Less Than Alone
Triple Crossing Brewing

 

Draft at TCB Downtown. Near black pour, razor thin ring of beige head, still. Aroma is a near perfect blend of roasty malts and chocolate, sweet, light booziness. Taste is sweet, malty, roasty, dark chocolate, creamy, heavy. Booze dances around, you know it's there, but it never steps out in front. Pretty luscious.

Look - black and thick with a slight tan head and rimming
Smell - strong booze vanilla dark fruit and woody
Taste - sweet vanilla dark fruit like a cherry and great woody
Feel - full body with a slight fizz and cream
Overall - pretty fantastic

This one pours a very dark black color, with a small head, and a little bit of lacing.

This smells like sweet creamy vanilla, brown sugar, caramel, dark fruit, milk chocolate, bourbon, leather, and oak.

This is absolutely one of the better barrel aged vanilla stouts that I've ever had. The vanilla provides a lot of different flavors while not getting too cakey or overwhelming. I feel some brown sugar, caramel, blueberry, along with more typical sweet vanilla flavors, along with barrel char, dark chocolate, and oak. It's just super tasty and it's all well integrated. There's a really deep barrel flavor that stands up very well to the big old vanilla infusion.

This is thick, creamy, and with no real booziness to it. It's quite drinkable for the style.

This is decadent and super enjoyable. Triple Crossing manages to do both delicate lagers and heavy duty barrel blasts well.

Poured from a waxed bottle that @cubatobaco generously gifted me for being a proxy.

Pours a nearly black, thick body with almost no head at all. What little head was there was a cola color and dissipated quickly.

Smell was light barrel and not much more. I've held onto this for a while, so I could see that taking a bit away from the vanilla, but hopefully keeping it in a fridge the entire time helped. I did notice a bit more vanilla as the beer started to warm.

Taste was similar to the smell, as the barrel was there, but not overwhelming. The vanilla definitely shined through which was perfect for me. I'm starting to appreciate well-crafted barrel-aged beers, so this was a nice step.

Mouthfeel was medium. I thought it would be thicker from the pour, but it wasn't overly thick, which again, was good.

Overall, a nice beer that I would have never gotten to try had it not been for @cubatobaco.

The beer pours a nice off-white head that dissipates quickly while the beer itself is a dark chocolate brown so deep that it looks black. It has a nice, slightly oily texture to it.

The smell is pretty good. The notes are fairly intense but balanced very well against each other. The smell starts off with a marshmallow note that is the combination of the vanilla beans and vanilla notes that come from the aging process. The mocha chocolate notes come out afterwards and intensify once the beer warms a little bit. There is a slight and sharp alcohol note in the finish but it's hidden very well.

The taste is very good. It starts with more of a vanilla note that slowly transition into a marshmallow one followed by a mocha chocolate note. It's pretty good. However, as the beer warms up, a more stringent vanilla note pops up in the finish after the chocolate fades a little bit.

The feel is pretty good. It has a heavy body with a decent thickness to it. It has a nice tingling carbonation in the finish.

Overall, this is a very very good beer and one worth having as a special treat or at the end of a cold day.