Bitching ‘Bout Bourbon Flavored Beer

Their rye is solid

 

Sweet beers Are the devil or for man babies

 

I've heard that. The thing is, I don't have much of a baseline on this. We don't get ST stuff here. I'll pick up a four-pack in Ohio now and then and share it with my friends here. I've always loved it, but a little certainly goes a long way. I really haven't had it enough to detect any differences between batches.

 

Kind of back on topic, ST had a barrel aged beer program for a bit that yielded really nice beverages. Then as far as I know, they stopped that in favor of straight distilling.

 

Now I want some Oakshire…LOL!

 

Our opinions are going to differ greatly here. I find the barrel character, viscosity, and flavor perfect with those beers. The only complaint I have is the sweetness, but when I open up a fear beer I know what's coming and don't drink it all in one night.

But, I dislike American style barleywines quite a bit, the bitterness is always unbalanced to me. I find them borderline disgusting.

 

It always perplexes me when people give breweries more than several attempts to re-earn their respect. Perhaps it's a function of markets that I'm not familiar with, but I tend to steer clear of a brewery after buying a few bad beers from them. That numbers drops lower when those are BA (i.e. expensive) beers.

 

It's really starting to sound like you have a local brewery who's BBA offerings don't suit your tastes.

If anything, I've found the trend in spirit barrel aged beers to be breweries adding so many other flavoring ingredients that the barrel and spirit flavors get lost.

 

That's my usual cue to 'avoid.'

Prairie used to be something I'd buy for a special occasion. Now, I pretty much avoid all their work since nearly every single one of their BA beers has flavor additives that I don't care to consume. They come to mind quickly since they add so many flavors to beer, but there are others I avoid more than I support at this point.

 

Yeah, I should probably just withhold my opinion on the topic at this point since I too avoid any beer with a long flavoring ingredient list. So maybe all these beers I see are now being made with a delicate hand and an eye on exquisite balance. But as of 4 or 5 years ago when I gave up trying these (Prairie was definitely one I gave a lot of chances) there was a marked increase in over full ingredient lists and the barrels/spirits getting lost in the mix

 

To your point about excessive ingredients, Port Brewing used to make a fantastic imperial stout called Santa‘s Little helper. I picked up a couple of four packs thinking it was the same old beer, but it had hazelnut and coffee or some other non-typical beer ingredient in it.

I had a hard time finishing one of those with all of the excess flavoring, I really can’t understand preferring the flavored over the original version, but I’m pretty sure I’m the one in the minority, so I cannot blame Port for the revising the recipe.

 

Well that explains something. I had heard of that beer and then came across it randomly last year and grabbed a 4 pack. I found it full of tannic nut flavors and a note of cheap hazelnut creamer. I enjoyed it fine enough but won't seek it out. I didn't really understand how it had earned its reputation though. Makes sense that it's the unflavored version that built the brand and what i had is the unfortunate modern derivative

 

That beer was also released almost exactly 20 years ago. Was a completely different landscape, as I’m sure you know.

 

That was my takeaway originally. Just like beers like kbs, bcbs, Pliny, etc I figured it was an artifact of an earlier time

 

I think you hit the nail on the head with the hazelnut creamer, although for me it was the main flavor, not just a note. I honestly don’t think that I even know what hazelnut tastes like, so I couldn’t place the offending flavor, but it seems like brewers are jumping on the Starbucks flavored coffee/ latte bandwagon. If hazelnut coffee is popular this year let’s put it in our imperial stout!

 

It might be worse for me because i grow and forage hazelnuts and love their flavor. So when I encounter the artificial flavor (which is basically just he flavor of hazelnut oil usually) I'm super disappointed

 

Agreed