Cooper
Montgomery Brewing Company

 

750ML bomber picked up as a continuation of my hopes for Montgomery Brewing. The IIIPA & rye were both lovely, so it’s the early forerunner for my favorite new brewery of 2018. Split with my wife. And this iteration has 12.3% ABV on the label, so it's bulked up.

The pour is on the light side for a barleywine, a soft, opaque, muddy orange with a thin layer of bubbles, except for a weird island of big ‘uns piled up against the lee side of the glass. The nose is all about toffee & caramel, with an undercurrent of booze & barrel. Nice start.

Cooper – Barrel Aged is boozier than that regular at Town Hall who stopped by the table to drunkenly chat up my young girls a few years back – seriously, I’ll bet you could have smelled him five tables away. The massive shot of booze is chased with that toffee & caramel from the nose, but rather than richness, the wood lends it a biting, sharp shot of tannins. Booze seizes hold of mouth, stomach, & decision making centers mid-palate, with a bourbon afterimage that stains the palate from teeth to esophagus, leaving behind deliciousness wherever it contacts a permeable surface (what the hell did I just say?). The one drawback is that it’s a bit thin, something one wouldn’t expect from a big, burly, barrelly barleywine. It does up the drinkability factor a bit.

A noble effort & a good beer in a style that’s criminally underrepresented in the Twin Cities beer scene. But I’d take the rye or IIPA over this most days. But hey. It’s here now. And so am I, so we’re gonna make swweeeeeet beer.