Almond Suite
Private Press Brewing

 

 

A big shout out to tacosandbeer for this bottle!

Vintage: 2022

A - Dark brown pour that's borderline black with dark caramel colored lacing and lots of legs oozing down the sides of the snifter when it's swirled.

S - Roasted chocolate, dark roasted chocolate, some char, almonds, Bourbon, vanilla, and some wood on the nose.

T - Nice complexity going on here with several layers of flavor. Roasted cocoa malt, coconut, almond, wood, vanilla, Bourbon, toasted brown sugar and ends with a lingering roasted cocoa, Bourbon, and almond.

M - Big body to borderline light syrupy and leaves a healthy residue of sugar stickyness on the lips, light warming in the back of the throat.

O - Complex and flavorful. Recommended!

This one pours a very dark black color, with a small head, and a little bit of lacing.

This one smells like roasted malt, dark chocolate, toasted almond, peanut brittle, coffee, bourbon, and honey.

As expected from Private Press, this is hardly a pastry stout, as there’s more focus on barrel char and roasted malt. There’s some dark roasty coffee type flavors, dark chocolate, a not really sweet and mostly bittersweet toasted and almost smoked nuttiness, with light barrel vanilla and some caramel.

This is medium bodied, with very little booziness, and a nice drinkability.

I think I liked the double barrel version a touch more (of course, duh, two barrels is always better than one), but this was still quite nice in its own right.

Glossy black but with reddish-brown edges under a quick to fizzle out head dispersing to a thin tan ring.

Compared to the atrocity that was Starry Noche b2 before it, the contrast in mouthfeel, carbonation and barrel presence is immediately apparent and quite substantial. The medium body, by comparison, features a stingingly spicy whiskey that's quite mature yet measured, pairing with a mild nuttiness.

A fortuitous accident that a buddy of ours opened this previously committed bottle, it helped to provide some comic relief while allowing us to do a very enjoyable side by side with Double Barrel.

Look - fantastic thick blackness with a lasting thick brown head and lacing
Smell - chocolate caramel slight nutty
Taste - almond chocolate with a slight caramel and wood
Feel - thick but not over thick and creamy light carb
Overall - really nicely done

A: Collar jets up to a shade of bone white, then heralds a rapid discourse from the midnight pour. The body relaxes on oily leather, while tracing highlights near dark mocha, as the collar compresses with minimal preservation and adherence. After a while, an optimal longevity for the ABV’s ability to pin a glass thread

S: Scent is commenced by a honeyed lacquered landscape that’s mannered by roasted malts. The digs reference fiberboard, oak block, and a growing intuition for Almond bark just after the incipience. Proceedings continue to labor dark chocolate on turtle bark, with sticky pudding toffee, and a dried bond of honey on prune leather. Timed amenability brings out a new level of almond with ties to Daim bar and German Bienenstich. A bit further and the progression begins to concoct a honey relationship nearing Bolo de mel, with an agricultural presence behind nutted fig and wild raisin. This in turn roughs up roast, while jotting the nutty/bready nuances of malted warmth. The midsection furthers this, by promoting an opportune moment for creamy-caramel milk, and molding buttery-brown sugar to cookie-butter pies. There’s a sensitivity to the distantly placed charred vanilla, as the matter swells up with barrel heat and charges dark fruit restorations. Those restorations being fitting to the encircling process of tannin, as notational fronts rest on wood chip locales. All the while, a remaining attendance on Crème de Noyaux spins out to the appendix with dry smoke, offering a spread of embers on raisins towards the detached draws of honeyed caramel. The blend pushes on with desiccated barrel cyphers, and formulates a complexity that puts the start at a deficit

T: Touch of marzipan fruit with orange blossom honey, that’s evocative to the hops play on citrus to piney earth, while incorporating malts bready tone in fresh Challah. In a similar fashion to the aroma, palate eases honey records throughout the launch, while slowly instituting almond fixations across minutes. In this manner, almond works to an inclusiveness on Medovik, before the chocolatey rendition in Spartak. The barrel initially collaborates with the roasted malts and bitter hops on a parallel note in coffee, then works the courtyard employing bourbon backdrops to clocked vanilla and timed wood. Maple staves, hickory planks, and oaked timber advance that clocked/timed growth, as barrel acclimates a warmness to creamer, nuttier plots. Congruently, vanilla builds along oak chips, and lumbered planks, before ripening enough to assist honey in the spreads. That extension draws upon the sunnier regions, where Hovenia dulcis silts, and reinforces almond paste with entrenched drupes. As weather acclimates the blend to barrel heat, and broadens the subtext, a meeting takes place between desiccated coconut and brandied almond wood. Yet, the encounter is only momentarily close-knit. To that end, withered dark fruit take precedence, and guide lingers in mature oxidation, while subtlety poking at berries (of cranberry bogs) before pillaring to burnt cherries. The wooded terrain gains a bit more traction, as mid-palate settles, and prefaces the dry amalgams for an enduring resonance

M: The blend traces an impending touch of dry smoke with barrel directness, yet restrains the control to a moderate sensation. Nonetheless, a bulky element that can be intense on sweetness, yet quick to dry against the airing of fruit on black licorice and burnt leather. Retrospectively, a smooth calmness to the agile feel, which lightly borderlines a sweet/rich tinge to the discrete carbonation

O: A protracted openness that barters for a more balanced directive across the blends fusions. In this regard, an evocation to Birched Honey while crafting marzipan, before diversifying to a hard-bitten Clark bar, which kicks off those dry echoing amalgams to tailpiece the build. Accordingly, a relaxing stabilization that takes time, while preserving a dry roast and burnt char locale