Massive! - Rum Barrel-Aged
Gigantic Brewing Company

Bottle: Poured a deep dark brown color ale with a medium dark brown foamy head with good retention and some lacing. Aroma of caramelized malt notes with some nice rum notes and light vanilla notes. Taste is also a good mix of caramelized malt notes with some nice rum notes with not much residual sugar notes with some vanilla notes. Body is about average for style with good carbonation and some warming alcohol notes. Interesting barleywine with nice barrel aging rum notes.

 

Chestnut brown opaque body, tan cap. Barley and rum with big toffee and dark fruit make up the really pleasantly dark aromas. Taste uses the rum to enhance the barley and malt, producing strong black strap molasses, dark fruit galore, caramel, and toffee, while the oak serves as a countermeasure to the sweetness and booze. Feel is indeed massive, with slight resin, solid booze warmth, chewy barley and lush depth. The wife loved it.

Poured into a Fremont small snifter. Pours a slightly hazy, medium to dark reddish orange with a thin khaki head that dissipates to tiny patches and a ring of bubbles around the glass. Aroma of caramel malt, dark dried fruit and rum. Flavor follows with dry caramel malt, dried plums, dates, raisins, a touch of oak and rum. Rummy fruit finish. Medium bodied with light to moderate creaminess, despite quiet pour. Another solid barleywine from Gigantic. I'd say the profile on these is more like an English barleywine because of the dried fruit character and low hops, but it's a nice barleywine no matter what category it's pegged in. The rum treatment is a great one. The fruity character of rum meshes very nicely with the base malt and dried fruit nature of this barleywine. It brings out the plum more than in the Port one I tried last year. I think I was only able to get these last year because of the Covid event; I'm guessing Gigantic may have distributed in a wider area at that time. I've never seen these barreled variants in Seattle before or since. Too bad, because they are my kind of barleywines. I'll be getting any version of Massive! That shows up around here. Nicely done.

My last of 2020 series and I have enjoyed the hell out of them. There is a Massive! hole in my cellar now that they are gone...

So much burnt caramel. Love it. It works beautifully with the sugary rum notes and tingly oak finish. Huge, huge beer that works incredibly well.

Thanks Gigantic for these, hope we do it again next year!

Another Gigantic barleywine! 500ML bottle with a red paper “Rum” tag on it. Split with my wife.

The pour is the standard murky amber with minimal head. I’ve found this isn’t a very aromatic base beer: caramel & rum, & not much of either, come to the nose.

Massive! Rum Barrel Aged is the gentlest I’ve tasted of the series thus far, which is like saying I’d like to try to hit the worst MLB fastball. The base beer brings scorched caramel & moonshine while the barrel brings wood & rum. The rum is admirably understated – too often rum pile- drives a beer into oblivion. The combo brings out a figgy undercurrent. Big, full, brutal. Glad I have someone to share these beasts with.

The mild rum makes this a bit more traditional than the others but doesn’t push it to its fullest potential. Very good brew.

A: The beer is hazy to murky dark brown in color. It poured with a short light beige head that left a narrow collar around the edge of the glass.
S: Moderate aromas of toffee are present in the nose along with notes of dark fruits and caramel.
T: The taste has flavors of dark fruits and toffee and finishes with notes of rum from the barrel aging.
M: It feels medium- to full-bodied and a bit smooth on the palate with a moderate amount of carbonation. There is a touch of warming in the finish.
O: If you let this beer warm up it really develops a nice and complex taste. It definitely tastes strong, but masks its alcohol rather well considering that it is 14% abv.

Serving type: bottle