Grand Cru 2015
8 Wired Brewing Co.

 

A: poured into a Duvel tulip to a deep brown with some red highlights topped by a finger of light tan head which fades slowly to a collar around the edge of the glass with minimal lacing.
S: Smells of sour cherries, oak, vanilla and wine barrels. Slight furniture polish note as well.
T: Taste is tart cherries and wine barrel with a little furniture polish, slight leather and a hint of caramel. Slight vanilla but the furniture polish is somewhat prominient. Swallow is pretty strong funk and sourness with some more furniture polish, cherries and wine barrel
M: This beer has a moderate amount of body that is slightly slick and oily on the palate. Carbonation is low but adequate while the beer has a drying finish.
O: Overall this is a pretty solid beer. It has good flavors and some nice complexity. It does this all pretty well but some people may not enjoy the furniture polish note this one has. Definitely interesting but I don't think it's worth revisiting.

 

Bought at Liquor Shed.

Pours a clear dark red, small short lived head of foam. Little bit of lacing.

There's a mix of dark fruits in the smell; black cherries, plums, very oaky, Pinot Noir currants very much in your face. Some acetic qualities.

Very vinous taste due to the barrel aging, fruity, some vinegar, woody with some Brett.

Pretty light bodied with zesty carbonation.

For sure, the sourness level is up there. Got my rolaids ready. ;)

 

Bottle; hazy mogany color, no head; the strong acetic aroma hides all the fruity character of the wine barrel, it's there but it's not pleasant; taste is vinegar and vinegar, some complex notes in the very back but the acetic taste ruins everything once again; almost flat, could have been a good beer, if only...

 

500ml bottle - brewed with currants and cascara (I'll have to look that one up), and aged in Pinot Noir barrels.

This beer pours a slightly hazy, dark orange-brick brown colour, with three fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat fizzy tan head, which leaves a bit of low-lying headland profile lace around the glass as it evenly subsides.

It smells of musty oak staves, acerbic mixed red fruit (cherries, raspberries, and currants), gritty and grainy pale and caramel malt, acidic cooking vinegar, old leather, a subtle Brett funkiness, and some weird herbal and dead grassy bitterness. The taste is sharply tart red fruit (cherries, plums, and currants), grainy and crackery caramel malt, some thin toffee notes, a very old-seeming woodsiness, mild clover honey, Brett and some strange funky otherness, balsamic vinegar, and more of those odd herbal, leafy, and musty bittering agents.

The carbonation is adequate for the big job at hand, via its perky-ass frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, and smooth, sure, and even a tad creamy, once yer frontal cortex accepts all the sour/tart/funky Sturm und Drang going on here. It finishes off-dry, but barely, as the sturdy malt starts to crack under the pressure of the woody, acidic, funky, and herbal essences [sic].

Overall, this is one hell of a complex and complicated (your mileage may vary) offering, with the heady red wine barrel treatment fairly well integrated and spread throughout the whole. A lot easier to put back than I was expecting, including the essentially invisible 18-proof alcohol measure. Good, good stuff.