Quadruple Shot - Vanilla Bean Barrel Blend
Tree House Brewing Company

12oz can with no canning date.

Poured into a Rastal Lawrence stemless tumbler.

Appearance: Black as midnight. The head is dark brown & pours two fingers tall with an aggressive pour. It seems viscous while it's pouring into the can. Eventually no head on the beer at all

Aroma: Big vanilla pudding & vanilla frosting notes. Strong chocolate presence as well. Earthy coffee. Not detecting much barrel after immediately pouring this one at fridge temperatures. The barrel arrives after the stout starts warms up a bit.

Taste: Blast of vanilla. Blast of earthy dark roast coffee. Midway through you get a nice chocolate stout & caramel bourbon note. Lighter barrel presence than the vanilla, coffee, & chocolate. Nice balance of the adjunct flavors here, but I would like a bit more barrel. Not too sweet or too rich for a pastry either.

Mouthfeel: Not as thick as I was expecting based on the look, but I am okay with that. It's a pretty smooth sipper without any booze at all. I would still call this a pastry stout body, but leaning towards a lighter side of the pastry spectrum it's not full blown pastry to me. Medium-full bodied stout with low yet adequate carbonation levels.

Overall: I tried Quadruple shot and really like it. This is a very nice variant of that beer. Really dig the barrel aged coffee stouts especially with vanilla or coconut so this is right in my wheelhouse. Not sure why, but it's missing a little bit of a wow factor that I can't quite put my finger on...which isn't necessarily a knock on this beer because I found this beer to be really delicious overall.

12oz can received as a gift from a friend. Says BEER X4 on the bottom of the can. I'm not sure how old this is, but I think that my friend purchased it from Tree House within the past six months.

Look: This beer is super dark - it's almost pitch black - with a frothy, light brown head.

Smell: My initial notes are brownie batter, bourbon, strong black coffee, and vanilla. I get the impression that there is a good integration of flavors here.

Taste: This is quite a beer. I am surprised at how sweet this beer is; this may be a high perception of sweetness from being conditioned on vanilla beans, but I tend to think that it is just a lot of residual sugar here. I really want to love this beer but there's something about it that is just not hitting for me. I think that it is way too sweet and the carbonation is too low.

Feel: The mouthfeel is hefty - nice thickness. This is a full-bodied beer. I do wish that it had a bit more carbonation though, but I suppose that is a natural tradeoff between body and carb.

Overall: Just my second Tree House beer that was not a New England IPA (Hold On To Sunshine was the other one). The viscosity on this stout is remarkable. It's such a velvety smooth texture. It's just really sweet and it doesn't have the level of complexity on the palate that I was expecting from the nose. For me, there are a lot of good and not so good things about this beer.

 

 

Probably the best barrel blended stout I've had from TH to date. Unlike some of the others where it feels like a cost saving measure more than anything, the combination of a barrel-forward base stout with fresh, sweet, coffee-forward stout works well and adds a lot more flavor than you would get otherwise

90/100

 

This one pours a very dark black color, with a small head, and not much lacing.

This smells like French vanilla ice cream, chocolate fudge, oak, bourbon, and caramel.

The regular old Quadruple Shot Barrel Blend – sans vanilla – was better than this one, as the vanilla definitely revved up the sweetness and richness a bit. It’s still quite tasty, with a rich vanilla and chocolate chip ice cream type, not some cheapo grocery store ice cream, like something that costs $10 a scoop served by someone with a curly mustache. There’s less coffee and more vanilla here, but a nice creamy caramel-ish barrel character is also the star here.

This is thick, almost syrupy, but very drinkable, with no real booziness.

This is quite decadent and a little silly, but still very tasty.