Flying Buffalo - Bourbon Barrel-Aged - Cherry
Griffin Claw Brewing Company

 

 

 

This brew was served from the tap at the Griffin Claw Brewing Company taproom in Birmingham, Michigan. It arrived in a fatty house goblet, showing a solid dark chocolate brown coloring. It held a one finger head of khaki colored bubbles, showing okay retention. Few spots of lacing were left around the glass as this descended. No haze or sediment was noted, and carbonation appeared to be light. The aroma gave big bourbon booziness, massive buttery diacetyls, clean vanilla, sour oaky wood, sweet and tart Smarties candy chalkiness, dark cherry juice, heavily syrupy milk and dark chocolates, clean chocolate and black malt roast, bran muffins, cinnamon spice, sweet cacao, malted milk balls, toffee, cardboard, cotton candy sweetness, honey and cloying maple syrup, molasses meat loaf glaze, and walnut oils. Moving to flavor, we noted barky oak, sour red cherry and cranberry juice, dark chocolate and black malts, chocolate milkshake lactics and sugars, apricot jam essence, lemon zest and tangerine skin, vinegar acidity, heavy buttery diacetyls, light caramel candies, cotton candy sweetness, honey, rich bourbon corn and burn, and cork. The body was shockingly thin, and the carbonation was flat to light. Otherwise, the mouth met oily slickness, but this only served to transition to dripping warmth and savoriness. Slurp, smack, cream, and froth were all decent, and the abv was appropriate. This one was a definite sipper.

Overall, this beer was not what we expected. For a cherry stout you think of dark, fleshy fruitiness, as compared with the more sour side of the fruit, as in lambics or fruit beers. Here, to our surprise and disappointment, you receive the latter. It’s actually quite bizarre through the taste, skirting the line between being overly sour and cloying sweet. This actively diverts your attention from what is otherwise a nicely chocolatey, and richly roasted stout base. Unfortunately, this is relatively lost. While all this is going on, however, it does distract you, and assist in masking the 11% abv tag on the beer. You would never know it was above 10%. Perhaps we had heard too many good things about it, and built it up in our minds, but this just didn’t really do it for us beyond anything else comparable.

Short Review. I first had this beer at the 2014 World Expo of beer, I thought it was pretty nice, but it was a little too sweet for me. When I had this time on tap at Griffin Claw I thought the exact same thing, but I did like the balance that it had, every aspect showed up a little and for the most part they worked well with each other.