BBL Aged Stout
Kootenai River Brewing Company & Restaurant

Taster at brewery. His one goes from zero to sixty in record time. Normal pour, light aroma, then BAM! Big full boozy barrel roast grains and a wonderful feel. Very nice!

 

 

13oz, very bulbous goblet at the surprisingly pleasantly located brewery in Bonners Ferry. The name comes straight from the beer menu here, and is not laziness on my part.

This beer appears a solid, light-absorbing black hole, with a small cluster of reddish Coca Cola seemingly coalescing at the top of the stem, and two hefty fingers of puffy, densely foamy, and well creamy tan head, which leaves some rather attractive webbed lace around the glass as it lazily falls away.

It smells of astringent Kentucky barrels - wet, rye-soaked wood, dry vanilla, and a weird spiciness - grainy caramel malt, bittersweet cocoa, neutered dark fruit, acrid Scandinavian anise candies, and a further leafy, booze-tinged floral essence. The taste is more barrel-dominant edginess - besotted wood grain, bland vanilla, and cheap Bourbon whiskey - wan toasted caramel malt, day-old coffee, stale orchard fruit, and a still tame earthy, weedy, and musty hoppiness. The barely elevated ABV over the standard stout really doesn't present itself as such.

The bubbles are generally long gone from their possible original disposition, the body a bare medium weight, as the barrel just cuts right through the heart of the matter, rendering an obfuscated smoothness, at best. It finishes off-dry, sort of, as the sensation is fleeting, the lingering grainy woodiness once again seeing to that.

Yeah, every once in a while one runs across a Bourbon barrel aged example such as this - you know, the kind where you gradually (or right away, your mileage may vary) catch on that this was, um, enhanced by something like Wild Turkey, so take from that what you will.