Three Ryes Men: Pineapple Upside Down Cake (2024)
Reuben's Brews

Poured from 12oz can into my BeerAdvocate teku. Canned 11/26/24, this was the final beer of my 2024 Reuben’s advent calendar.

Appearance: rich, dark, ruddy brown hue with some haze in the body. Head is a low finger of amber-tan foam.

Smell: friends, it smells like pineapple upside down cake. The wonders of modern hop extract chemistry! Richly sweet with some dark raisin and date aromas typical of a barleywine, but with a burst of tropical pineapple aroma and even something I fancy to be a bit of cherry as well. It is absolutely as advertised! I think I might prefer a standard barleywine but this is definitely new and interesting.

Taste: if anything it delivers more and deeper pineapple flavor than the aroma; some of the classic barleywine flavors have to take a back seat to the sweetness and fruit. That being said, this is still a very tasty treat to sip on after dinner.

Mouthfeel: huge body with a low carbonation and a really silky, rich smoothness. Wonderful.

Overall: definitely a sippin’ treat. 12oz is a pretty humane serving size of this — I can’t imaging drinking a bomber of it. I’ll only ever want one, but it’s still a lovely dessert.

Poured into a Fremont small snifter. Pours a dark orange red with a thin light khaki head that dissipates to sparse patches with slight lacing. Aroma of caramel malt, over-ripe pineapple, lime, passion fruit and other ripe tropical fruit. Flavor is caramel malt, ripe pineapple, mixed ripe tropical fruit, lime and a vague cinnamon note; boozy. Medium bodied with light to moderate creaminess. A remarkable flavor of pineapple using hops, although the description is a bit confusing: "tropical fruit puree" and "does not contain pineapple". The puree is hard to parse but is very much like a tropical fruit smoothie of ripe mixed fruit. I love the base rye wine in this series and although this isn't my favorite variant, it works quite well and could be a fine big ale choice for a tiki bar. Not as sweet as I expected and thus just the way I like it. Odd, interesting and sippable, if a bit hot at this point. Reuben's has really dialed in the big ryewines and stouts, impressive.