Bourbon Barrel-Aged Smashed Blueberry
Shipyard Brewing Company

Had on tap at the brewery tasting room. Poured dark with a nice frothy head. Had a nice fruity scent . Was a bit thin but great flavor and the abv was nice at 11. No noticable alcohol to me.
Probably will not have s chanve to try agsin, so glad i tried it.

Guess this got re-released recently, because I just found a bottle at Craft Beer Cellar Nashua last weekend. I've had interesting experiences with Shipyard's barrel-aged offerings. They're usually pretty great, though some have been kind of strange candidates for aging, such as this. I guess, after thinking about it for a few minutes, this really isn't too weird but I didn't quite expect it. Smashed Blueberry is a pretty decent beer in its own right... kind of like a sweetened Scotch ale with berry influence. The barrel-aging treatment gives this an awesome complexity of character that keeps me from hating Shipyard... and that's... bad? But also great, because this is excellent? Damn it!

Pours a superb dark color with a strong, retentive head of khaki foam that seems to lace rather ephemerally. Trying to glean the actual color of this beer lead me to swirling it around in my glass a bit, but I could never really get it to give up any kind of specific hue. All I can say is that this beer is quite dark and bears a thin head of khaki/eggshell-white foam after a while in my glass.

The nose is an insanely forward combination of dark berry and bourbon-soaked wood, combining to create some intense vanilla and tannic notes with blueberry, blackberry and raspberry in there as well. This literally almost smells like blueberry cobbler. Was not expecting this to be so forward with its components, but there you have it. I love that you even get the pie crust in the nose here... this just seems wonderfully evocative.

Flavor is similarly strong and well-done with intense notes of earthy blueberry and pie crust right upfront, giving off a satisfactory air of blueberry cobbler. Blackberry and slight jammy raspberry in there as well with vanilla, buttery crust and even cranberry-like tartness filling out some of the flavor. Damn, this is impressive.

The feel is perfectly balanced with a slightly medium-heavy element coming from the strong ABV. The hefty and almost-smoky malt from the base beer make an appearance here too, though, with some density added to the base. The fruit and malt combine to bring some added heft to the final product. This is a very good offering from Shipyard's barrel house. Top notch stuff!