Concrete Jungle
The Alementary Brewing Co.

brewed as an anniversary beer, this is an imperial cream ale aged in bourbon barrels with tart cherry and orange zest, a very interesting beer, not like others i have had before in this style. the base beer is kind of secondary to the barrel and the booze and the additives, its just a strong ale, nothing really remarkable about the base, but the beer overall is quite detailed and layered, with orange really forward, a lot of sweet from the cherry and the whiskey together, like an old fashioned or something, lots of fruit, brown sugar, vanilla too, kind of soda-esque, but not artificial like that. some nice natural bitterness from the barrel char and from the orange alike, the base beer so straightforward that these things really come out, kind of unimpeded by the malts or anything. great depth of flavor though even without that, a lot of residual sugar and a lot of exposed alcohol too. this is really boozy, and i am glad to be sharing the bottle, but i like the beer a lot. a cool idea, they could have made the cream ale itself a little more interesting, but this is a good one as the fruited strong ales go, nice barrel character, good stuff!