Black Toad Brewing Dark Ale

Beer Ghosts, Me'thinks.

What is it with some of the beers I buy at Trader Joe's; you can’t seem to pin down any information on the brewers. Case in point: Black Toad Brewing’s Dark Ale. This is a dandy, dark beer that hints of dark wheat bread and nuts in the bottle and tastes vaguely of coffee and licorice, then finishes off with a pretty strong taste of licorice. In the glass, it’s as dark and mysterious as Black Toad Brewing with a thin, whispy tan colored head.

As for this illusive Black toad Brewing, well the label says they’re in Saint Paul, Minnesota. My buddy over at Loggerhead's: A Roughneck’s Take On Beer, tried this beer back in 2007 and their product was from Chicago. Hmmmm.

Here’s another spooky part of this mysterious puzzle: I took some fairly detailed photos of a glass of Black Toad’s Dark Ale sitting beside the empty bottle with the six pack carton as a nifty backdrop. Downloaded them and went in later to retrieve the images and…nothing. Gone. The file was still in the computer but the images were gone. Weird.

Here’s Wortwursts post at Loggerhead's:
http://lagerheads.blogspot.com/2007/01/black-toad-dark-ale.html

The Beer Advocate crowd rates this one high:
http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/2250/5729
I’d say this is another home run for Trader Joe's. Even if they aren’t exactly up front as to where their beers are made or by whom, I still figure they are tops for providing access to offbeat beers at a really reasonable price. More bang for the beer buck, I say. On the other hand, there seems to be some serious joo-joo working with this stuff and I’d be careful with it.