Pallbearer - Reserve Mélange
The Veil Brewing Co. - Production Brewery

Matte black with a fuzzy brown head that quickly recedes to a slightly oily surface.

A heavy char just shy of hickory allows room to impart a pleasantly peppery spiciness throughout the fairly viscous body that exhibits deep dark chocolate chip frosted brownie with cocoa dusted dates.

Rich and complex. AF.

 

poured from a 500mL bottle into a perennial snifter. pours a dense, thick black with a dark brown foam cap. aromas of milk chocolate, bourbon, caramel apple, toffee and oak on the nose and taste. this is really good. the way the apple brandy barrels shine give it a subtle sweetness and the base stout is chocolate-forward and thick. enjoyed this over the span of about 2 hours and it was enjoyable start to finish.

Typical Veil stout, coating the glass like old engine oil. Hardly any head, but what develops is nearly as dark as the beer itself. Menacing.

Massive aromas of vanilla caramel chews, bourbon soaked brownie batter, burnt sugar and slight dark fruits. It’s rich and complex.

The flavors are just huge, without being overly dense or sweet. It’s mouth coating, without being cloying, and you keep going back to more to see what else it will reveal to you. More caramel and vanilla at first, but seamlessly transitions to rich coffee and dark chocolate bitterness, smooth fruity bourbon and oaky maple. The base beer is holding strong in spite of the long barrel aging process. Willett barrel is definitely carrying the weight here, and I’m not tasting any overt apple brandy flavors (thankfully). It’s amazing the barrel-aging process can produce such complex flavors.

At a time when Veil has been leaning a touch too sweet with their stouts, I was so pleased to see how balanced this was. Not sure how an extra year in the bottle impacted this, but I can’t imagine it being much better.

Poured a deep rich black to dark dark dark brown into a tulip - just exquisite - right amount of barrel, brownie batter and mocha and slight hint of maple. This is super thick and syrupy. The Willet barrel is fantastic - one of my favorites insofar as aging stouts. Think this is one of the better Veil beers I've had - full disclosure, I think regular old Pallbearer is one of the best non-adjunct stouts going, so I expected a lot from this, and it delivered.

This one pours a ridiculously thick looking dark black, with a very small head, and no lacing – but black stains down the glass.

This smells like rich oaky bourbon, brownie batter and fudge, burnt brown sugar, roast, caramel apples, maple, molasses, oak, and espresso.

Like most Veil beers, this is sweet, but not in the very cloying way a lot of them are. The barrel character is just absolutely tremendous. There’s definitely more apple brandy here, but the Willett barrel character carries a lot of the weight as well, adding a roasty, oaky, spicy, and almost maple-ish character. The base beer has some roast left to spare even with 2 years in barrels, with lots of chocolate as well.

This is really, really thick – but not syrupy, almost like concentrated mocha or something like that. There’s very little overt booziness here.

The Veil can be a very silly brewery sometimes, but their non-adjunct stuff is often quite good.