Generational - Double Barrel-Aged (VSOP Cognac)
Side Project Brewing

 

 

 

Beautiful barrel forward stout. The bourbon is predominate, but the cognac finally makes an appearance once the beer has sat for a long time and opened up.

 

 

 

 

Look - black thick great rimming
Smell - booze chocolate with dark red fruit and vanilla and wood
Taste - chocolate followed by dark red fruit with a nice woody and booze
Feel - full but less than expected very light carb
Overall - pretty fantastic

 

 

 

Pours like black paint. No light. Viscous. Daunting. Looks almost undrinkable. Very thin, dark ruby brown head emerges around the edge of the glass. Gone before you can even catch a real glimpse. Glass coating, with molasses-like alcohol legs.

Get your nose close to the glass and you’re met with vanilla, bakers chocolate, dark berries, stroopwafels and coconut.

Flavor is just off the charts. You can taste the venerable aging process in sequence. Starts with the high-cacao dark chocolate and black toasted malt of the base stout, transitioning to massive bourbon heavy flavors of dark cherry and oaky-caramel from the Buffalo Trace barrels. Finishing with sweet, fruity and vanilla notes from the VSOP barrels. Aftertaste is the unmistakeable but balanced fury of a 16% beer.

Mouthfeel is oily slick and dense, but the lack of carbonation is preventing that creamy smoothness that I like in a stout. Alcohol is mouth-numbing.

I mean, I knew this beer would crush worlds and it does.

poured from a 375mL bottle into a snifter. pours a dense, oily black with basically no foam whatsoever. big, big barrel presence. i really don’t detect cognac barrel specifically but the barrel is there in full force along with bakers chocolate and slight hints of vanilla. taste follows but to me integrates the barrels and the base stout better than the nose. lots of chocolate, bourbon and cognac, oak, slight vanilla and even earthy tobacco and dark fruits. full mouthfeel, although maybe a little thinner for SP standards. lower level of carbonation. overall, a very enjoyable barrel-aged imperial stout but i think expected a tad more complexity and while the cognac barrel is present it doesn’t add much to the original bourbon barrel-aged release.

 

 

 

My god. This is is decadence at its finest.

The biggest issue with this beer is that it has no head and looks flat. It’s not flat, but it looks it. Aroma is rich notes of bourbon, oak, vanilla, roasted malts. Taste has notes of roasted malts, bourbon, oak, cognac, sweet char, maple syrup, barrel, vanilla, and marshmallow. At points it’s like licking a barrel. It is astounding how complex this beer is and a testament to what brewers can pull out of a stout with just barrel aging alone without adjuncts. Feel is thick, smooth, creamy, silky, and rich. Surprisingly bright carbonation - but it works given how thick this beer is.

Overall it’s damn near perfection.