Barrel aged Series: Whiskey Barrel aged Grand Cru Deluxe
Brouwerij The Musketeers in Sint-Gillis-Waas, East Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
Belgian Style - Quadrupel / Dark Strong Regular|
Score
6.83
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Whiskey, wine, rum or Calvados? Each year, we let a different type of barrel enter into symbiosis with our beers!
This year, we were really patient and let two beers mature for a year in oak whiskey barrels.
These barrels are no less than 30 years old and were used for maturing bourbon (U.S.) and whiskey (Ireland).
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6
3/I/25 - 33cl bottle from Geers (Oostakker), shared @ home with Bouvier, BB: 27/X/24, batch: 6404211027 (2025-11)
Clear red orange beer, small creamy yellowish head, unstable, a bit adhesive. Aroma: oxidized, malty, some cardboard, caramel, leathery, dried fruits, a hint of vanilla. MF: ok carbon, medium body. Taste: a little bitter, dry, a bit oxidized, earthy, quite a lot of alcohol, leathery, whisky, a bit hoppy. Aftertaste: bitter, dry, earthy, some alcohol, ok I guess, but not good. Pretty disappointing for a B.A. beer actually.
PS: Looks like that tradition never really took off. Never saw a new edition...
Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 8
Servida en tulipa, color ámbar, turbia, espuma beige claro de media retención. En nariz es una cerveza poderosamente perfumada, malta, caramelo, licor, algo de vainilla, pasas, piel de naranja confitada, ligeras notas de plátano, barrica... En boca es licorosa, potentes notas de malta y whisky (puede que también me recuerde al brandy), además de caramelo, naranja escarchada, algo de bizcocho y madera...calienta allá por donde pasa. Trago corto y pausado. Puede llegar a ser un tanto empalagosa, aunque se disfruta en calma.
Lci. Too much Whiskey... Not balanced at all.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5
Amber colour with thin head. Gentle vanilla. Stronger woody notes. Background sweetness. Sweet but with enough complexity to keep it interesting.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Hazy amber colour, white foam. Fruity nose, green apples, whisky, some varnish. Sweet, malty, with a whisky finish.
Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
One of two new barrel aged Musketeers beers, the blonde one in this case (the other one unsurprisingly being a dark variant). Thick, moussy, egg-white, cobweb-lacing, bit irregularly shaped but dense and relatively stable head on an initially clear, warm and pure amber-hued orange blonde beer with tiny bubbles rising up everywhere, turning misty with sediment. Aroma strongly dominated by whisky in a very convincing, indeed Irish whiskey-like way (not peaty like the dark one), surrounded by notes of wet oak wood (vanilla-ish), calvados, orange peel soaked in cognac, orange loaf, unsalted peanuts, pineapple, old crackers, clove, vague dusty note and some solvents (fresh paint). Fruity onset, sweetish but not too sticky, lively carbonated with minerally effects distracting a bit from the flavour, notes of pear, pineapple and fried red apples, supple and rounded mouthfeel; peanutty, cracker- and old biscuit-like maltiness, some lingering residual sweetishness and spicy phenols (clove), generally clean and streamlined, until - way too soon for me - everything is burned away by the whisky, still coming across as very calvados- or brandy-like as well. An unmistakable whisky aroma rises up retronasally, woody tannins come in (that vanilla aspect) and the alcohol heats the mouth from the middle onwards; nevertheless, more subtle notes of dried-fruitiness, clove-like spiciness, peanutty maltiness and earthy hop bitterishness remain clear enough. Like its dark counterpart, a well-brewed, focused beer drowned in too much booze - for me at least. Again this feels like some 'edelbier' got a shot of Irish whiskey in it, resulting in a 'duikboot' feel I personally dislike. Too bad - this blonde one is even less up to the daunting task of carrying so much liquor on its shoulders than the dark one, and for me the booze is much too dominant, even when taken in small sips. More subtlety and much less whiskey remainder in the barrel would have really lifted this up to another level... A bit of a pity, in all, but not one for me - though who knows how these bottles will evolve in a few years...
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7.5 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
Short-lived off-white head over hazy dark ochre beer. Boozy nose, brandy or sweet whiskey. Banana, unripe grapes, orangepulp on brandy. Alcohol all-imposing, boozy. Again IMHO rather brandy than whiskey, and again orangepeel, Traubenzucker, blue plums. Alcoholthinning, alcoholheat, bit oily feel. Good carbonation. Definitely a good one, if just a tad too boozy for my full appreciation. How much whiskey had been left in that barrel? Purchased at the brewpub