Serie Loteria: El Iñigo Montoya (Bourbon Barrel Aged Yodo Con Leche)

Yodo, in Andrés’s home country of Costa Rica, is a slang term for coffee, as in something strong and dark.

We start with an Imperial porter at about 8.5%, made with two kinds of caramel malts, oats for creaminess and three different dark malts, including rye and a special one from Patagonia Malting in Chile. To this we add a solid helping of dulce de leche, a creamy milk caramel from Argentina. Only when the beer is fermented, do we add the coffee.

With the help of Gaslight Coffee Roasters, local Chicago specialists, we sorted through several Costa Rican estates’ beans looking for a coffee with great flavor and true Costa Rican character. We found it in Finca Agrícola Cafetal, from Lourdes de Cirrí de Naranjo. We airfreighted fresh beans from the new harvest, had Gaslight custom roast them to bring out their best and did a room-temperature steeping in beer, then strained and added the liquid back to the entire batch.

The result is a mocha-like strong porter with a luscious creaminess and a lovely, fresh-roasted coffee nose. The finish is a lot like a Latin cup of coffee: intense, delicious and satisfyingly long. This version was aged in Wild Turkey bourbon barrels. Show Less