This is the, er, I guess we’ll call it the spouse of Tired Hands MotherAnimal (a barleywine conditioned on coffee and vanilla). Near as I can tell, FatherBeast is the same beer, sans the coffee… oh, and it was aged in Dad’s Hat Rye barrels. Beast Mode: Engaged. Not being a big coffee person, I expect this to be more my speed, and what do you know, I loved it:
Tired Hands FatherBeast – Pours a slightly cloudy dark brown color with beautiful robey tones and just a minimal cap of head that quickly resolves to a ring around the edge of the glass. Smells deeply of crystal malt, caramel and dark fruits, with some vanilla and oak pitching in as well. As it warms, more whiskey comes out to play too. Taste is very sweet, filled with a fruity crystal malt character, with the whiskey and vanilla sweetness kicking in towards the middle, then leaning back to the intense fruity malt towards the finish. Mouthfeel has a relatively low carbonation which leads to a very smooth and approachable feel, medium to full bodied, not much to indicate the ABV. It’s pretty easy going for a sipper. Overall, this is some great stuff. A-
Beer Nerd Details: 11.5% ABV bottled (375 ml capped and waxed). Drank out of the FatherBeast snifter on 9/27/13. “Roughly” 150 bottle release.
Worth waiting in line for, and check out that fancy snifter. Bitchin. As per usual, expect moar posts on Tired Hands in the near future, because I’m a jerk and like to post about beers that will never see the light of day again. You’re welcome.
I thought this was the same as MotherAnimal just aged in the whiskey barrels for a while. So the coffee was there too. Honestly, I don’t remember the coffee being terribly strong in MotherAnimal so maybe it has just faded mostly away.
MotherAnimal had plenty of coffee, but seeing as though I’m not a coffee guy, I’m probably a little more sensitive to that than most. FatherBeast didn’t even have a trace of coffee that I could detect. To your point, it may have just faded completely away (it’s been almost a year since MotherAnimal was brewed, and the BA process probably didn’t help the coffee). But then, all the announcements (and the bottle itself) make no mention of coffee either. Not sure if that’s because it had faded so completely, or if it was because this was slightly different.