A guy in our group is trying to land one to complete a vertical. He's struck out pretty badly so far. I've offered up a few things of interest but apparently not interesting enough. By all accounts this beer is past its prime anyway. I wonder about what other things could be landed with a similar package, but verticals are verticals and it'd be fun to drink each of them.
If someone has an '06 Abyss, they already have an '07 (99 out of 100 i bet). '06 had half as much produced and is older so definitely tougher to come by. Similarly, you probably won't see a lot of BT'09 traded for BT'10. First year vertical bottles..talk about a pain
my tasting group did the full vertical about a week or two ago. i felt that the 06 was a bit over-the-hill...same for the 07. the 08 was nice, but the 2010 stole the show for me (as always) and the 2011 seemed off to me since i first tried it. we unfortunately opened 2 infected 09's (which makes me 0 for 3). i'd put them at (just one guy's opinion): 2010 2008 2007 2006 2011 2009 (although i hear the uninfected is excellent)
Interesting. I did a vertical last year and 2/3 of us thought the 06 was the best (08 second). I guess I'm glad we did the tasting when we did.
a year isn't exactly a week. that being said, this was my opinion, you may disagree. although, abyss is my favorite beer of all time and i still think that 2010 is the best of all of them. then again, what i like in a beer may not be what you like in a beer.
Uninfected '09 is stellar. Unless you cellar yourself from day you bought, you never know whether someone else's cellar is the hall closet on the third floor. Abyss with some time on it is almost a different beer. It is fun to compare to fresh as a learning experience to know what time does to beer, but ranking years in a vertical is like ranking motorcycles compared to cars and airplanes.
Ranking your thoughts of a vertical is just a snapshot of an opinion...and what is wrong with ranking motorcycles to cars and airplanes anyway? they are all modes of transportation...and I'm sure everyone can put a preference on how they prefer to travel between those three options. does that mean that those opinions are insignificant? and if you had never rode on a motorcycle and everyone said that was their favorite way to travel, wouldn't you be interested in that information and perhaps seek out the experience for yourself? not to mention there are many variables that could influence your opinions so you may love motorcycles today and then decide that they are not for you tomorrow. I agree that it is fun to comparing fresh batches to older vintages, but to your point, it is essentially the same as comparing apples to oranges (especially when you are talking about a barrel aged beer that is a blend). In my opinion, the only way to really see what time does to beer is to get a ton of a certain beer and drink it regularly over time. Your taste buds change or perhaps more accurately, your interpretations/memory of what something tasted like changes. Besides, we always seem to love to compare beers of the same style to each other, so why not the same beer over a span of vintages? Agreed that the more time on something, the more chances that at some point it wasn't under optimal conditions, I guess I just don't get your point? You aren't interested in opinions? If that's the case you are probably on the wrong site as this whole site is about different people's opinions on different beers and beer like things.
I cellared my '09 Abyss from the day I bought it online (they'd just rec'd it within the day) & all three have been infected so far. 3 to go, & I don't have much hope for them. That said, yes, Abyss is a wildly different beer aged. I remember trying the '10 fresh & thinking "eh, this isn't as good." I thought the same when I tried the '11. With a minimum of 6-9 months, though, it's in my top echelon of beers. The '08 has been my favorite to date, just sublime, & still is.
Sorry you never got to taste my favorite year fresh. I heard the reports and drank all my '09 in less than a year. Traded for them all soon after release, and cellared them properly in steady cool and darkness in my useless-for-almost-anything-else cellar, and ended up with 1 light first stage (Shorts has schooled me well on the different stages), the rest all perfect. Even for infected beers properly keeping them can slow the inevitable. Truth told the light infection tasted pretty good. My favorite period of aging is 2 years. Wish it were possible simultaneously to compare 2 year old Abyss of all years to each other.
That would be so cool. Three years seems to be my favorite spot. Both the '07 & '08 have been borderline perfect for me at that point. Hoping to host a tasting in April & bust out a vertical to see how the gang is doing. Glad you enjoyed the '09. My three have been nasty, awful drain-pours; the first one was less than six months old. I figured there wasn't any hurry to open the rest!
A friend back east just did this vertical and his opinion was nearly identical to this. The only change is that he put the '08 in front of the '10. Good to know!
