Oil Man - Vanilla
Elevation Beer Co.

750ml
Capped
Bottled On: 01.01.18

Poured into a tulip a very nice dark brown/black color, very nice carbonation, with a very nice thick/creamy one-finger plus tan head, which leaves some nice small islands, and some nice creamy sticky lacing behind. The nose is malty, with a nice touch of chocolate, toffee, a nice touch of vanilla, licorice, slight bourbon. The taste is really nice, malty, with some chocolate/toffee, very nice touch of vanilla, licorice, slight bourbon, really nice sweetness. Full Body, ABV is hidden extremely well, a pretty nice complex brew. Overall, this one is very tasty. So subtle! Goes down so easily!

With this beer, I will have had the coconut, coffee, and vanilla iterations of Oil Man over the past three days... As with the others, this is a fairly medium-bodied beer, black, of course, with a big tan head on top... All three present characteristics of bittersweet chocolate char and cold, sweet espresso, with a bit of bourbon and woody tannins... Currently (as of my review), this vanilla version has the best rating of the three (which is why I saved it for last)...

Perhaps the vanilla didn't hold up as well as the coffee in the stout, but it's influence is not much greater than that one might get simply by bourbon barrel-aging a beer, meaning, it is not particularly pronounced.

As a group, I would say the Oil Man BBA stouts are fairly typical of the style, without any particular qualities that set them apart from the pack. The barrel-aging is rather subdued, the base stout seems fairly ordinary, and other than the coffee version, the featured flavors are not particularly enticing.

In sum, a good stout, a decent barrel-aged stout, but not a strong "bourbon barrel vanilla stout" (if that's even a thing)... Okay to buy and try, but not quest-worthy... For the record, the 750 mL bottles, with a 10.8% abv, were about $17 each...

12/14/18 bottling...