Booze notebook: Stout Week in Everett features strange brews

If you expected Geoff Middleton of Everett’s Middleton Brewing to throw a hum-drum Stout Week, I’m afraid you’d be sorely mistaken.

Middleton is getting freaky with this week’s Stout Week celebration, presenting stouts made with Sriracha, bananas, cinnamon rolls and Shiitake mushrooms. Get your taste buds ready for this one.

Middleton’s Stout Week runs through Dec. 8. A limited selection of stouts will be available Dec. 5 and 8, with the full list of 20 stouts Dec. 6 and 7. Tickets for Dec. 6 and 7 are $25, and include a Stout Week glass and four 5-ounce pours.

Here’s a look at some of the stranger concoctions:

Joe’s Gettin’ Cocky: Adding Sriracha hot sauce late in the fermentation process gives this stout a spicy flavor and aroma.

What the Shiitake?!?: A typical stout recipe dry hopped with dried Shiitake mushrooms.

Is That a Banana in Your Pocket?: Using banana jelly bellies, Middleton infused this experimental stout with a dose of banana flavor.

Vulgaris Imperial Stout: Middleton took a stout he made with fresh beets and aged it three months in honey moonshine barrels from Bad Dog Distillery. One variant was aged on vanilla and maple syrup.

Figgy Stardust: Made in collaboration with Crucible and Lazy Boy, this Belgian winter warmer is brewed with figs, juniper berries, clove and coriander, and then aged in JP Trodden barrels for two years with Brettanomyces.

Rollin’ in Dough: Made in collaboration with At Large Brewing, this stout had cinnamon rolls added in the mash, frosting in the boil and dry hopped with cinnamon.

Other stouts on tap: Breakfast First (Cookie Crisp), 14 Steps (Peanut Butter Chocolate), Dessert First (Raspberry), Ore-oh no you Di’nt (Oreo), Number Two (Coffee), Mint To Be, I HATE Black Licorice, I LOVE Red Licorice, Brownie Points, Orange You Special, Barrel-aged Breakfast First, J-walking Grandma (collaboration with Whitewall), Mexican Hot Chocolate (collaboration with Outlander).

Sound to Summit kicks off 7 Summits Series

Snohomish’s Sound to Summit Brewing released its first double IPA, Denali, in its 7 Summits Series. The series is a set of six double and one triple IPAs, each named after the tallest peaks on the seven continents and covering a wide range of IPA styles.

Customers can try each beer as they’re released over the next months and fill out a punch card for a prize. The series wraps up at Sound to Summit’s anniversary party in February.

The first beer in the series, Denali, was released this week. A West Coast IPA made with Columbus, Simcoe and Mosaic hops give the beer notes of citrus, spruce tips and mango.