Let me start off by saying I like cranberries. Cranberry bread, cranberry muffins...but not cranberry beer. The aroma was interesting but I barely finished the bottle, and had to drink it in short doses to get through. Just not my thing I guess.

I'm re-rating this because I feel that my earlier notes were too forgiving (and a rating of 3.0 was too high). If one wanted to homebrew something like this, I would advice them to mix up some molasses, soy sauce, cough syrup, brandy, maple syrup and a little vanilla extract, and that would get them close. I don't mind its unbeerness - I love the Dogfish Head World Wide Stout - this is just unpalatable. I'll have a shot at trying one after its aged about 10 years (or more). Final Note: never could understand why they called this 'Triple Bock'. Its not a bock in any sense of the word. One more time at it: a 1997 vintage sampled in 2003. The longest aged sampling I've had of it. It could surely go more, but if it isn't drinkable now, will it ever be? Dark dirty brown opaque appearance, totally still. Oily texture in the glass. Aroma is dominantly fruity (fig, raisin) and alcoholic, moderately roasted, with soy sauce. Moderately acrid, no maple in the nose. Quite pungent and complex but not pleasing. Sweetish up front, with figgy notes, overwhelming acrid coating in the mouth, some soy sauce and licorice notes (cough syrup), and burning finish. Lingering wood. Some port-like notes, but long bitterness leaves only a hint of dessert wine. I could manage to finish a 4oz serving of this, but I wouldn't enjoy it much -but at least I'll bump the numbers up a little. In the end, it needs alot of work to be a good beer - they've done much better with the Utopias.