Triple Barrel GBS
Hardywood Park Craft Brewery

Lots of flavors everywhere. Needs to sit another year!

Presentation: 750mL brown bottle with no dates, served in a Rastal Harmony tumbler.

Appearance: The tan colored, half finger head goes away fairly quickly and leaves behind a lot of lacing that covers the entire glass. Its a deep, pure black color with some very dark brown showing up towards the edges then held up to light.

Smell: A rich, beautiful aroma of gingerbread cookies hits the nose right away. That's followed up by some fresh, caramel apple, vanilla, coconut, brown sugar and molasses.

Taste: It's a sweet flavor at first of gingerbread cookies, brown sugar and milk chocolate. That's followed by some more bitter flavors of light roasted coffee, cocoa powder and charred oak. In the aftertaste there's caramel apple and a slightly spicy, alcoholic bourbon note.

Mouthfeel: It's thick, creamy and very smooth with medium-low carbonation. It never gets cloying or overly aggressive texture-wise.

Overall A wonderfully complex beer with a lot of flavor and great texture that's surprisingly easy to drink, especially for such a big, bold stout.

Crowler, 3 days after pour:
Pours a bit oily black with a nice coffee head that fades, both in volume and color, until it become a tanned fishing wire around the glass edge. Feel is medium, with a little heft from some residual sweetness, but not much. Actuall a pretty smooth beer for all the booze influence.

Nose is fruity and spicy, resembling an apple pie in somewhat expected ways with the gingerbread and brandy influences. The rum barrel comes through next. It's a nice aroma, though I could argue that the actual porter/stout notes get effectively hidden. The same doesn't quite apply to the taste, mainly because I've had GBS before, and the base does come through, specifically with the ginger. The brandy comes through (I gotta assume it's apple brandy like the other variant, since I get a bit of apple). Apple pie with rum-spiked coffee, and a hint of bourbon barrel char in the background.

Everything to me is nicely integrated in this thing. I generally don't like rum barrel beers, but the influence in this beer is actually nicely done. A barrel-aged spiced beer with a fruity influence and it works? My girlfriend called this beer "crack" - which is a term she uses for big stouts she really likes (the first being Evil Twin Imperial Biscotti Break).

 

 

 

Pours nearly black with a thin off-white head. Smell is strongly of dark fruit, followed by ginger. Taste is dark fruit up front followed by a mild but prominent gingerbread flavor, tapers into rum then a hint of bourbon to follow. At first it was like someone had dipped a gingerbread cookie into brandy, then sipped some rum and followed up with a shot of bourbon. Finish is bourbon. Feel is creamy, surprisingly not overly boozy. Overall I actually really enjoyed this, maybe a touch on the higher side price wise, but I enjoyed it and would consider buying again.