Fancy Pants Sunday: Perennial 2025 Abraxas
Welcome to Fancy Pants Sunday, Peaks & Pints’ ritual offering to the beers that take themselves very seriously — as well they should. These are the pours that arrive in hushed tones and fancy glassware, the beers that don’t blink or rush or apologize. Today’s exalted presence: 2025 Abraxas, the legendary imperial stout from Perennial Artisan Ales. Spiced with cacao nibs, vanilla beans, cinnamon, and ancho chili peppers, this stout doesn’t just speak — it chants. It arrives robed and ready, as if aged in a bell tower and stirred with a relic.
The Story of Perennial Artisan Ales
Perennial began in 2011 in St. Louis, Missouri, the brainchild of Phil and Emily Wymore, two craft-minded humans who believed beer could walk the line between culinary art and ancient ceremony. With a background that included time at Goose Island and Half Acre, Phil brought barrel knowledge and creative ambition back to the Midwest, opening Perennial in a refurbished industrial space in South City. From the outset, they brewed small, thoughtful batches — Belgian-inspired ales, saisons, stouts, sours—focused more on flavor journeys than flagships.
Their motto wasn’t just “local ingredients” or “seasonal thinking.” It was, and still is, a kind of brew-philosophy: balance, experimentation, and the gentle flex of a well-placed chili pepper. Over the years, they’ve expanded into community-centric tasting rooms, collaborations, and a barrel-aging program that hums quietly beneath the surface like a string section in a jazz trio.
The Rise of Abraxas
If Perennial had a patron saint, its name would be Abraxas. First conjured in the early years of the brewery’s life, Abraxas became its most sought-after pour — a black-magic imperial stout built on layers: dark chocolate, cinnamon bark, real vanilla, and a low, slow burn from ancho chilis. It’s not spicy. It’s smoldering. It’s not sweet. It’s warming.
Abraxas became more than a beer. It became an event. In St. Louis and across the craft-besotted Midwest, Abraxas Week now draws fans and collectors who show up for new vintages, verticals, and variations — barrel-aged, vanilla-heavy, double, even wild-fermented riffs. The beer’s name — drawn from ancient mysticism — suggests a duality, a divine tension between light and dark. And that’s exactly what it drinks like.
Abraxas is Fancy
The 2025 Abraxas stays faithful to the original spell. It pours obsidian black with a soft tan halo, thick and slow like winter syrup. The nose is a collision of roasted espresso, Mexican hot chocolate, and vanilla bean. First sip? Dark cocoa rides in first, chased by cinnamon heat and a subtle smoky pepper warmth that never screams — it whispers. The body is rich, full, almost chewy, like velvet draped over stone. As it warms, it shifts: fudge, oak, spice, a flicker of heat on the exhale.
You fancy, Perennial 2025 Abraxas!
LINK: Peaks & PinTs beer and cider cooler inventory
