Editions On Oak - Port Barrel Aged Dark Ale
Letra - Cerveja Artesanal Minhota

375 ml corked & caged bottle, from a SPAR shop in Funchal. ABV is 9.5%. Brown colour, moderate beige head. Surprisingly modest aroma of malts, port and oak. Pleasant flavour with distinct notes of port wine, oak and malts, very moderate hops. Not sour at all.

Poured to a Ora et Labora taster.

A: The body is brown, having little to no opaqueness. The head is beige, with no retention nor lacing.
S: The aroma is very strong of port wine, specially white port wine, in a mix with white vermute. Very fruity but very tart as well.
T: Taste starts off with a medium sized roasted malts profile, turning then to a fruity and sweet touch given by the port. Right after, the taste gets tart like if it had some minor brett or any other flavourful souring yeast.
M: Body is low. Carbonation is medium to low. Alcohol is unnoticeable but tartness is a bit to high for a Belgian Dark Ale. The barrel didn't evolve too well here.
O: Would love to experience more things from the Editions on Oak series from Letra. They're starting off very well for a first year.

 

this is a radical bottle of beer, one of the more intensely flavored and interesting beers i have had, my first from these guys, tons of respect for it. dark red in color, a little brownish, some haze toward the bottom of the bottle, and a very lively head with great retention. heavy port wine aroma, concentrated and sweet and grapey, grape jelly, dark wine, tons and tons of wood tannins from the oak, this apparently spent a long time on wood, and you can definitely appreciate that in nose and taste. the yeast is strange, its hard to figure this out, is it supposed to be sour? its acidic pretty good, tangy and tart, more than just the intense wood tannins, but it also has a bready smooth old world wort of ale yeast profile along with the weird sourness. dried cherry, raisin, fig, plum, cabernet, its all there. lots of body too, upbeat carbonation, and hardly a trace of all its alcohol, barley even warming in the belly. this is not for everyone, almost a beer wine hybrid after all this time in the barrels, awesome port flavor developed in here and a lot of weird yeast character. incredible beer, really different, not for everyone! i really disagree with the other review here, i thought this was about as pronounced as port can be in a beer, at least in my experience. very very intense. like nothing else out there...

BOTTLE: 33cl. Brown glass. Tan label. Branded black pry-off crown cap. Has a neck hangtag. Best before end of 12-2019.

Purchased at Cerveteca Lisboa for 6.80 euro and served chilled into a teku.

10.00% ABV. Dark ale aged in Port barrels for 2 years.

HEAD: Occupies ~85% of the glass even when gently poured. Thin, of off-white colour, somewhat weak. Retention is nice - about 6 minutes. Leaves no lacing as it recedes.

BODY: Dark nontransparent reddish-brown. I see no yeast or less within.

Appears overcarbonated. A redder deeper colour would better announce port wine, and it's a bit too murky and dull for its style, but I find it generally appealing, if underwhelming, and the head retention is quite nice.

AROMA: Faint red port/dessert wine. Reticent wood; no rich or toasty oak. Mild acidity. A hint of tart fruit. A faint hint of sourness (maybe a 1-2/10 in terms of intensity).

Aromatic intensity is subdued.

TASTE: Reticent port wine floods the palate, eclipsing any base beer character but luckily never coming off too sweet. No rich vivid oak here, nor any other wood. Wheat, drowned out neutral malts. Ale yeast intangibles.

Grape, tartness, mild (~1-2/10 in terms of pungency) sourness. No spices (as advertised on the label). No overt hop notes.

It's balanced inasmuch as it's one-dimensional. Depth of flavour is wanting. Flavour duration is nice. Flavour intensity is average.

I like it, but it leans heavy on port wine, offering little from the base beer.

TEXTURE: Medium-bodied, slightly acidic, smooth, wet, mildly thick, unrefreshing.

Not oily, gushed, boozy, astringent, hot, rough, scratchy, or harsh on the palate.

Fails to elevate the beer as a whole.

OVERALL: Given it's a Portuguese beer aged in port winw from Portugal, one might hope for a more vivid, pronounced port wine and port barrel flavour. This offers merely mild port wine flavour, and brings next to nothing to the table in terms of the base beer. A sipper, but drinkable. It's better than most Portuguese brews, but it leans on port wine too too much, while not offering much in terms of depth of flavour. I'm glad I tried it, but it's so highly priced for its quality I couldn't see myself buying it again.

Low B- / WORTHY