is very soft and is very drinkable. Flavors of malt, caramel, toffee, and a mild earthy nutty finish allow this beer to be paired with hearty food and sips of bourbon.

Inspired by West Coast I.P.A.’s, but brewed with Michigan style. The Crooked Tree is heavily dry hopped to give it a big aroma of pine and citrus. The flavors are big, yet very balanced between fresh hops and malt. Often described as “grapefruit” our hops give this beer an excellent fruit flavor that finishes dry, crisp, and clean. It will pour a nice deep copper color with a bit of haziness. Because of our almost patented “Intense Transfer Methods” our Crooked Tree has won several medals in the India Pale Ale category.

Have you read the description for the regular Crooked Tree yet? Well this beer is almost the same just double the flavor and alcohol. We actually took the Crooked Tree recipe and doubled all of the ingredients except the water, just the way a DOUBLE should be made. Big hops balanced with tons of malt give this beer a huge body. Although this beer is as cool as “The Fonz” when first purchased, it gets really mellow and smooth with some age. After a year or two stored in a cool dark place you’ll notice the heavy caramel and malt flavors are trying to sneak past the hops. This beer is hugely delicious so it will need your undivided attention (the chores can wait….trust us).

Dark Horse Crooked Tree with only Cascade hops.

Crooked Tree malt using Falconer’s Flight as the single hop showcase.

Number Four – Brewed with all malted barley and peat malt (smoked malt). This beer is full bodied with chocolate, roasted barley flavors, and a smokey almost BBQ finish.

Leave it to Dark Horse to create a nontraditional Polish style kolsch beer. It’s our way of poking fun at the German purity law and those that insist beer has to be brewed to “style”. This beer is fairly light in color and body with mild flavors of malt and toasted malt. The aroma is hoppy, as well as the fi nish fl avor of the beer. This is where we put our own touch to a traditionally boring beer…Polish hops! And lots of them! These Eastern European hops create a wonderful bitterness and aroma giving this beer a clean, crisp and dry flavor that works well with the mild sweetness from the malt. The result…a very balanced beer for session style drinking.

Dark Horse Crooked Tree with only Apollo hops.

Number one in a series of five stouts produced for the fall and winter seasons. This beer is full bodied with hints of chocolate, roasted barley, coffee flavors and a nice creamy head.

This is a true dopplebock and Dark Horse Brewing’s only publicly distributed lager. It was so normal that we couldn't stand it so we made it into a coffee dopplebock.Ha, take that Germany, with your Reinheitsgebot purity law! Anyway, we use fare trade organic coffee from our friends at The Ugly Mug Cafe in Ypsilanti, MI We did a label contest and opened it up to the public for this beer. We had so many awesome entries that we couldn't just pick one winner so we have 2 labels for this beer. We stagger the bottles in the six packs but with no order in mind.

It’s big and full bodied with lots of roasted malts and balanced with heavy hops to put this imperial in a league of its own.

A pale ale made with blood orange peels & fruit.

A lot of people have asked us “why are there Bee’s on the label?” Well, we don’t really have an answer for you other than they just look cool. This is a light bodied easy drinking ale. We only use real raspberries so the flavor is very mild fruit and balanced, not what you would expect from a “fruit” beer. The way we see it is we’re brewers so lets make good beer, not some fruity carbonated malt beverage. Oh yeah, our motto…”beer first, fruit second”.

Conceived in a dimly lit room on a blistery cold night in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, but born and raised here in Marshall Michigan. The Reserve Special is the oldest of all beers in the Dark Horse family. It has an incredibly “thick” presence and when poured into a glass its color is so dark it’s eerie. The flavors explode onto your taste buds with heavy malt, roast, and chocolate, but stay very balanced. The Reserve Special Black Ale has a hard time being called a stout or porter but it fits nicely into the category of a delicious strong black ale.

Why is the Grim Reaper holding a mailbox? Well, that mailbox is from a dead Dark Horse beer. The Grim Reaper better know as “Death” was quite found of our classic Sapient Summer Wheat Ale. When we changed it into a Belgian Style Triple, Death thought it would only be appropriate to bring something from that beer into this beer. So he picked the mailbox, and we weren't about to argue with him. You can say what you want about him, but that Death sure has a big heart. So anyway…we brewed this beer with a Trappist yeast strain so it is very traditional. The flavors are incredibly complex with notes of mild fruit and finishes with a bit of clove. Although this beer is higher in alcohol it is very smooth and finishes dry on the pallet.

This collaboration beer made with Chef Cleetus Friedman of Chicago's Fountainhead will save your soul and then melt your face off. Aromas of chamomile touch your nose as they lead into the soft body and mouthfeel of this liquid symphony. Just as your mind is clear and your sins are washed away, a tasty riff of sweet and earthy fresh apricots hit your palate and rock your tastebuds finishing dry and hoppy. Drink, rock, repeat.

For those of you who don’t know who “Scotty Karate” is… He is a local one man band who plays an amazing slurry of honky tonk influenced, punk country songs. His voice is amazing as well as his high energy shows. (Check him out @ www.scottykarate.com) So, we decided to make a beer and name it in his honor. This beer is a big, full bodied Scottish ale. It is 9.75% alc. but it is very smooth and balanced. Since Scotty is also very passionate about beer I asked him to write a description for you, so from the man himself…

An extremely hoppy ale, that really does smell like weed.

This porter pours dark brown, nearly black with a nice off white head. The aroma is very rich in roasted chocolate malts and coffee beans. Lots of caramel with a mild sugary sweetness. The flavor starts very strong on the chocolate malt side, but mellows out in the middle with some nuttiness and fruit notes, finishing with floral hops. Medium in body with moderate carbonation.

A barley wine style ale brewed to 15% alc with hints of raisin, chocolate, carmel, sherry, cherry, and alcohol, just to name a few and this beer will only get better with age.

Number Two – This beer is made with milk sugar (lactose) which gives this beer a nice creamy mouth feel which mingles with hints of chocolate and roasty flavors.

Number Three – A full bodied stout made with all malted barley and blueberry. Flavors of chocolate, roast malt and light blueberry make up the palate with lots of fruity blueberry aroma.