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Yes, Virginia, there is craft malt liquor. ��

But, if you want to get your ��on some, you’re going to have to keep an eagle eye out for it.��

Over the years, several of the larger craft breweries have produced malt liquors. But almost always, the nectar of the poor-decision-making gods has come and gone quickly. In many cases, the brews were only ever offered at the breweries’ in-house taprooms.

Take, for example, , which brewed a craft malt liquor to celebrate its 40,000th batch of beer. The idea started as a gag but the finished product, at 9.4 percent alcohol, was no joke.

“We wanted to keep things simple and deliver a beer with gusto,” says New Belgium head brewer Mike Cothran. “We had never made a 9 percent alcohol lager before, and lager yeast in general tends to be more difficult to make [into] higher alcohol brews.” For this reason, most malt liquors are somewhere between 6.5 percent and 8 percent, Cothran says.

“Traditionally, malt liquors are brewed with adjuncts like corn or sugar to bring up the alcohol at a lower price,” he adds.��“This also helps the yeast to ferment at higher alcohol levels since adjuncts are often 100 percent fermentable.��We did use a small amount of sugar, which is traditional for Belgian brewers, but the rest was all malt.”��

The final product was called , which was the name of one of the brewers’ imaginary childhood band. It “actually turned out really good,” Cothran says. “It finished clean but had a more body than a regular domestic beer.”��

Cobra Horse was only available in a few Colorado bars and at the brewery. But ’s crack at malt liquor, called , sold to the public in 40-ounce bottles that came in their own brown paper bags. Perfect for enjoying while sitting on a pile of your broken dreams and wondering where you went so wrong.��

Even smaller breweries, like Virginia’s , are whipping up their own iterations of the traditionally-frowned-upon corner store booze option. And it’s clearly getting out of hand: Devils Backbone’s malt liquor, called , won a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival.

Jim Weatherwax, the plant manager for ,��says his company’s malt liquor offering “sold really well.” But he doesn’t see it becoming a regular item in the company’s lineup anytime soon. “I don’t know that it’s a fulltime sustainable type thing.”

Cothran, at New Belgium shares that sentiment. He jokes that he feels lucky he didn’t get fired for producing Cobra Horse. “Personally, I would love to brew it again, but I really don’t have any control over new brands,” he says. The division of the company that deals with which brews gets produced “does surprise us a lot and bring back fun older beers that we all loved.��Maybe with a little push they would bring it back?”

Here’s hoping. After all, as Weatherwax says, “malt liquor is like a really, really high alcohol pilsner.” And that, Virginia, is something we can believe in.