General Tales of Ordinary Madness
Free Will Brewing Co.

 

 

From Free Will Brewing's website: This beer has many components spread across various vintages and casks - including quad aged in apple brandy barrels for over a year, then aged an additional year spread between an aromatic bitters barrel, an orange bitters barrel, and a merlot whiskey barrel. A portion of each was then blended with some Winter Bier aged a year and change in a light whiskey barrel as well as Ralphius aged a year in a cherry brandy barrel. This carefully crafted outcome was inspired by some of our favorite bourbon cocktails - falling somewhere in between a Manhattan and an Old Fashioned in flavor. Booze forward, with notes of brandy soaked cherries, cinnamon, orange citrus, and an herbal spice component.

Well OK then. That's... a lotta stuff. Sounds good, though? Enough for me to buy one, I guess.

I expected a flat pour, but that's not the case at all. A pinky finger's worth of head bubbles up for a minute before thinning to a ring. No lacing. Body is dark mookie brown. It looks the part. The scent wafting outta this glass is a complex, many-splendored motherfucker. Holy shit. Orange liqueur, moonshine steeped cherries, earthy cinnamon (their description is spot-on on that front). There's so much going on. It's fucking delightful. Sweet caramel and toffee. Taste brings the thunder too. There's the aforementioned orange liqueur up front with some boozy maraschino cherry juice and just enough of a Belgian quad core to remind you that this is a beer. Getting some apple on the finish, too. Tart apple. Granny Smith, I guess. There's an alcoholic warmth going on. It's not overwhelming or anything, but it's there. Finishes incredibly dry because of it. Damn this is a fun beer. I'm duly impressed. There was so many moving parts involved in the brewing process and thus so many different ways that things could have gone sideways. But this Frankenstein monster of a beer emerged unscathed and I'm enjoying the fuck out of it.

EDIT: I ended up re-capping this and drinking it over the course of 3 nights and that didn't hurt things at all. It's almost more of a liquor than a beer.