May 2012 Cellar reviews

stone old guardian, "early 2010 release"

Appearance:

(oh i don't know, 3.75)

Smell: Lots of oxidation aroma, sort of cardboardy and sherrylike. Caramel malt. No hop presence. Assorted sugary aromas in the background. No booziness. (3.75~4.0)

Taste: Lots of bitterness which is sort of tinged with burnt sugar, if that makes sense. bit of raisiny/sherry-like oxidation already, but not much (way less than aroma would have you believe, and works fine with the beer). Pretty hot, still. Good malt depth.

Miss the hop and malt balance. Think this is at an "awkward period" where it hasn't quite developed enough, but the nice piny hop counter-balance to the sugary malt has disappeared. Still a tasty beer. (3.75~4.0)

Mouthfeel: Softer than when fresh. Still medium bodied and hot. Carbonation is substantial enough, but mild. I like it a lot. (4.25)

Overall: Old Guardian in general is a solid 4.0 of a beer, I'd say. At 2 years it has some improvement, but mostly I miss the hops. Finishing the bottle will be easy, but I won't open my 2011 until it's at least 4+ years old I think.

 

Southern Tier Backburner Barleywine (no bottling date) purchased early 2010. Not a great one for ageing. Thin, with a bit of an oily feeling on the tongue. Oxidation and stale, cheesy hop aromas dominate. A bit of caramel and dried orange peel try to worm through but don't show enough to make it pleasant.

Oak aged Yeti (no bottling date) circa 2010. A favorite fresh. at this age it mostly showing soy and wet, charred oak and little else.

2010 GI Fleur-I have a soft spot for the GI belgian line and put quite of few of them in the cellar over the years. This'ns also better fresh. I remember this having a more pronounced belgian yeast character when baby. Now it seems a tad subdued with the berry-like hibiscus coming front and center. Still good, but a bit one-note. I may be remembering this as more tasty fresh than it ever truly was...but I'd say don't bother ageing it.

 

yup! ive already begin to rebuild my stock

 

Great Lakes Plead the Fifth: 2010, 2011, 2012, Barrel-Aged Version

Plead the Fifth is my favorite easily available stout, so I've been looking forward to this for a while, wondering if it'll hold up to time or if I'll be sipping it fresh forever. My lovely wife accidentally drank my only other bottle of '10, so we'll have to bump it up if this is worthwhile next year. Four bottles, eight small tasters, seatbelt on, here we go.

2010: Well, there it is. Still pretty good, but drifting into acrid territory, & the body is definitely thinning. Chocolate is the strongest component here. Not bad, but next to the others, now I'm not sad I have no more of the 2010 bottles. * B-/B *
2011: Kick-ass. This one's defined by the roasty notes, while the chocolate is subdued. Strong current of sweet malts. Aftertaste is marvelous, the various components stick to the palate like Elmer's. Much thicker than it's year-old kissing-cousin. * A/A+ *
2012: Almost as kick-ass. This one wins on mouthiness, big & thick & crawling all over the palate with a malty paintbrush. Roast is a lovely, coffee-smell-in-the-morning afterthought. More of what I'd think of as a classic RIS. * A-/A *
BA 5th: Tougher to compare to the rest of the crowd than I thought it would be. The bourbon is heavy enough to eradicate many of the best subtleties of Plead the 5th, which is too bad. Still good in it's own right, but a bourbon bomb that might make the lowliest RIS taste good. Very good, but I'll take my Plead straight-up, thank you. Scratch that. After about 20 minutes sitting out, this bumps up towards world-class, & the base beer really starts to shine. *A-/A *

Conclusion: I'll be saving some of my current stockpile, but not for more than a year or so. The 2010 is certainly still worthy, but it's a serious step down from the other two years; no sense in letting a great beer like this go to seed.

 

2009 Goose Island Sofie-
Started slowly gushing after the cap was pulled. Massive, billowing head on the pour. I was worried, but it smelled pretty great. Peppery, clove, dried citrus, raisin, flower pollen. The carbonation was abrasive and seemed to lift all the flavor away from the tastebuds. After swirling a good portion of the co2 out the flavors held on the palate better. Orange rind, and poppyseed lemon cake. This has lost some of the tart, wine-like character it had when fresh, which I missed. Overall I thought it was pretty. I was the only one who seemed to like this aged version better than fresh.

 

1971 Courage Imperial Russian Stout.

Whoa. This guy was so different from other vintage bottles I've tried. Big hiss when I popped the cap, poured and made some foam, tasted fruity(cherries, as noted by Matt...at the Laramie tasting we had with fellow BA Chuck) malty, some carbonation holding on...big alcohol notes. It truly was unique, going by my past experiences. We all dug it.

 

umm...Do you mean Dark Horse?

 

Ummm....yeah. I always mix up Plead the Fifth & Blackout Stout.

 

2006 Left Hand Smoke Jumper.

I had major doubts on this bottle going into it. I wasn't sure how well it had been cellared before I got it, and besides a WWS and a few select sours it was the oldest beer I've opened. I was really pleasantly surprised by the result however. The beer still had a great pure smoke flavor throughout, and I found that it had a nice smooth rounded finish (carbonation levels were one of my main concerns). The only drawback was a slight amount of soy sauce taste in the background. Otherwise this one was a winner and one of the better smoked beers I've had.

 

2009 Deschutes Mirror Mirror

Infected!

I knew others had experienced this, so I was apprehensive in opening it. I could smell it right away. Oddly, it's not totally undrinkable. If someone handed me a glass and said it was an oak-aged Belgian sour, I'd probably dig it. But it's not, and I saved this beer from a trip to the Pacific NW in 2009 to have for our wedding anniversary and it just doesn't work. I can catch a glimmer of the goodness that is buried underneath the sour twang, so I'd certainly love to try a new release one day. Wishing I had bought two bottles and drank the fresh one right away.

 

Victory Storm King. Enjoy by Nov 09 12. So it's about 4 and a half years old. It's still a pretty decent beer, although malty-chocolatey flavors subsided considerably. They're still there, but are not pronounced as one would hope in the imperial stout. Still carbonated, boozy, very boozy actually - at 9.1% didn't expected it from an older stout. Quite bitter. And at first taste, the bitterness is not that of a coffee or bitter chocolate, but rather hoppy. Then gradually this hoppiness disappears. But most importantly, it's thinned out, far from full imperial stout body. Again, still pretty decent stout, but not sure if it's worth keeping it that long. Have a bottle of a younger one, by a year, will see how that one fared.

 

I bought a bottle of the 2010 at a bar last weekend. I poured the beer into a snifter and it was very clear almost champagne-like, I thought, "that's weird I remembered this being cloudy". The second pour was very cloudy, then I remembered how the sediment in this beer settles very quickly, especially when refrigerated. I guess it had been in their fridge for a while and the waitress must have been careful when she brought it to the table. Anyway, The carbonation was not as intense as I remembered. Fresh Sophie is actually the most carbonated beer I have ever had, its like chugging warm club soda, I like it! The 2010 bottle this weekend was much smoother than the few I had last spring. Overall, this was an awesome beer to revisit!! Cheers!!

 

That's great. I am the beer manager at a restaurant and we are in the early stages of starting a pretty awesome beer cellar. GI Sophie is one of my boss's favorites, so naturally we've got a lot of it that we're holding on to. Glad to hear that it's good after that long.