Bourbon Barrel Aged RIS
The Grizzly Paw Brewing Company

Needs to be aged.

Appearance - Pours a dark chocolate brown with three fingers of foamy mocha head.

Smell - earthy, leafy, and floral hops, cocoa, bready malts, vanilla from the barrel, raisin, plum, and other dark stone fruit aromas. There is some earthy yeast as well.

Taste - Starts off with the earthy, leafy, and floral hops then goes into the malts, cocoa and the vanilla from the barrel. The raisin, plum and other dark stone fruits follow suit then is finished by the earthy yeast.

Mouthfeel - Medium bodied with light to moderate carbonation. Finishes smooth with all the ingredients lingering.

Overall - A bold and tasteful offering from the folks at Grizzly Paw. All elements of this brew are done well and makes this a true sipper.

650ml, black wax sealed bottle, the 2016 Single Edition, aged for a year.

This beer pours a solid black, with the scantest of amber basal edges, and three fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and somewhat fizzy brown head, which leaves a bit of roiling sea swell lace around the glass as it quickly abates.

It smells of bready and doughy caramel malt, some sharp dark stone fruitiness, vanilla-forward Bourbon wood, bittersweet cocoa powder, mild anise spice, and plain earthy, herbal, and soused-up floral noble hops. The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, sort of sour black fruity notes, a subtle Bourbon oakiness, medium chocolate, black licorice, weak cafe-au-lait, and more understated leafy, herbal, and besotted floral verdant hoppiness.

The carbonation is fairly laid-back in its basic form frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and generally smooth, with nothing really playing spoilsport here. It finishes off-dry, but not by all that much, as the barrel essences swoop down, like death from above.

Overall - as noted on the label description, the wood does indeed go the long mile in reducing 'any cloying sweetness' (which is the brewery admitting that there was any in the first place), which renders this a fairly quaffable experience. Add in the essentially masked north of 10 points of booze, and we have a veritable winner on our hands.