Seeing as how my first beer was a half pint of Guinness at a pub in Dublin, it should come as no great revelation that I prefer dark beers, with Guinness remaining at the top of my list. I’ve recently come across two more stouts that you should check out, if you have the same good taste in beers.

The first is Schlafly’s Coffee Stout. I mean, how could I not love it, judging solely by the name? Coffee and beer? Where do I sign up? On Schlafly’s website, they have this description: “This collaboration with Kaldi’s Coffee uses the cold toddy method of extraction for the coffee. We mix it with Oatmeal Stout for an exceptionally delicious beer.” It is hard to find, at least here in Tennessee, so when you come across it be sure to stock up. I have found, that, like the Duck Rabbit Milk Stout, I enjoy the Coffee Stout more when I space it out. So while Guinness is enjoyable night after night, you might want to put the Coffee Stout in rotation with a couple of other beers.

My second recent discovery, and the one that has been giving Guinness a run for its money, is the Highland Brewing Company’s Mocha Stout. They have this to say about it on their website: “Highland’s most robust beer, having a very malty body with a large, roasted chocolate flavor. It is black in color with a very clean finish and a moderate hop flavor.” Again, what’s not to like? Chocolate and beer? I had one of these a couple weeks ago, ice cold at the end of the day, that reminded me why I love beer.

As is frequently the case, this is an experience that is better shared. Probably one of the reasons I like the Duck Rabbit Milk Stout is because the first time I tasted it, it was over a five hour conversation with a good friend that I hadn’t talked to in a while. So turn off the TV, clear some time in your schedule, pick up a six pack of Mocha Stout or Coffee Stout, call up a friend, and share an evening engrossed in stimulating conversation and enjoying great brews. If you can’t find someone to talk to, exchange the remote for a good book. As Anne Lamott says, “If you are mesmerized by televised stupidity, and don’t get to hear or read stories about your world, you can be fooled into thinking that the world isn’t miraculous – and it is.” Take time to hear each others stories, to tell your secrets and hear a few from your friends, and in the process be reminded that you are not alone.

Frederick Buechner expresses this so eloquently in his introduction to Telling Secrets: “I have come to believe that by and large the human family all has the same secrets, which are both very telling and very important to tell. They are telling in the sense that they tell what is perhaps the central paradox of our condition – that what we hunger for perhaps more than anything else is to be known in our full humanness, and yet that is often just what we also fear more than anything else. It is important to tell at least from time to time the secret of who we truly and fully are – even if we tell it only to ourselves – because otherwise we run the risk of losing track of who we truly and fully are and little by little come to accept instead the highly edited version which we put forth in hope that the world will find it more acceptable than the real thing. It is important to tell our secrets too because it makes it easier that way to see where we have been in our lives and where we are going. It also makes it easier for other people to tell us a secret or two of their own, and exchanges like that have a lot to do with what being a family is all about and what being human is all about. Finally, I suspect that it is by entering that deep place inside us where our secrets are kept that we come perhaps closer than we do anywhere else to the One who, whether we realize it or not, is of all our secrets the most telling and the most precious we have to tell.”