
Founded in 1992, Moonlight is a tiny brewery based out of Santa Rosa, CA. Brewer/Owner Brian Hunt is a Bay Area beer legend who gets mad respect from beer peeps near and far. Death & Taxes, a 5% ABV black lager, is one of Moonlight’s five year-round beers and also its flagship beer. A stickler for quality control, Moonlight’s beers can pretty much only be found on draft throughout the North Bay, East Bay, and SF. In 2013, Moonlight announced opening a growler fill station/taproom in Santa Rosa, but from what I last read, this is still in progress.
Death and taxes are life’s two guarantees, but the third guarantee is that Moonlight’s Death & Taxes is one of my top five beers. Moonlight simply describes this beer as “a very dark yet surprisingly light-bodied lager beer, crisp and refreshing with no heaviness.” Agreed, but they left out the part about its robust caramel and coffee aroma and that it smells and looks like a porter, but its light texture will bring you back to its lager roots. There are some other really good black lagers out there such as HenHouse’s Mrs. Schwarzbier and New Belgium’s 1554, but nothing beats Death & Taxes (hello, irony!).