Sarajevo Red
Alley Kat Brewing Company

Just a terrible beer....I hear it went bad during the barrel-aging process, but they released it anyway. Do not drink if you value your tastebuds, and life!

341ml bottle, the first in a series from an outfit called 'Beer for Victory', who are producing commemorative brews at various locations, in honour of the 100th anniversary of the Great War. Sarajevo Red illustrates the assassination of Archduke Franz-Ferdinand, which sparked said world conflict, and is a barrel-aged version of Alley Kat's Imperial Red Ale.

This beer pours a clear, rather dark red-brick amber hue, with two fingers of puffy, tightly foamy, and somewhat creamy beige head, which leaves some splotchy webbed lace around the glass as it evenly subsides.

It smells of musty cardboard, two-by-fours, dry bready malt, sharp, spent yeast, and a bit of metallic alcohol. The taste is spicy wood grain, hollow vanilla notes, gritty, slightly crackery caramel malt, more dank packaging material, i.e. metal-fastened industrial pressed sawdust, and a sidling measure of astringent alcohol.

The carbonation exhibits a fairly low intensity, just a meek frothiness when you really look for it, the body on the wan side of medium weight, and smooth like the aforementioned wood products - sure, but watch out for splinters. It finishes off-dry, barely, the underlying big-ass amber ale maltiness whimpering to the end, at the hand of the still oppressive dry wood 'character'.

I can't believe that it's been two years since the last time I did this, i.e. defend an arguably infected Alley Kat product, so here it goes: while this is a fail as far as a tasty barrel-aged amber ale goes, the failure may only be in the stringent, stark wood that they chose/were able to procure for this, as it does very much seem like raw sawdust chips were the actual aging medium, and they absolutely neuter the base beer. Approach with a healthy dose of trepidation.