Now friends; I know what you’re thinking. I know you’ve just heard my words, “peanut butter stout” and your mind went straight to your go-to peanut butter beer that you love and adore. You want to tell me all about YOUR peanut butter stout and haven’t heard the words that were coming out of my mouth…rather off the page or screen. You really want me to hurry up and finish talking so you can tell me all about your peanut butter stout favorite. We’ve lost friends over this beer. Feeling like their beer was better, they would tell us all about their peanut butter “swipe.” Sure. We’d give it a go. I’d make note, accomplish a beer run, get home, and fill my Stout Glass. A few sips later, we’d have the rest of that can down the drain and 5 cans left to cook with. We still loved our friends; we were just spoiled. It wasn’t them; it was US! We felt sorry for our uncultured and inexperienced beer-drinking buddies that had never known the true joy that could be found in a real peanut butter stout. 

After many engaging and spiritual meetings, our friends would try Sin Tax and have a life-changing, love-at-first-sip experience. 

They would come to us and tell us how wonderful we were to have cured them from their dreary tea-colored cans of liquid Jif. Our friendships grew to new levels as we shared the dark liquid joy all holding up our nonik pints of pleasures to the air and to the sun in cheers. That dark beer would eclipse that sun denying its light as if shouting, “NONE SHALL PASS!”

Years had passed and our status among our beer-drinking peers elevated to an almost celebrity status. We were the go-to gurus and all-knowing in the ways of peanut butter bathed in alcohol. 

Until…it all came to an abrupt end when one day…

The refrigerated area of my local market simply didn’t have any Sin Tax. The beer’s normal spot in the cooler had some label for a lite brew of some sort. Had they moved it? I searched the cooler up and down. I even moved boxes they store in the cooler for some reason. You know; those boxes with those red bow tie logos and gray boxes with pictures of mountains. I looked everywhere. NO SIN TAX! My Sin Tax was just gone. Maybe we had told too many people about the beer. I started to wonder if everyone was drinking it all up and this beer was going to start being as rare as a roll of 3-ply in 2020. 

The next time I visited the market… GONE! I drove to the brewery. Relief! The tapster said, “Sure!” as he took my card, “Keep it open?” He grabbed a glass, leaned it to the spout of that tap, and let the blackness fill that void. After squirting the glass with water and setting it on the round, Mother Earth logo coaster in front of me, he said, “Enjoy it…” 

Let me stop here. I have a hard time writing this because these are likely the hardest words I will ever write. My Mother Earth Brewery did have some Sin Tax but, he continued “…because that’s the last of it; it’s only on tap for as long as this last keg holds out.” They had discontinued the brew! It was as bad as that time Santa told me my father was on the naughty list.

Soon, my relationships crumbled. Friends who were as faithful as a knight to his king; Lancelot to King Arthur, just de-friended us on social media and told their children that it was me who took their hamsters from their spinning, squeaking wheels in the night. Without a great Peanut Butter Stout, our so-called friends tried to go back to their old bellywash, but having enjoyed Sin Tax, they could really never “go back.”

It’s like me growing up in Louisiana and then moving straight to Alaska. You get ruined! When you live inside the postcard, how can you find that “WOW” anywhere else? Even places we’d visited and dreamed of returning to were never experienced the same after experiencing Alaska and much of British Columbia, Canada. We tried some of the other peanut butter stouts, many of them. None matched that perfect balance of flavors that Sin Tax had.

“Because everybody is brewing peanut butter stouts now.” That was the reason for the brewery to stop making Sin Tax; there were too many other breweries making peanut butter stouts. WHAT?!?! That makes about as much sense as Mercedes giving up car production because Yugo got into making cars, “Well, we have to quit making cars because everybody is making cars now.” Phooey! It was something else…but what?

Well, it hurt our feelings so bad we started searching for a new place to live. Yes. It was that bad. We searched high and low; rim to base. We muffled from one glass of foam-crowned darkness to another and left many a full glass on many bars and brewery tables.

Eventually, our gadabouting brought us to a small town with a small brewery. The tap room was cordial and inviting. Dogs were here and there and some were lapping up their own clear, non-alcoholic, malt-free, hopless, free-of-yeast, clear drinks from metal bowls. I walked past a few tables of patrons toward the bar and took my seat.

“No, we don’t have a Peanut Butter Stout, but we have a Pee Can Porter if you’d like a taste.” My brain jolted a bit with the imagery of a beer made from pee. I had a beer made from “recycled water” but not a beer made from “recycled water” this close to its original end-user’s disposal point. 

“A beer made from pee?” I ain’t never had no pee in a can,” thinking it is one of those gimmick names that describe a really bad thing only that it’s really a good thing. I smacked my hand on the bar and decided to just go for this “pee in a can beer, “No taste for me, good sir! Give me the pint!”

The glass returned filled with a deep, dark brew that sorta puzzled me. I was expecting the classic yellow of you-know-what. He stood there waiting for me to take the first sip. The glass’ wetness let my fingers grip it well, so I brought it up to my nose to get a snout full of the aroma. The keep’s body language was encouraging me to take that first sip as I took in aroma offering hints of sweetness and…nuttiness…these aromas reminded me of…SIN TAX!

I brought the glass up to my lips and drew in that first sip. My eyes widened as if I had tasted beer for the very first time! This was no pee in a can beer, this was THE beer! Eureka! I had found it! But, was it possible? I had to sip again, and again, and again. No! This was not like Sin Tax, this was BETTER THAN SIN TAX! 

I dabbed my mouth with the back of my sleeve and set the half-emptied glass down. “Friend, what is this really?” “It’s a pee can porter.”

“A pee can?” my head turned a bit like a dog hearing a funny, squeaky sound.

He walked over to the cooler and grabbed a four pack of dark cans with golden cursive type. He laid them down on the bar with a deep wooden “clunk and clonk” sound. I turned one of the cans around on its plastic, PakTech carrier. The golden text read, “Pecan Porter.” BING!

“PECAN! OHHHH, you mean Pecan not ‘pee can’.” I shouted then took another swig. Smooth. Nutty. Easy to drink. THIS WAS IT! “You have made my day, friend! How many of these do you have?” 

This pecan porter is even better than that stout (though I do love me some Mother Earth beers and ain’t bashing that fine brewery by no means, no sirree!). But this well-bodied Pecan Imperial Porter from Laughing Dog Brewery is now my GO-TO for when I am craving a semi sweet, balanced-with-hops malty flavor, drink-one-and-want-another beer. Like I said, I don’t like sweet beers and this one does have a bit of sweetness like Sin Tax but is by no means overpowering as if you’ve just had dessert. Some of those sweet beers are like the soda left over after eating all the ice cream from a Coke Float. This Pecan Porter will definitely not ruin your dinner.

So…back in Nampa, the Sin Tax had dried up. It was a beer we used to drink AND brine with. There is this rib recipe we have where we beer-brine those ribs with Sin Tax that was to DIE for. We tried that recipe with our new Pecan Porter…and though it turns out my beer brine costs more than the two racks of ribs in that brine, the resulting meal is absolutely amazing!! We were good-to-go until…

Fast forward a few months and the Facebook feed shows an announcement.