United States Archives - Page 4 of 84

WeldWerks Barrel-Aged Fluffernutter

December 2, 2020 by Mark

No one wants to admit that they like peanut butter beers, but brewers are out there making them all the time, so I guess some people actually do… My inner curmudgeon gets mighty suspicious about gimmicky ingredients but even that bastard can kinda see the appeal of peanut butter beer if he squints. I mean, he’s never truly loved one… but he gets why someone would drink it.

Of course, Curmit (the name for my inner curmudgeon that I just made up because typing out “inner curmudgeon” every time seems like a waste and yes, I’m aware that I just wrote the words out twice in a long paranthetical, but Curmit thought it would be a good idea and I like that guy) can be won over if you play to his biases. Like, say, aging your peanut butter beer in bourbon barrels for almost two years.

To be more specific, Weldwerks Barrel-Aged Fluffernutter starts with a big imperial stout base that is aged in freshly emptied 6-12 year-old bourbon barrels for 19-21 months, then conditioned on peanut flour, toasted marshmallows, marshmallow creme, and Vanuatu vanilla beans. Curmit might have been a little suspicious and he probably likes plain old BA Medianoche better, but he thinks that marshmallow is a better fit in beer than some sort of fruit/jelly (i.e. fluffernutter is a better idea than PB&J when it comes to beer) and we’ve already established his love of vanilla. One sip was enough to convince him this endeavor was worthwhile:

WeldWerks Barrel-Aged Fluffernutter – Pours a deep, dark brown, almost black, with just the faintest ring of tan head around the edge of the glass that disappears quickly. Smells great, bourbon, caramel, oak, peanuts, and vanilla. Taste hits the rich caramel up front, moves quickly into that fluffernutter peanut and marshmallow, followed by boozy bourbon and oak in the finish. Mouthfeel is full bodied, rich, and chewy, the bottle doesn’t have an ABV on it, but it’s plenty boozy with some pleasant warming alcohol character. Overall, yup, it’s spectacular and all the doodads and extra ingredients work well enough, especially as a change of pace. A

Beer Nerd Details: ? ABV bottled (22 ounce bomber). Drank out of a snifter on 10/2/20. Vintage: 2020.

This is one of those beers that would have been great to bring to a share… if we weren’t in the middle of a pandemic. I miss shares, is what I’m saying. Anywho, I’ve really enjoyed WeldWerks’ barrel aged program, so I will always seek them out. Even if they have gimmicky ingredients that don’t necessarily excite Curmit.

You know what, screw it, bonus review! One of Curmit’s favorites here, also from WeldWerks:

WeldWerks Medianoche – I didn’t take tasting notes for this, but Curmit loves this thing and there’s plenty to say about it. Legend has it that this big imperial stout was designed to stand up to extended barrel aging, and while brewing process details are often uninteresting, this one has a standout step that I think pretty much anyone can peg as extreme: After mashing in, they then put the resulting wort through an arduous 36 hour boil (for context, most beer goes through a 1 hour boil). After fermentation, the beer goes into 7-12 year bourbon barrels for 18-24 months. Don’t take my word for it, here’s an interview with the brewer:

“So, we designed the beer from the ground up, using the barrel, the spirits from the barrel and the time spent in the barrel as essential ingredients, and made adjustments to the recipe accordingly,” he explains. “After several years of tweaking and pushing the barrel character further and further, we have landed on an incredibly high-gravity stout that is 100% malt-derived. That means no extracts, syrups or other sugars. To achieve those targets, we boil each batch for over 30 hours, which is insanely inefficient and labor intensive, but it has resulted in a beer that can hold up for 18-plus months in casks and showcase all the complexities our barrels have to offer.”

The result is phenomenal. The base retains some of its roasty notes, but the typical caramel, oak, and vanilla barrel aged character is also there in full force. Totally delicious, complex, but well balanced stuff, and worth seeking out. A

Beer Nerd Details: 12.8% ABV bottled (22 ounce bomber). Drank out of a snifter on 6/26/20. Bottling Date: 04/16/2020.

So there, both Weldwerks Fluffernutter and Medianoche are pretty great stuff, if you can get ahold of them.

Allagash Coolship Resurgam

November 12, 2020 by Mark

Back in the before times, the long long ago, there were two American breweries that had made a name for themselves by specializing in Belgian style ales: Allagash and Ommegang. I thought it might be fun to catch up with both and see how they’re faring in the current beer scene. Now that we’re awash in barrel aged pastry stouts, hazy slurry IPAs, milkshakes, fruit juice beers, and other stuff that doesn’t actually taste like beer, how’s a traditional Belgian style brewery to adapt in tomorrow morrow land?

Allagash’s flagship beer is White, an excellent, flavorful Belgian Wit that’s been a popular gateway beer for all those Coors/Blue Moon drinkers out there, but doesn’t exactly get twixt the nethers of beer dorks. For those already ensconced in the warm embrace of beer nerdery and thus more fickle in their tastes, Allagash has been building an excellent sour beer program and basically become an American Lambic producer.

They’ve even installed a Coolship at their brewery. For the uninitiated, a Coolship is basically a long, shallow pan that’s used to cool the wort while also exposing it to the environment and inoculating it with wild yeast and other microflora. Only a handful of American breweries have even attempted something like this, and Allagash is definitely one of the pioneers of such projects (at least, in America).

What we have here is an American take on Gueuze, a blend of 1, 2, and 3 year old beers aged in oak. The term “Resurgam” is latin for “I shall rise again,” which has obvious Christian connotations, but it is also apparently the name of a Victorian submarine. Go figure. Now: it’s beer!

Allagash Coolship Resurgam – Pours a slightly hazy pale golden color with a solid finger of white fluffy head. Smells great, lots of earthy funk, a little stone fruit, lemons, and the like. Taste hits that earthy funk up front, quickly followed by fruity esters, apricots, lemon zest, finishing with a tart bite. Mouthfeel is well carbonated and crisp, light bodied, moderate to low acidity, dry finish. Overall, it’s a pretty damn spectacular beer. Something about Allagash’s sours always seem to just click with me. Also of note is that this is about 3 years old, which means that it ages pretty well too… A

Beer Nerd Details: 6.4% ABV bottled (375 ml caged and corked). Drank out of a tulip glass on 9/12/20. Bottled: Aug. 31, 2017.

N.B. The picture above was taken almost two years ago at a local bar, but the tasting notes were from a different bottle I drank this past September. I just thought the older picture was nicer looking than my standard setup so I used that instead. I’m pretty sure it’s the same batch of beer, so there’s that…

The Coolship program also releases several fruited variants, like Coolship Red (made with raspberries) and Coolship la Mure (made with blackberries), both excellent. There are many others that I have not had, but one of these days I’m going to try and snag a bottle of Ghoulship for the Halloween Season.

Anywho, as hinted at above, I’ve got some Ommegang beers in the pipeline too. They’ve gone in a bit of a different direction, but are still putting out some interesting beer…

Anchorage Wendigo

November 8, 2020 by Mark

So what exactly is a “black barleywine”? During the arduous research phase of this post, I stumbled across these BJCP Style Guidelines for… Russian Imperial Stout (emphasis mine):

The malt aroma can be subtle to rich and barleywine-like, depending on the gravity and grain bill.
Malt backbone can be balanced and supportive to rich and barleywine-like, and may optionally show some supporting caramel, bready or toasty flavors.
Overall Impression: … Like a black barleywine with every dimension of flavor coming into play.

Ah, so basically a Black Barleywine is a Russian Imperial Stout that tastes like a barleywine but is secretly a stout but is ultimately a barleywine. I’m glad we cleared that up. Alright, I guess that’s enough of the inconclusive, pedantic semantics of style analysis, let’s get to the actual beer…

This is a black barleywine *ahem* that’s been aged 6 months in Willet Bourbon barrels and then transferred to Woodford Reserve Double Oaked barrels for an additional 7 months. A lot of barrels were harmed in the making of this beer is what I’m hearing, and that sounds mighty appealing. Plus, despite the nonexistent style wankery, they didn’t sully this with additional pastry adjuncts or off-the-wall ingredients, which is also nice.

But maybe I spoke too soon, because then there’s the packaging, which is a bottle that has a waxed cap. And they used glow in the dark wax. This will clearly make the beer taste better, though perhaps not as good as the mislabeled “Wenidgo” bottles. Something about an incompetent label printer typo that made it on some bottles, but got caught early enough that Anchorage just gave the affected bottles to their employees. But they got out in the wild or something and yadda yadda yadda, Barlywine is Life had a field-day creating Wenidgo memes.

Alright now that we’re referencing obscure memes, I think it’s time to get back to the beer itself (again). But we haven’t even gone into the obscure Pet Sematary references! I know, I’m surprised too.

Anchorage Wendigo – Pours a very dark brown, almost black color with a half finger of tan head. Smells nice, lots of vanilla, some caramel, toffee, oak, and bourbon. Taste is very sweet, rich with caramel and toffee, vanilla, brown sugar, more caramel, bourbon and oak. Mouthfeel is full bodied, rich, and chewy, boozy but not overly hot. Not exactly balanced, but this is my kinda stupid. Overall, despite the above wanking about style, it certainly reads like a barleywine. A really good one too, though hey, maybe they should just make more ADWTD. Also, I suspect this will age fabulously, if that’s your bag and you have millions of dollars to burn. A

Beer Nerd Details: 15.5% ABV bottled (375 ml waxed cap). Drank out of a snifter on 8/14/20.

It’s probably too pricey for most folks (especially at the inflated $60-$80 rates a lot of places are selling them at) and while it’s great, it’s hard to justify the purchase unless you hate money or are involved in a Brewster’s Millions-like wager. It’s great, but if you’re sensitive on price, it’s not like this is a necessity.

Suarez Family Brewery Triple Feature

November 2, 2020 by Mark

Remember ~~last week~~ a couple weeks ago* when I said that we all know that Suarez Family Brewery is good at making saisons? Let’s put that to the test. Also, let’s drink a Blonde ale that doesn’t feature a busty blond bimbo on the label, because Suarez is classy and doesn’t need to resort to that kind of thing. Also because I was drinking it out of a growler, but still. They did release it in cans, and the label is very elegant. So there.

N.B. Now is usually the time where you can skip to the end of the boring tasting note paragraphs to see the grade, but in this case, I’ve actually written some general thoughts about each beer. This is probably something I should do more often, no? No? Fine then, be that way. But I did it this time, so enjoy:

Walk, Don’t Run – This is billed as a hoppy New Zealand blonde ale with Nelson Sauvin and Moteuka hops. Sometimes, when a brewery puts out a blonde ale, it just feels bland and watery. Other times, especially when described as “hoppy”, it just feels like a pale ale or IPA. Here, Suarez has somehow found middle ground that does feel like it warrants the blonde style without veering too far into hoppy or malty territory. Instead, it’s just a perfectly balanced, light, but subtly flavorful session beer. Clocking in at 3.7% ABV, it’s tasty and yet, crushable. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 3.7% ABV growlered (750 ml swing-top). Drank out of a tumbler glass on 7/25/20. Drink by Jul 27 2020 (I drank it the day it was filled/picked up).

Kinda Classic – Remember when saisons weren’t sour? Like, no oak, no wild yeast strains, no bacterial beasties? I do, and they were and still are great, and this is a nice example of that sort of back-to-basics saison. It’s got a nice, expressive Belgian farmhouse yeast going for it, but it doesn’t have the intense earthiness of a Brett beer or the sourness of other varieties. I mean, we’ll get to that soon enough (see below), but I appreciate a take like this:

Pours a hazy straw yellow color with a couple of fingers of fluffy white head. Smells of musty Belgian yeast, lots of spicy phenols, coriander, clove, and the like, with some herbal hops kicking in and maybe a touch of sweet citrus. Taste features plenty of those spicy phenols from the nose, coriander and clove showing up in force, with something a little more herbal pitching in towards the finish. Mouthfeel is crisp, dry, and refreshing, light to medium bodied, well balanced. Overall, I miss a good, non-sour saison like this. Refreshing, tasty, pairs well with food. B+ or A-

Beer Nerd Details: 4.5% ABV bottled (500 ml bottles should have a nickname like “bomber” or something, shouldn’t they?) Drank out of a tumbler on 7/30/20. Blend #3, bottled 4/20.

Slow Bustle – I believe I’ve mentioned before that Daniel Suarez worked at Hill Farmstead before he opened his own brewery, and that influence clearly shows in a lot of his saisons, which bear a marked similarity. This is a good example of that sort of thing, but it manages to coax out some distinct flavors that I’ve not seen in a saison before, so good on them. Maybe it was the “generous portion of raw honey from our neighbors” that they brewed this beer with?

Pours a yellowish gold color with a solid finger of white head that lingers a bit and leaves a bit of lacing. Smells great, sweet, with tart pineapple and a hint of funk, maybe some other tropical aromas. Taste hits the funk a bit harder than the nose would imply, with a nice earthy character that eventually gives way to the sweeter, more tropical pineapple and a bit of tartness with some oak making itself known towards the finish. Mouthfeel is well carbonated and crisp, light acidity, low to medium bodied. Overall, a pretty great saison in the Hill Farmstead mode, but the pineapple character really distinguishes this one from its brethren (or, like, any other saison that I’ve had). A

Beer Nerd Details: 6.1% ABV bottled (750 ml now that I think of it, these don’t really have a nickname either). Drank out of a wine glass on 8/14/20. Blend #4, bottled 3/20.

So it’s been another successful Suarez Family Brewing expedition this year. For the pandemic curious, they had a very easy online-ordering and contact-less curbside pickup situation going, so if you think you’ll be heading through the Hudson Valley anytime soon, give their website a whirl and order you some saisons and pilsners. And apparently pale ales and blondes too. Really, just order whatever they’ve got. I’ve yet to discover an even remotely bad beer from them.

Suarez Family Brewery Hecto

October 15, 2020 by Mark

We all know Suarez can nail those Pilsners and Saisons. I mean, weird flex (who focuses on those two styles), but it’s very true. My only experience with their hoppy wares was a few cans of Crispy Little that I accidentally froze because the meager alcohol content couldn’t stand up to the bitter cold of a rental-house’s refrigerator. However, I did manage to crack one of those cans before the fridge ate the rest, and while I enjoyed it well enough, it doesn’t quite stand apart from the neverending throngs of pale ales and IPAs out there.

Enter Suarez’s Hecto. On paper, it’s a similar beer. It’s a 4.5% ABV pale ale hopped with Citra, Mosaic, and Amarillo. And I dunno, it’s awesome. Maybe it’s just because I had been on the road for about 7 hours and I had cracked a can whilst sitting on the dock by the lake, but damn this was great. Now, I also managed to get another taste of Crispy Little this year, and while it’s very good, Hecto is just noticeably better (i.e. it’s not just the malevolent refrigerator coloring my opinion of Crispy Little). Worth trekking into the wilds of the Hudson Valley to procure!

Suarez Family Brewery Hecto – I didn’t pour this out, so I don’t know what it looks like. Imma guess it’s pale with white head. Smells fantastic, sweet, bright citrus fruit, pineapple, a hint of dankness. Taste follows the nose, citrus, sweet pineapple, a hint of grapefruit, dank pine. Mouthfeel is light bodied, crisp, and refreshing, utterly quaffable. It doesn’t suffer from that whole “diet IPA” feeling that a lot of similar beers have. Incredibly well balanced. Overall, this is an astounding beer for a such a low ABV pale ale… A

Beer Nerd Details: 4.5% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank straight from the can, like a man on 7/25/20.

I didn’t save the can and didn’t note the canning date; I know you’re crestfallen, but rest assured, it was very fresh. As usual, Suarez is just killing it. I have some more saisons from this year to cover, so stay tuned (at this rate, I’ll get to it sometime in 2022).

Mason Second Son

October 12, 2020 by Mark

I’ve noticed an uptick in the prevalence of strong ale blends. Because I’m very observant. Totally not a recency bias thing. Besides, such experiments have long dotted the beer landscape. Firestone’s Anniversary beers are perhaps the best example. A combination of beers brewed and barrel aged for the specific purpose of blending, they usually turn out pretty well. The Bruery’s Mélange series is a little more uneven, but it has its bright spots. Lots of other examples, ranging from weird to good to eveywhere inbetween.

The trick is to blend two different beers together such that they become more than the sum of their parts. A Voltron of beer, if you will. This is more difficult than it sounds, especially once you start blending different styles together. One beer can dominate, sometimes even in small quantities.

Mason Second Son is today’s example. It’s a 50/50 blend of Mason Ale Works’ excellent B.A. Baracus barleywine and their B.A. Cash imperial stout. This is a tenuous project as it is because a stout can easily overwhelm the barleywine, and in this case, an added component further complicates matters. Yes, the stout has the dreaded addition of coffee. My reticence for coffee beers is well known, but I can respect the best examples. In this case, the blending really muddles the flavors, making me wish I was drinking one component of the blend or the other, but not both together. It’s not bad or poorly made or infected or anything, it’s just conceptually flawed.

Mason Ale Works Second Son – Pours a very dark brown, almost black color with a finger of light tan head. Smells nice, rich caramel, toffee, bourbon, oak, and a surprising amount of vanilla, with some roasty stout aromas leavened by fruitier barleywine and perhaps a touch of hops. Only a faint, lurking menace of coffee in the background. Taste is a little more focused on the coffee stout side of things. Roast, coffee, with much less of the caramel, toffee, bourbon, oak, and vanilla than the nose would have you believe. It’s still there, and this is pleasant enough, but the nose fooled me into thinking this would be more barleywine than it is… Mouthfeel is full bodied, but not quite as rich and chewy as you’d expect. There’s plenty of booze and a nice, gentle carbonation. Overall, an adequate blend, though I do really wish the coffee wasn’t there. I almost think that it would be better with a much higher dose of coffee. As it is, it overwhelms the more subtle elements of the beer while not being big enough to really carry the beer by itself. I enjoy this just fine, but my inner curmudgeon won’t let me rate it higher than a B

Beer Nerd Details: 14% ABV canned (12 ounce). Drank out of a snifter on 7/17/20. Vintage: 2019.

It’s a good thing I still have a couple of cans of B.A. Baracus, which is definitely worth seeking out.

Gigantic Massive! Variants

September 7, 2020 by Mark

I enjoy when a brewery starts playing around with using different barrel treatments on the same base beer. The differences are sometimes subtle, but they do emerge in a horizontal tasting. When Gigantic brewing started releasing variants of their most excellent Massive! barleywine, I sought out a couple to see how they’d fare.

Barrel diversity is great, but I’ve never had a beer aged in Port barrels that I loved. Now, I do enjoy a good Port wine, but something about the Port barrel-aged beers I’ve had just never worked for me. In fairness, I haven’t had some of the heavy hitters of the category. I’m looking at you, Damon. Likewise, while I enjoy Rye whiskey from time to time, I often end up feeling like a Rye barrel-aged beer is too similar to Bourbon barrels (and usually not as good).

So I’m happy to report that these variants are awesome. Maybe even better than their Bourbon barrel-aged counterpart. I don’t know what sorcery the Gigantic brewers practiced, but it worked:

Gigantic Massive! Port Barrel-Aged – Pours a turbid, muddy brown color with a solid finger of off white head that doesn’t stick around very long. Smells great, the base caramelized malt character shines through, the oak makes itself known, but the port is lurking more in the background. The taste is all rich caramelized fruit, the port wine is very well integrated with the base here, caramel, toffee, fruit, a little booze. Mouthfeel is still rich and full bodied, maybe not quite as much in the way of booze, but still plenty of alcohol heat, making this a nice little sipper. Overall, this is fantastic. It is, by far, the best Port barrel aged beer I’ve ever had, and at least as good as the standard Bourbon barrel version if not better. A

Beer Nerd Details: 14% ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a snifter on 5/15/20. Vintage: 2019.

Gigantic Massive! Rye Barrel-Aged – This appears similar, but comports itself much more like the bourbon barrel aged version, which is about what you’d expect. I’m not having them side-by-side, so I can maybe talk myself into this having more of a spicy rye note and these variants do seem to be a bit more balanced or integrated… whatever that means… Look, this is a great beer, much like the regular Bourbon version, and I’m really enjoying it. Would highly recommend checking these variants out. It seems like they’ve done a great job with them, but this Rye variant isn’t as distinctive as the Port version, so if you have a choice, I’d go for the Port before this… This is still great, though! A-

Beer Nerd Details: 14% ABV bottled (500 ml). Drank out of a snifter on 5/16/20. Vintage: 2019.

These were both phenomenal and if you see these Gigantic Massive! variants out in the wild, I would highly recommend checking them out. I’d certainly love to try some of the other variants, notably the Cognac (which I find works well with barleywine). Maybe Gigantic even managed to tame the Scotch barrels (or, more likely, they chose a non-Islay/non-peated scotch barrel). Maple barrels are nice, but do tend towards the overly sweet. The Mezcal variant is the only one that seems like a bad idea. But it gets good ratings, so what do I know? I certainly wouldn’t turn it down.

Toppling Goliath King Sue

September 2, 2020 by Mark

Iowa’s Toppling Goliath built their reputation on stouts and their barrel program, with some play in hoppy realms. That’s where we’ll be traveling today, though I’d really like to take a supersonic ride on their SR-71 stoutplane sometime.

So who is the eponymous Sue of this beer’s name? How did she become a monarch? And why is there a dinosaur on the can? Well, it turns out that Sue is a reference to the famous T-Rex, itself named after its discoverer, one Sue Hendrickson. Her profession is described as “explorer”, which is probably enough to proclaim her King (as the kids say these days. I think. I’m pretty out of touch you guys.) But the King part is really just a reference to Toppling Goliath’s flagship beer, PseudoSue. That pale ale was so popular that it inspired this imperialized version, hence the royal modifier.

King Sue is a northeast style IPA brewed with Citra hops. Music to my tastebuds. When it was introduced, it became a sorta insta-whale, but hoppy walez rarely retain such status and sure enough, Toppling Goliath has been steadily increasing production to the point where fresh cans are showing up at my local grocery store (and let me tell you, they have a generally terrible selection, so this was a pleasant surprise).

It’s a pretty fantastic beer, but since the general proliferation of NEIPA around the country, you don’t really need to hunt for this sort of thing anymore. Chances are, someone in your locale is already producing something just as good that is far more accessible. On the other hand, if you’re seeing these show up on shelves and are looking for some midwest hop juice, this is a nice choice:

Toppling Goliath King Sue – Pours a cloudy but bright, almost luminous yellow color with a solid finger of white, fluffy head. Lacing speckles the glass as I drink. Smell is of intense tropical citrus hops, lots of mango, but with that Citra floral background that complements the citrus well. Some danker pine notes show up later. Taste is sweet, juicy hops, tropical fruit, mangoes and the like. The mouthfeel is tightly carbonated, medium bodied, very easy going. Overall, yes, I think this is quite the worthy IPA, right in my sweet spot. A

Beer Nerd Details: 7.8% ABV canned (16 ounce pounder). Drank out of a tulip glass on 7/10/20. Canned on 6/24/20

One of these days I’ll find a way into Toppling Goliath’s barrel aged stores. In the meantime, these hoppy bangers will have to do. I did manage to get a taste of some of their stouts at GABF last year, and they were absolutely delicious, so this is definitely a brewery to be on the lookout for…

Remus’ Revenge 10 & 2

August 20, 2020August 20, 2020 by Mark

The one and only time I’ve been to Cincinnati was during a layover at their airport, whereupon I learned that it’s the city “where pigs fly.” It’s a reference to the infamous pork-packing industry that was so prevalent in the town that it gained the nickname “Porkopolis.”

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s worth noting that Cincinnati was also a well known beer town. Naturally, that did not survive prohibition, but the recent craft beer boom has swelled the ranks of breweries to pre-prohibition numbers and beyond.

I took a flyer on a few bottles of Fifty West’s barrel aged barleywine 10 & 2, but came away with more questions. Just who is this Remus and why does he seek revenge? My chain smoking monkey research squad was unable to unearth any answers, so we went direct to the source to get the skinny:

Our Remus’ Revenge series is all based around George Remus, the “King of Bootleggers”. Remus made an empire running alcohol on Route 50, which goes from Ocean City, Maryland to Sacramento, California (and the road our brewery is located here in Cincy)! George Remus was allegedly the inspiration for Gatsby in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s book, hosting lavish parties in his mansion “Marble Palace”, which is another one of our BBA beers in the series. He famously murdered his wife here in Cincinnati in a very popular park after she left Remus and filed for divorce, leading to our “Ghost of Imogene” BBA Imperial Stout. Our “Death Valley Shootout” BBA Stout tells the story of a fire fight that took place at Remus’ Death Valley Farm, one of his fortified distilleries. We just released “Six Feet Under” BBA English Barleywine referencing his death and burial in Bourbon country right across the river from Cincinnati in Kentucky. 10&2 is our award winning (gold from WBC and silver from GABF) BBA American Barleywine that kick-started our barrel aged beer series but actually doesn’t have any Remus lore tied in with it!

Many thanks to Fifty West’s no doubt beleaguered social media manager for responding to my no-doubt annoying inquires. Anyway, so now there’s three more beers in their barrel aged series that I’ll need to track down. In the meantime, I’ll have to make do with this more American take on the barleywine style, aged in bourbon barrels.

Fifty West Remus’ Revenge Series 10 & 2 Barleywine Aged In Bourbon Barrels – Pours a murky brown color with half a finger of off white head that quickly resolves to a ring around the edge of the glass. Smells nice, lots of toffee, caramel, bourbon, and oak, some of that faded hop quality that indicates the American Barleywine base… Taste hits a lot of those notes from the nose, that dank, faded hop character coming to the fore quickly but yielding to the caramel, toffee and barrel character before reasserting some bitterness in the finish along with a heaping helping of booze. Mouthfeel is full bodied, rich, and well carbed with a boozy bite and a bit of heat too. Overall, this is some tasty stuff and the barrel aging clearly took some of the bite off the highly hopped base, making for a damn solid BA Barleywine. B+

Beer Nerd Details: 12.5% ABV bottled (12 ounce waxed cap). Drank out of a snifter on 4/26/20. Vintage: 2019.

Certainly seems like a brewery that would be nice to visit if we weren’t all holed up in our homes during a pandemic in an election year. The same year in which some geniuses discovered these mystery death seeds from China and thought Hey, let’s plant these suckers; what’s the worst that could happen? Sorry, what was I talking about? Oh, right, beer.

Pelican Father of All Tsunamis

August 10, 2020August 10, 2020 by Mark

Pelican Brewing’s Father of All Tsunamis is the stout spouse of the Mother of All Storms. I’m guessing their child is the 50-year storm that Patrick Swayze rides at the end of Point Break. Alas, there does not appear to be a beer commemorating that momentous occasion (yet!)

The Father of All Tsunamis is an imperial stout aged in Rye whiskey barrels. This marks an interesting deviation from the Mother’s use of Bourbon barrels. Alas, while a very good beer, this doesn’t really enter the conversation of best barrel aged stouts. That’s more because it’s a very crowded field than anything else though, so let’s strap on our foul weather gear and drink this sucker:

Pelican Father of All Tsunamis – Pours a deep black color with a solid finger of beautiful, dense brown head. Smells very nice, rich caramel, hints of roast, something I can’t quite place, maybe liquorish, plus the usual retinue of boozy oak and vanilla. Tastes of sweet, rich caramel up front, with some dank hoppiness peeking through in the middle and some of that boozy oak and vanilla leading into the finish. Mouthfeel is rich, full bodied, and chewy, well carbonated, pleasantly boozy but well balanced. Overall, this is a rock solid barrel aged stout, definitely a good example of the style, refined but restrained. A-

Beer Nerd Details: 11.2% ABV bottled (22 ounce bomber). Drank out of a snifter on 4/11/20. Vintage: 2020

Pelican also makes a barrel aged Wee Heavy/Scotch Ale called Captain of the Coast that I’m itching to try. Like the Father, it uses a different type of spirits barrel though (Washington Wheat Whiskey). I’m not sure what the aversion is to using the same type of barrel for different beers, but I welcome the change of pace…