The Beer Traveler BA Oloroso
Mikkeller ApS

Hazy amber color with beige head. Aroma has some crème brûlée, dessert wine and generic sweetness. Taste has light wine notes, toasted malt and some bitter earthy notes on the finish. Medium to light body, medium carbonation, a bit acidic.

750ml bottle - man I'm getting tired of these hard to read labels from this self-professed brewing asshole.

This beer pours a hazy, dark orange-brick amber colour, with four fat fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and creamy tan head, which leaves some stellar stratified rock face lace around the glass as it quickly sinks out of sight.

It smells of bready and doughy caramel malt, a pungent dark orchard fruitiness, musty yeast, estery Sherry, a bit of barrel oak, some muddled earthy Christmas spice, and a very subtle leafy and perfumed floral hoppiness. The taste is big and fruity up front - overripe apples, red grapes, and plums - followed by an emboldening caramel/toffee maltiness, more flor-dusted dessert wine, still understated seasonal (the upcoming ones) spices, ethereal white chocolate notes, besotted wooden staves, and some consistently tame earthy, floral, and herbal hop bitters.

The carbonation is fairly active in its palate-pinging frothiness, the body a solid medium weight, and generally smooth, with maybe the spice and latent alcohol astringencies starting to make their move. It finishes off-dry, the fruit and malt stepping off the gas enough to allow the dryness of hop, spice, and alcohol alike to provide the required dose of sanity.

Overall, this is one tasty and engaging BA dubbel, with the Oloroso sherry cask providing some very laid-back, old-school woody wine character. Easy to drink, with a well-integrated, near 17-proof wowee sauce quotient. I gotta say, this brew does inspire thoughts of travel, especially to the various European origins that comprise it.