Phenomenology Of Spirit (2018)
Hill Farmstead Brewery

750 mL bottle. Deep brown body. Smells of red wine and dark fruits. Mild acidity. Some roasted malts. Tastes of dark fruits, red wine, mild vinous sourness. Some toasty bready leaning towards roast. Lingering sourness. Medium body. Nice. The bourbon barrel is a little lost, which I remember being more prominent in other iterations.

 

 

poured from a 750mL bottle into a stemmed bulb glass. pours a light brown but gathers to a dark brown in the glass with fizzy, khaki colored head. a thick khaki collar surrounds the the glass and remains constant throughout the entire pour. smells of oak, red wine, perhaps even a little cherry and chocolate. some acidic aromas that tingle the nostrils a bit. definitely get a little of the tart cherry flavors on the taste but it’s a little muted after that. not bland or offensive but more unfocused. feel is the highlight of the pour. soft, nicely carbonated but not overly so. slightly dry oaky finish. overall, very interesting offering from the always consistent, always reliable HF. this one has me puzzled. i definitely didn’t dislike it but it’s not as immediately striking as a lot of their other offerings tend to be.

 

Picked up by s friend for me at the Bryond Good and Evil release. Been dying to open and finally did tonight. Not their best work but another really good beer from the best to do it!

 

 

 

 

 

Picked up on a trip to Vermont a few weeks ago, opened while on vacation up there.

Beer looks nice. Dark, pretty highly carbed, formed a nice head on the pour. The smell, however, is a letdown. Not much of the barrel or dark malts are detectable on the nose.

The flavor is where this beer completely falls apart. The label claims it is aged in a combination of barrels prior to release, but the flavor is nothing but moderate sourness. No hint of oak, no hint of red wine or bourbon, not even a hint of roasted malt. I don't know if the ambient yeast just took over in the bottle, but this one was not good. The feel was similarly thin, almost watery, not really able to carry any of those flavors through on the palate.

Overall, this was bad. At $30 a bottle, given the description, I was expecting a rich, complex beer with harmonious flavors of red wine, dark fruit, semi-sweet chocolate, and oak, complemented by the complexity one expects from inoculation with ambient yeast. Instead, this one just tasted sour, with no real discernible flavor to it other than one-dimensional sourness. It ended up as a drainpour. Avoid.