Barrel Bound
Tonewood Brewing - Barrington

 

 

 

 

Tonewood Brewing "Barrel Bound"
$10/32 fl. oz. "crowler" filled on 11/10/17 and sampled on 11/13/17

Notes via stream of consciousness: As I understand it this is a beer that's intended for barrel aging but hasn't gotten there yet, the "raw material" shall we say. The growler opened with a "crack" and it poured an opaque brown-black body beneath an almost three-finger thick head of densely creamy dark tan. When held to direct light you can see that it's clear along the base of the glass, and there are some ruby and dark mahogany brown highlights. As far as I can tell so far the head retention is excellent, and the lacing looks pretty good too. Moving forward, the aroma is clean, malty and grainy with some dark chocolate and caramel, some yeasty apple-like fruitiness, and certainly not hoppy. I'm not sure at this point that I'd even call it roasty. There's some, but it's not directly roasty or coffee-like. On to the flavor... the chocolate remains, and there's a bit of a berry-like fruitiness as well. But again, it's very softly roasty. And it's also quite soft in the mouth with a moderate, very fine-bubbled carbonation and medium body. Velvety smooth. That accentuates the maltiness a bit, but the fruitiness remains clear, and there are some hops there as well, kind of leafy and grassy and lightly earthy. There's a moderate bitterness that's just enough to balance it so that it's got a hint of sweetish chocolate in the finish but it remains dry. The 7.8% alcohol by volume isn't shy, but neither does it really do anything more than poke it's head out from behind the malts. Seeing as how this is intended for barrel again I understand why it is the way it is. Again, it's kind of the "raw material" that's the base of something yet to come. Or not, in this case. And looking back I have solid sheets of thin lacing left around the whole glass except for where my lips were sipping - nice. So it looks like I've covered the look, smell, taste, and feel and all I need to do now is throw in my opinion of it overall. There is a bit of an edge of roastiness to it that gives it a small bite, but overall it's very smooth and rounded and darkly chocolatey. The alcohol presence is nice, as is the fruitiness although there is a little bit of a higher alcohol floating around in there somewhere. In the end it's very nicely done, well balanced, and pleasantly rounded (as opposed to some stouts that can have some rougher edges) and I can't see any reason not to sit down and enjoy one of these.