The First King Of Kiev - Cabernet Barrel-Aged
Mad Swede Brewing Company

Bomber from brewery. Dark brown with ruby highlights, ring of beige head. Roasty malt aroma with red wine notes. Taste starts with the traditional RIS flavors, but quickly gets the cabernet barrel fingerprints all over it. Sweetness, fruity, light bitterness. Not as boozy as you would think.

very cool to put this huge stout in a wine barrel, especially a local one, here it adds rich dark fruity characteristics and yields something entirely unique, enormous, complex, and wonderful. 2019 vintage on tap at the brewery. deep dark brew with a lathery burlap colored head and great lace as it drinks, remarkably well carbonated for the style too, shiny and will refined looking. aroma is amazing, immediate wine tannins, jammy raspberries, tart red currants and cherries, and concentrated fruit like dried blueberry or raisin, awesome with the obvious chocolate notes in the malt and the warming alcohol rising up. i like all the oak this has, very mature, very nuanced, subtle vanilla here too from it, earthy, wow. the flavor is just as good, tons of dark fruit and rich wine character, port almost to me, fortified tasting with the booziness, cherry and blackberry now too. traces of toasted coconut among all the dark chocolate and baking cocoa from the grain, a slight burnt or smoked taste that rounds out the low end, and then the oak and wine again at the end, really compelling and delicious. its smooth to drink on even with some warmth, and seems immediately wintery to me, like it needs a blizzard to be seasonally appropriate, a wonderful sipper and among the best beers ive had from these guys in any genre. the wine barrel is an awesome treatment for this stout, which is quite versatile itself. elite level!

2019 vintage. On-tap at the brewery in Boise ID.

A: Dark, jet-black, with a small khaki-colored head.

S: Crazy red wine characteristics on this one; boozy cabernet and oaky tannins; deeply-roasted malts.

T: More of the same; jammy; charred caramel; vanilla; milk chocolate, espresso on the drying finish with more oaky tannins.

MF: Full bodied, mouthfeel cut down a bit with those dry boozy characteristics.

O: This one grew on me a lot as it warmed; if you like wine-barrel-aged stouts (or red wine in general) I believe you will like this one. I enjoy barrel-aged stouts, so this one delivered overall.