Double Double Cask (2023)
Kane Brewing Company

 

 

 

 

 

**
08/13/23

Bottle to snifter, share with DC.

Aroma: smoke, leather, fig,
Taste: Leather, brown sugar, tobacco
Feel: smooth, wine-y, touch flat, but full medium body.

Fantastic Kane. Again.

**

Poured fro, 500 ML bottle into a Kane pub glass. It pours a deep mahogany with dark cola hues and sports a fizzy, medium mocha-colored head and lacing. The nose is fantastic! Roasted malt, brown sugar, raisin, molasses, caramel, rum, and distinct bourbon. If anything, the flavor is even better. I'm tasting chocolate, caramel, raisin, fig, brown sugar, cigar, sherry, and of course the bourbon notes which are full but surprisingly delicate and add additional sweetness. The BA site lists it as an American Barleywine but to me it lacks the hoppy bitterness and drinks more like an English variant. The mouth feel is luxuriously thick and chewy with low/moderate carbonation, and while there is no escaping the 12.8% ABV it doesn't come across as overtly boozy. Overall, Double Double Cask is a tour de force - a truly superb Barleywine, even by Kane's lofty standards. Drinking it is like slipping on fleece-lined gloves on the first day of winter.

 

 

Pours very dark, thick and syrupy, zero head. Set complex aroma, loads of dark dried fruits: raisin, fig, chocolate, port wine, bourbon barrel, cherry cordials. Flavor is loads of chocolate covered cherry cordials, liquid fudge, raisin, dried figs. Very complex. Sweet, yet tart, tangy. Really cool. Thick and viscous. Overall an amazing beer.

3/1/23
500 ml bottle, a few weeks old
4.5 rating

 

 

Hopes are unreasonably high here for me, but I'm not at all disappointed. This is definitely a different beast than last year's. The Armagnac/Cognac notes are a good deal more prominent here, they come across as sticky, vinous molasses and it is glorious. This molasses note comes across as almost a tangy dark chocolate at times. I also get a ton of fruit here, dried and concentrated to the point of being candy-like, raisin and prune primarily, but also some pear and orange. There is just so much going on here, I also get hints of leather, vanilla, tobacco, honey, and on and on. This is just magnificent, bottled bliss. Kane is King of barleywine blends.