Islay Scotch Barrel MacFannyBaw
Against The Grain Brewery

June 2014 release; drank 6/18/14 @ the Yarchives.

Dull orange murkiness.

Nice off-white head; decent lace.

Smoke & fresh ham nose.

Medium thick mouthfeel.

Ham & smoke up front, with hints f honey sweetness.

Bold as hell but somehow smooth & easy to drink, with no booze heat. A strong rauch.

i have made this remark before, but for all the label gimmicks and weird recipes these guys toss at the wall, sometimes they really hit, and when a spade is a spade, we have to call it as such, and i am ready to designate this one a full on spade! some of their best work to date, a real peaty scotch barrel houses a decent but also light and a little wild and iodine forward malty brew that seems to have wheat and pils malts in the mix at the same time, and some heavy campfire smoke to it on top of the wood. i love the complexity, but at the same time its quite drinkable. there is mild bandaid here for sure, but there is also birch bark, breakfast tea, and alder wood smoke, char, cocoa, compost in its freshest form, old corn, stale cereal in the best way possible, wet wood, single malt whiskey, vanilla, and dried hay. its old school, interesting, and drinkable, with a great dry finish for how malty it is, and a distinct scotch whiskey flavor to finish. super good, one of a kind really, and if i had never heard of these guys before this one, i would be ready to declare them as one of the best immediately, but its almost contradictory to my soul to rave about this when almost everything else they do seems so cheap and forced and fake and lame and weird and dumb and like they have me on the hook. i cant dig their vibe, but one in every four or five now has been splendid, and this is one of their best, worth the price and something that with a more adult name would almost trick me into taking them seriously for a moment...