Angry Amos
Country Boy Brewing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The brown in this Brown Ale is a murky cloudy color with a thickness and chunkiness to it. The head was thick, almost syrupy and was a ring of lather at the edge of the glass.

Caramel tones seem to dominate but are accented by toffee and chocolate sweetness. Slight tones of butterscotch and praline are underpinnings for a malty backbone.

For all the interesting smells the taste is more one dimensional with a strong butterscotch taste. The butterscotch is a buttery butterscotch and doesn't delve into the Wurthers toffee realm. The finish has some caramel malt but the buttery flavor overwhelms my palate. I like butterscotch and it's a surprising beer flavor but it's tone is too strong for me.

The feel is thick, hefty and smooth. Very easy to drink with a nice creaminess there is a small alcohol harshness but it's relatively tame.

This beer has been floating around town for awhile and I've never been compelled to try it, but that was my mistake.

Very hazy, caramel brown hue with a pillowy foam of head. No translucency to be found, which makes it look like a glob of caramel candy. Lots of malty sweetness on the nose with lingering spice, sage or perhaps cardamom. It really shines on the palate; complex bourbon traits vie for attention with inherent spices. Caramel, toffee and vanilla couple with rum spice to form something akin to an old ale with a robust mouthfeel. This beer has a lot of character and a lot of flavor. I want to sip it slow, and I want to chug it at the same time.

The love affair of Country Boy's Amos Moses Brown Ale and Baird Brewing's Angry Boy Brown ale not only joins the taste of the former's English-like taste and the later's hoppy American taste, but both are "amped" to imperialized strength. Then this Imperial Brown Ale is aged for a couple months in Maker's Mark barrels for a sweet and bourbony thread that runs through its taste.

Medium brown in its color, the beer takes on a lighter saturation of brown, mainly due to its barrel "bleaching" effect. Still, the beer remains significantly hazed, showing only dark honey highlights about its edges. Well headed with a tightly-knit off-white head, the beer laces remarkably with clingy collars for well defined concentric rings.

Its aromas are assuredly of chocolate, toast, coffee and nuts- but there's a few key scents that pop out immediately- butterscotch and good 'ole Kentucky bourbon. Its savory buttery scent weaves into the barrel's caramel, nutty woods, vanillans and slight cherry-like alcohol scents.

To taste, the beer opens with a sweeter and savory tone: caramel, toffee and a dash of brown sugar meets butterscotch and cashew for a brittle-like taste that carries the flavor through the middle palate. But its later taste is lightly bittered, as if by walnut oils. Accented by scorched wood, coffee and cocoa, the robust taste is alive and well despite its Werther's candied upstart. Still, the beer's barrel aging continues its tribute with boozy spice (could be rum-like as well) and vanilla-like smoothness for a certain dessert-like flavor profile.

Creamy, smooth and quite velvety, the beer interrupts all that after its silky start in favor of powerful warmth, boozy strength and a lightly oily texture. After its short-lived creaminess subsides, its sweetness is slow to fade. That all leads to a finish that's long and sweet, arriving only at a semi-dry finish well into the next sip.

Angry Amos is a highly savory taste that's reliant on its strong caramel and bourbon flavor. Its butterscotch counterpart is an asset to its taste and aroma (even though it drowns the beer out a tad), but leads to a moderately dull texture. If not for that, we'd have an incredibly robust Barrel-Aged Imperial Brown Ale.