Bourbon Barrel Aged Flying Mouflan

i drank a bottle tonight and simply cannot agree with the folks saying the nose is the worst part or that its lacking...the nose is outrageous and probably my favorite part of the beer. it includes all the wonderful barrel nuance i look for in a well barrel aged beer: vanilla, caramel even toasted coconut. the taste is sweet raisons, chocolate and tangy whiskey.

i hesitated on believing this was barrel aged for 3 years, but after tasting it, it certainly has some depth and profile to be expected of beer that has spent quite some time in barrels. maybe its a blend of barrels of different age or simply just the product of blending barrels with different qualities together. but there were some sips that seemed old and almost musty/oxidized


something about this beer truely has me perplexed and my suspicions intensified as i spoke to a friend about it. how is this beer "bottle conditioned" as it claims on the label yet it had zero sediment in the bottom and was bottled only 3 days ago? if you look close there is a bottle date on the neck of the bottles. if this beer is that carbonated after 3 days maybe we should be concermed about bottle bombs in the coming days/weeks?

 

Like many others, I'm a little disappointed by the pricing on this. Splinter beers in the past (although packaged in 750 mL bottles) were not quite so expensive, but of course beer is a luxury. We can compare this to other breweries/barrel aged stuff, but for Troegs it seems a little ridiculous. I'd be curious to hear how the pricing can be justified. Picked up two bottles today and I'm really looking forward to trying this. The beer spent 18 months in the barrels NOT 3 years. I talked to a sales rep who spoke with the lead cellarman, Tim, who oversaw this. I'm not quite sure where the 3 year thing came from...

 

Price...OUCH

 

The pricing seemed high to me off the cuff, but it's really just $24 per bomber which is a price point that people in Pennsylvania should be more than familiar with for barrel aged beers.

 

A question for the people frustrated about the price.
Did you opt out of buying the previous splinter beers too because of the price? Lets take the sour argument and how those cost more to make out of the equation and talk strictly about splinter black and red. Those were roughly the same cost per oz, just in larger bottles. I think BA troegenator was the only bottling in their barrel aged lineup that was cheaper and im not sure why? I too thought it would be more in line with troegenator pricing than the older splinter beers.

 

It's the format. People seeing a $48 four pack and I'll admit, my initial reaction was to recoil as well, but then you think about the price per ounce. In that context, the price isn't so bad. If they'd been selling $24 bombers I wouldn't hesitate to buy them.

But I digress. There's no way I can get anyone there until at least Saturday and I'm sure it'll be long gone by then.

 

I never purchased any BA offerings from Troegs before for a few reasons. I'm not willing to stand in line for hours to buy beer, I don't buy large format bottles often, and even without those issues, the prices were a bit high.

The Mouflan price caught me off guard because typically small bottles cost less per ounce than large bottles. So I figured low 30's per four pack was a worst case scenario price. 33% higher than Troegenator is hard for me too understand. No big deal, lots of great stuff from Troegs at a fair price and plenty of great barrel aged offerings at less than a third the cost from other breweries for me to enjoy.

I'm just disappointed because I assumed this would be in a price range where I could comfortably afford a few 4 packs. I drove 45 minutes without knowing the price, so part of my disappointment stems from sticker shock after a fairly long drive. Seeing those prices posted was pretty deflating. I'm over it now.

edit: I am hoping that the rationale behind the high price tag was to ensure that it stayed on the shelf for at least a little while so more people could try it. I can kind of understand that.

 

Troegenator case price is about 33% less than what cases of flying mouflan used to sell for a case.

 

Good point. But didn't big bottles of Troegenator cost about 33 percent more than the small bottles? So a more expensive base beer is cancelled out by the smaller bottle format. :-)

 

Maybe they changed their minds about bottle conditioning it after they had the label approved?

 

I have never seen a big bottle of Troegenator and I have been drinking it since it was a seasonal only.

I'm not a big fan of Troegs new corked bottles. Their Triple which was bottled in them was close to 100$ a case because of the format.

 

Any way any of this is still gonna be around by Saturday?

 

They released bombers of Troegenator and NN a few years ago, I don't recall exactly when. A pic is here http://www.garyswine.com/shop_craft_beer/06468.html

I dislike corks and cages as well, I wonder how much that adds to their packaging costs?

Bottom line, did anybody guess these would cost anywhere near this much? Upset or not, we were all surprised, right?

 

I'd love a bottle if anyone has one to spare. My one year old and an upcoming trip south are preventing me from being able to make the 100 mile from drive from the Philly burbs.

 

in 7 hours yesterday they sold through 35% of it
figure into this the die-hards who left work sick so they wouldnt miss out and all the other people who rushed in immediately after work to buy it. i think its safe to say that the initial surge is over and it will continue to trickle out the rest of this week. at the very least some will probably still be around this weekend...if not for sale to-go, at least still available to drink on site. i really believe the price point on this will make it last longer than anyone could have predicted. but again...this is all a guess. who knows, a bunch of bottle shop shit heads could be rolling out the minions to line up and buy cases right now and it could sell out today. who knows?

 

Thanks. I can't go out at all this weekend but I have a friend going up Saturday morning. Hopefully she can snag me a 4 pack.

 

I was just there earlier today (around 11:15) and there were three cases sitting behind the counter, and the diplay had about 10 single bottles, and 12+ four-packs.

This does not take into consideration cases they may have "in the back". I know when Impending Descent was released they'd wheel out more cases on a dolly any time it started to get low. I did not ask about the current stock remaining for BBA Flying Mouflan. So there may be much more left than was in plain sight.

 

They can keep it at this price!

 

A little after lunchtime today they went through an entire display case in 20 minutes. I was trying to get in touch with a friend to see if they wanted any and I saw this happen. They restocked as I left.

 

anyone from Annapolis want to drive up on Wed?