Funny color, delicioso flavor. Mild fizz, sweet flowery fun. Nice hints of juniper from the gin works so well with the flower and lemon grass with cucumber to take home the refreshing cocktail hints.

Big wood, light coconut? Booze

500mL bottle, pours a deep dark mahogany with a small purpleish pink head. Aroma is deep on the cherries and boysenberries, with lots of tannins and oak, cherry pits, and a hint of blueberry skins. Flavour is very fruity and tart, with lots of deep boysenberries, blueberries and cherries, with lots of red wine tannins, and tons of oak. Lovely depth to the fruit, with lots of musty fruit skins, finishing on oak and vinous tannins. Excellent.

500ml bottle from Tavour. Black pour, fizzy beige head fades to flat. Sweet coconut aroma, chocolaty. Taste features layers of coconut and sweet chocolate. Velvety, smooth, creamy. Hint of booze. Top notch.

Bourbon (Heaven Hill) barrel aged barleywine from this successful craft brewery in Oregon, from a 50 cl bottle. Moussy, medium sized, yellowish pale beige, slowly opening and diminishing head on a hazy, deep copper brown beer with wine red glow and disparate bubbles slowly rising up around the edges of the glass. Aroma of hazelnut liqueur, quite intense sweet bourbon and lots of vanilla-exuding oak wood, chestnut, toffee, candied fig, baked banana, tawny port, old brown honey, Sultana raisins, caramel sauce, hint of wool cloth. Candied, dense onset, candied cherries and figs, raisins, bit sticky-sweet even but kept in balance by a dim, vague sourish undertone; soft carb, full and vinous to even somewhat syrupy mouthfeel, made ‘heavier’ by the alcohol. Toffeeish, very caramelly middle, chestnutty and hazelnutty as well, with lots of that ‘praline-like’ residual sweetness, brown-honeyish and thick, but a strong vanilla-scenting oakiness and warming bittersweet bourbon counter the sweetness a bit and in this case bring a certain level of drinkability. Hop bitterness remains low (28 IBU in this case but of course largely hidden under all that malt and booze); woody and bourbon-y vanilla fill the nose retronasally while a long, warming, ‘liquid praline’ finish is established, with clear and clean malt flavours still composing the basic flavour track, as it ought to be in a good barleywine. Not exuberantly hoppy as many American barleywines once were, but at the same time too intense, ‘big’ and bourbon-forward to be called an English style barleywine; in spite of not neatly belonging to either subgroup, this Maestro feels very classic, even old school, which is a feature I really appreciate in any barleywine. Worth its considerable price tag and probably well-suited for extended cellaring.

Coffee in the name, coffee in the description, coffee in the beer, still less coffee than Anchorage coffee beers. Any of em. And I don't hate it! Definitely light Belgian strong ale fig notes + light coffee hints. Nice barrel notes upfront and throughout.