Bottled, thanks cquiroga! Very black. Aroma of oak, vanilla and licorice. Sweet and tarry, full bodied. Extremely strong barrel character, but then everything in this beer is very strong, so it kind of matches. Molasses mixes with chocolate, oak and vanilla. Salty licorice finish. The barrel aging has improved it, and made the rough edges less noticable.

Bottled, thanks cquiroga! Dark black, minimal head. Tarry nose. Very swet and thick with lots of molasses, burnt roasty malt and oily syrup. Very full bodied with salty rye bread and tarry finish. Hugely flavourful, but a bit rough.

Draught pint at Solana Beach on 3/23/2007
Lovely, soft, strawberry-amber body with some darker ruby tints and a yellow-flecked, medium-beige head that is large and well-retained, providing webs of lace down the glass. Clarity is medium-high. Some glassiness/chill-haze and light carbonation in the liquid.
Expecting a big malt bomb from a "Triple Red", I was quite surprised to smell what seemed like yet another IPA. Fortunately, quite a delightful one. Very grassy and floral hop aromatics are very heady, but definitely strongly aromatic and pleasant. Extremely fresh, they slowly, but irreversibly give way to a more expected citrus hop nose, as Rastacouere points out. Some crystal malt mixes in with the citrus hops and produces an orange hard candy-like note, but juicy, red grapefruit notes destroy the hardness and plenty more melon and sweet oranges dot the finish. Definite wintergreen and pine resin linger around as well, but I never found it too bitter in the nose. Soft, buttercream-like malts spill forth with warming and provide a nice balance without becoming entangled in the hops. No alcohol that I could find, despite its strength, and a very strong aroma overall.
Creamy malts and a light, but engaging carbonation produce a very soothing texture. The malt has notes of toastiness, vanilla, medium-dry caramel and sweet cream, but never gets cloying, adding more texture than it does flavor. Crystal malt is fully absorbed in to the soft base malts. Pine and grapefruit lay on top of the malt, from the start, and provide a good deal of bitterness, but also a huge flavor. Cherries, lemons, nectarines and peaches emanate from the hops, while red apples and a berry-like malt fruitiness is complementary as well. Some doughiness builds up on the end, and the creaminess thickens somewhat. Add to this a very large pine-like acidity and it’s quite a mouthfull. But for all that, I found the alcohol to be very well-controlled and the beer quite flawless. Definitely a beer to be approached slowly, but from the wonderful opening of floral and grassy hops, to the creamy, soft texture and ample bitterness, I think there’s a lot to enjoy here.

Bottled. An unclear orange beer with a thin yellow head. The aroma is very nice with strong notes of grapefruit, and the flavor is sweet with strong notes of grass and grapefruit, as well as light spicy notes, leading to a nice bitter end. But the body is a bit thin.

Bottled. A pitch black and somewhat murky beer with a thin brown head. The aroma is acidic with notes of vegetables combined with chocolate. The flavor is like slightly acidic chocolate sludge combined with notes of grapefruits, leading to an end with a slight alcohol burn. The body is thick.