Junie Perro
Transient Artisan Ales

The beer pours black with a sudsy, sizzling mocha colored head, the nose is boozy with contributions from both the gin and bourbon barrels, and there’s loads of chocolate fudge and vanilla.

The taste really captures the boozy gin flavor, which works exceptionally well to complement the bourbon and provide heat at the back of the palate. The chocolate fudge and vanilla cut the booze, with an assist from the honey and subtle citrus note.

The big, creamy mouthfeel is perfect for this big beer. Transient nailed this one, IMHO.

This reads like a train wreck. These ingredients will not work together. It is impossible. Salted caramel rye stout aged in gin and bourbon barrels, adjuncted on orange peels, honey, vanilla, and cacao nibs. No way.


The thing is: it’s magnificent! The aroma is like an orange honey trippel, with a kick of vanilla at the end. It’s black and mostly settled looking in the glass. The flavor is complex like quantum physics. It has all the flavors of the aroma, and manages to squeak in nuances of gin…which I thought would absolutely ruin this beer…but it highlights the honey sweetness like a nice tea when you’re sick. Then it pushes a vein cacao liquer at the end to give it a solid harumpf close. Mouthfeel is dead perfect, thick without any syrupy goo and a cleanse at the end from the bourbon and barrel tannins. The alcohol is complementary, but does give a little touch of bitch slap. It is not genteel. I don’t get much caramel, maybe traces in the end with some focus…imagined or not…and the salt does not play in as any sort of detractor.

Really, this beer should not work, but it slays.

The pour is stout black with a moderate head that left no lacing for me.
Aroma is lost on my Covid damaged nose.
The taste; let me begin by saying I wasn’t expecting much as salt, salted caramel or not, salt taste just ruins beer for me. But I detected no salt, and the smorgasbord of additives were deftly mixed in to provide a pleasantly semi sweet stout dripping in dark fruits, dark chocolate and mild coffee.
To be sure, a better trained palate would suss out far more detail, but this is a treat. Of course, if you prefer the bitter aspect of some stouts, this one isn’t for you. (What are you doing drinking a BA stout anyway? That almost always kills the bitter)
The feel is viscous, not as much as the depth of flavor would suggest, but it makes for a nice sipper.

 

 

A - Pours motor oil black with a thin tan head.

S - Aroma is cinnamon, chocolate and honey.

T - The taste is chocolate, salted caramel, cinnamon, honey, bourbon and some nice heat from the gin barrel.

M - Medium body with medium/low carbonation. Syrupy mouthfeel with a light crisp finish.

O - Really digging this. Big cinnamon flavor adds a nice spice to the sweetness of the other adjuncts.

Appearance - The beer poured an oily black color with a little visible carbonation and a tan head.

Smell - The gin radiated a fresh bouquet of spruce in the nose.

Taste - At the front, gin, coffee, and coconut made the initial impression. Herbal notes where revealed to be cinnamon as the beer warmed. lactose sugar smoothed the profile to almost a paste-like quality allowing the gin notes to linger.

Mouthfeel - The addition of lactose sugar really had an effect. As previously described, the beer had a paste/shake-like quality.

Overall - There are a lot of unique aspects about this beer that make it likable.