7.4

Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 6.5 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 8

Next to General of Chaos, another barrel aged barleywine from this interesting new microbrewery in West-Flanders, this time aged on Jim Beam bourbon barrels - for no less than six years, which is longer than anything I have seen before in barrel aged beer, except for some of Struise's creations, perhaps... If this is true, then this Straete guy has been working on this beer for four years longer than the official opening of his brewery, which is of course perfectly possible considering his preceding experience as a hobby brewer - but it does remain remarkable that any brewery would publish a beer that physically existed before the brewery itself formally did. Anyway: apart from some loose, large, disparate, beige-tinged bubbles around the edge which vanish in the blink of an eye, no head is present - and none can be created even with forcing; beautifully warm bronze robe with fiery copper red glow. Aroma of caramel liqueur, Belgian chocolates, sweet Jim Beam of course and a whole lot of it, strong oak furniture but also furniture polish, varnish, methylated spirits, 'Koetjesreep', pecan, dry earth, very old hazelnuts, almond, wood glue, Picon, oxidized sweet sherry, vague hints of 'dropjes', nutmeg, dried autumn leaves and porcini. Sweet onset but not too sticky, with a vague sourish touch underneath and quite some 'dark' fruitiness of ripe pear, blue plum and blackberry jam; some dark sugars linger but again, do not stick too much. Carbonation is as good as completely flat, making the overall mouthfeel needlessly 'heavy' and cumbersome; a caramelly, toffeeish, hazelnutty and brown-bread-doughy dark maltiness glides over the tongue, does get thinned by the alcohol but still suffers from diminished drinkability due to the total lack of carbonation. Lots and lots of woody, tannic oakiness in the last stages, as expected, pairing actually well with the nutty side of the malts and producing a vanilla-like colour retronasally, where the alcohol combines with it all, resulting in something old fortified wine-like (a very old bottle of sweet sherry kept by my grandmother springs to mind). Before long, the bourbon takes over, and does so in a way that can indeed be characterised as 'disarray': it scorches and heats, dominates the poor beer brutally and produces headache-inducing solventy side effects. The bourbon flavour lasts for a long time, but luckily the caramelly and nutty character of the beer is carried along with it. Over the top, like its colleague Chaos, way too boozy for me personally to go wild about - a classic case of muscle-flexing and audaciously exploring boundaries I guess, but in its defense, it does match its overwhelming alcohol content (and effect) just a little bit better with a clean, nutty, malty barleywine profile than General of Chaos, operating at the same ABV but coming across a bit more yeasty and quadrupel-like. So if I had to choose between chaos and disarray, indeed the latter would get my preference (even if both essentially mean the same) - whilst realising how cynical this may sound in the geopolitical context of our present day.