Oak Boy
Parallel 49 Brewing Company

From notes from up north

Appearance: Deep opaque brown with Crimson notes when put up to the light. One finger of head, no retention or lacing.

Smell: Warming is needed for this offering, rich toffee with coffee smoke and oak but the potency just isn't there even after warming. It needs to be stronger.

Taste: Toffee malt with a hint of earth to balance it which walks hand in hand with some mild oak and vanilla and ends with a too strong dry nut note.

Mouthfeel: Carbonation is low, and really only seems to assert itself in such as way as to drown out the Oak. I've noted dry nut aftertaste, which is OK but why not oak? Transitioning is OK.

Drinkability: The oak is mostly lost, and with it the appeal of drinking a beer call Oak Boy. Easy to get and keep down but the beer is leaning too much into a nutty English Bitter almost Porter territory then a more malt and oak focused brown I expected it to be.

Final Thoughts: Two notes I've left on this one "Must Warm!" and "High Hopes Dashed" with both I feel being completely accurate. If you are advertising Oak as the main point of the beer, it had best be front and center, and it isn't here. If this was called Nutty Acorn I'd probably have been more charitable, but this was a disappointment.

16 ounce can.
Pours a clear cola brown with finger plus creamy foamy tan head.
Earthy and slightly oaky nose, toast, a bit of caramel and vanilla aroma; hint of molasses bread.
Taste is malty with bread/toasty flavour, a little bit nutty, caramel and again a vanilla sweetness; there is a soft woody note and a subtle earthy bitterness.
Light end of medium bodied with tingly active carbonation - smooth, clean and really easy drinking.

Parallel 49 Brewing 'Oak Boy' oak aged brown ale @ 5.0% , served from a 473 ml can
A-pour is cola brown from the can to dark brown in the glass with a small beige/tan head
S-some roasted malts , hints of caramel
T-semi sweet brown ale , oak aging does'nt stand out
MF-ok carbonation , medium body
Ov-should be listed as English brown ale
prost LampertLand

Pours a dark reddish brown with a thin 1 finger head that dissipates very quickly leaving a light lacing on top of the beer. The aroma is fairly weak with hints of dark malts and oakiness. The taste is also fairly week for a brown ale with some toasted malts and hints of cocoa. Mouthfeel is ok, a little light for my liking but not terrible. Overall a nice beer but I have had other brown ales that I liked more.

341ml bottle - day 22 of the 2018 Parallel 49/Red Racer Alpine Adventure Pack. This is an oak-aged version of P49's Old Boy Ale.

This beer pours a clear, dark orange-brick brown colour, with two fingers of puffy, finely foamy, and rather fizzy tan head, which leaves some approaching headland profile lace around the glass as it quickly dissipates.

It smells of bready and doughy caramel malt, some indistinct pome fruitiness, oily bar-top nuts, a mild barrel stave oakiness, and very tame earthy, musty, and floral noble hop bitters. The taste is gritty and grainy caramel malt, vanillan oak, more earthy nuttiness, bruised pome fruit, and some plain leafy, herbal, and dead floral hoppiness.

The carbonation is quite restrained in its milquetoast frothiness, the body a decent medium weight, and generally smooth, with a nice airy creaminess evolving as things warm up a tad out of the ol' basement bar frigo. It finishes off-dry, the malt and oaky vanilla showing the most lingering oomph.

Overall - this is a pleasant enough BA version of their brown ale, as I can at least discern some woody characteristics. My only beef is that these sort of things typically result in something higher than your average (5%) ABV, which is not the case here.