Irish Bayou Stout
Urban South Brewery

from Facebook brewery page: Irish Bayou Whiskey Barrel-Aged Stout 9% ABV.
We aged this vanilla, almond coffee stout in Jameson whiskey barrels as a part of their #caskmates project! After aging this stout one year, we finished it with New Orleans-style coffee, vanilla, and sweet almond. If you remember our 2019 Irish Bayou release, you're in for a treat this year!
Ok in my hand. Big 19oz can. Date Pkg 2/2/21 from can. No abv no ibu on the can.
Look: dark black motor oil (shines beautifully) dark chocolaty head a bunch little bobbles.
Smell: smells like coffee tiramisu
Taste: coffee chocolate wood far almond candy vanilla nuts and more ?!
Feel: full body warm creamy creamy smooth
Overall: Perfectly made full body stout delicious and creamy coffee on nose nut hazelnuts and almond not much . I wish more barrel-cask for noise and taste! (But it's fixable I have a bottle Jameson Caskmates Stout Edition )
I want this can to always be in my fridge for a change (minus coffee will disappear over time)

 

 

Drank from a snifter, a friend was kind to split a can.

Black as night in color, opaque. The foamy cap was an attractive reddish brown in color. Durable with ample lacing.

Roasted coffee and malt, vanilla, woody, aged sugars, a notes of whiskey.

Sweet coffee with vanilla spiked creamer. Some chocolate and whiskey tinged barley.

Milk stout body, light and sweet. The milk sweets are strong. Barrel influences are modest.

Nice looking and aromatic. The milk stout sweets aren’t a fave. Not bad.

 

 

From their press release: "10% ABV - Barrel-Aged Coffee Stout with chicory and medium roasted coffee, finished on Mexican Vanilla and almond."
Aged in Jameson Irish Whiskey Casks (part of the 2019 Jameson Caskmates project).

CAN: Stovepipe (19.2 fl oz) format. Ran me $11.99 USD plus tax at a beer store in New Orleans...at that price, this had better be good! Pull-tab. Sleek green label design. Packaged [XX]/11/2019.

"Whiskey barrel aged vanilla almond coffee stout."

HEAD: Dark dessert-like grey-brown. Not the gilded shining golden brown I hoped for, but certainly enticing. Has a better head height (~8-9cm) and retention (~10 minutes!) than I could have predicted. Creamy, robust, and full. Leaves thick lacing on the sides of the glass as it recedes.

BODY: Predictably, it's an opaque solid black. No yeast/lees are visible within.

Looks well-carbonated.

It's a nice looking stout overall...not a top tier appearance, but a promising one. I'd single out its head retention as impressive given the high ABV.

AROMA: Barrel sugars, faint vanillin, whiskey stave warmth...I guess I expected a gimmick barrel aged beer (like Budweiser's Jim Beam nonsense or New Belgium's even worse Knob Creek effort), not one that truly gave off authentic whiskey barrel notes. But the aromatics definitely point to whiskey barrel wood, though not recognizably Jameson.

Almond? Don't find it. Coffee? Don't find it. Vanilla? Just vanillin from the barrel. Chicory? Don't find it.

Dark malt sweetness, dry barrel char, raisin, chocolate malt sweetness, a hint of roast. If anything, the base beer is lacking, failing to bring as much to the table aromatically as the whiskey barrel.

Suggests a sweet dessert-like imperial stout that doesn't deliver on the notes its label proclaims it possesses. Aromatic intensity is average for the style. Alcohol is well disguised but some warmth is nevertheless noticeable.

TASTE & TEXTURE: Coating with a nice push-pull between dryness and wetness. Neither coarse nor smooth, but somewhere in between. Certainly unrefreshing. Filling, even cake-like given its weight on the palate coupled with its firm softness. Full-bodied and thick, though it stops just a bit short of syrupy.

Chocolate cake-like sweetness mixes with artificial vanillin (barrel-derived or actual Mexican vanilla bean? I can't be sure, which is a bad thing). Barrel sugars are present and there's some whiskey-like spice and warmth towards the finish, but it doesn't evoke Jameson or Irish whiskey specifically...I couldn't tell you if it was Scotch or Bourbon or Irish Whiskey barrel aged if I tried it blind.

Almond doesn't really land as cleanly or distinctly as I would have liked...there's just a dash of almond sweetness mixed in with the hodgepodge of sweet dessert-like flavours around the climax and in the beer's third act.

Not a lot happens up front...opens simply on dark malt sweetness before the chaos of overwhelming disparate flavours rushes in. More a mess than an ordered gestalt brew with a clear purpose.

I don't taste any coffee or chicory whatsoever...so much for those notes. Use more pungent evocative ingredients, Urban South.

Finish is all vanilla, and the effect intensifies as it warms.

OVERALL: I hoped for a more balanced deliberate beer; this is at best a likable mess of flavours. The base beer disappoints with its simplicity and the ease with which it's overridden by the drab indistinct barrel notes. This isn't the cross-marketing gimmick beer I feared it'd be necessarily, but it's a definite disappointment at $11.99 USD for a single can (which, I imagine, will prove a chore to drink as I get deeper in). I do like Jameson specifically, but its character just doesn't manifest here.

Too sweet a beer, lacking adequate balancing roastiness (from carafa or charred/burnt malts) and bitterness (e.g. from the coffee & chicory it was ostensibly brewed with).

I'd like to see them age it longer in Jameson barrels (and hey, why not call out the Jameson barrel - ideally one of their better whiskeys - and slap an age statement on this?), brew with a stronger more evocative coffee, go bigger on the vanilla and chicory additives, and crank up the almond to a more noticeable level. Oh, and - of course - reduce the fucking price.

I foresee this becoming an emperor's new clothes post-buy rationalization beer, but I can't stand for that nonsense...it's a mediocre $12 per can beer I regret buying, and not much of an imperial stout - particularly a barrel aged one. If I had it to do over, I'd nab the 4 pack of Old Rasputin sitting on the shelf across from it for $7.99 and would pocket four bucks.

(Price doesn't affect my rating. This beer's mediocrity is the real knife to the gut; the pricing just twists it).

C (2.89) / AVERAGE