Draught snifter at 3 Tides, 5/16/15
Small, neat beige head shows moderate retention atop a clear mahogany body with auburn tints.
Leave it to these guys to really nail the barrel aged scotch/old ales. I’ve had a few versions of barrel aged macfindlay and I think I tried a bourbon Chaos. That being said, I really think most brewers don’t do a good job barrel aging beers in 1st and 2nd generation barrels. It’s always just a mouthful of the liquor with the beer severely drowned out. Once in a while you find the occasional beer that really nails it, using the barrel to produce one flavor that dosent dominate the beer, but adds to the complexity, still allowing the malt/yeast/hops to do their thing. But by and large, the extra price and small sample size that these types of beer command makes me stay away from them; just been burned too many times.
Ahem, so after my treatise on 1st/2nd generation barrel-aged beers, they really killed this one. It’s got a little more bourbon character than I would prefer, but not by much, and I also prefer probably quite a bit less than most people. It’s there in the nose and flavor, nutty, woody, a touch phenolic, but not grainy, overly tannic or alcoholic. The flavor is suited best, with ample malts mixing to provide a maple-meets-raisin-meets-wood tannin that helps keep the palate dry, while allowing the MW always-wonderfully-extracted maltiness to balance the beer. Lighter and fruitier than many old ales (though they come in all shapes and sizes), this one takes more of a fruity, lighter bodied Gales-like character, though there’s still plentiful malt to balance, as mentioned. Soft, nearly creamy body has some traces of crystal malt, with no actual booziness or any flaws.