Beer-barians at the gate

Serious metal's always been infatuated with the idea of savage warriors on the rampage, which is why you're usually better off just admiring the cool album art, then picking up some Huey Lewis. Now a devil-horned brewery's staging an onslaught of Dallas: Jester King.

From their Hill Country lair, two Austin brothers have just invaded prime Big D watering holes including the Meddlesome Moth, Common Table, the Libertine, and FW's Gingerman with casks of craft brews inspired by their love of the darkest metal, influence that can be felt in choice descrips like "a cruel and punishing beer fermented by the sheer force of its awesome will". The heaviest of their initial offerings is 10% ABV Black Metal Imperial Stout (aka "Suds of Northern Darkness", "Iron Sword", or "El Martillo del Muerte"), whose tasting notes read "pitch black with huge notes of chocolate, roast coffee, burnt malt, and alcohol balanced by aggressive hop bitterness", and to which they actually play black metal during fermentation (if Goatwhore can inspire yeast to greatness, just think what they can do for you! Whore). Also on the warpath is dry, spicy, citrus/pine/tropical fruit-noted Wytchmaker Rye IPA, a 6.6-percenter that gets its name from the theory that Salem's witches were under the influence of rye infected with the fungus behind LSD, the drug famously taken by Mitt Romney before he cured his dyslexia.

On the way are Das Wunderkind and the 1984-referencing Boxer's Revenge, both farmhouse ales cultivated with native wild yeast and aged in wine barrels. In February, Jester plans on having all four offerings available in Dallas retail outlets, in the form of 750ml Champagne bottles -- after finishing one of those, the last thing you'll need is a new drug.