Jolly Pumpkin - Maracaibo Especial Vintage Reserve 2015

Catching up with last week's gem from the stash, Maracaibo Especial from Jolly Pumpkin. I have had various beers from Jolly Pumpkin over the years and they have always been exceptional so expectations were high for this one.

The side of the bottle gives a better description of what this is than I could.

A rich brown ale inspired by the enigmatic monastic brews of Belgium, and the mysterious mist shrouded jungles of the tropics. Brewed with real cacao, and spiced with cinnamon and sweet orange peel for a sensual delight. A brew to be sipped, savoured, and enjoyed!

This poured a lovey chestnut brown, with a good one finger beige head on it. I could smell the Belgian influence straight away, with a subtle barnyard funk emanating from the glass. Closer inspection you get some sour cherries with a hint of chocolate. Cinnamon and Orange Peel are usually quite strong aromas but I didn't get any of them.

The cinnamon comes through more on the taste, but it was still fairly muted and the orange peel was non existent. But there was chocolate, and a sort of candied sugar sweetness. As with other Jolly Pumpkin beers the sour funky side of things is subtle rather than face puckering, which works well in this style and is actually more of a Flanders red funk with those cherry notes and a bit of soy on the back end.

All in all this is wonderfully subtle, which may seem like a weird thing to say, but you can pick out all those flavours without a big punch from any of them. My opinion of Jolly Pumpkin has been reinforced by another excellent beer from them.

Lost Abbey - Track #10 (Bat out of hell)

This week's dip into the stash, I came away with Lost Abbey's Track #10 Bat out of Hell

Well what is it? Another big stout as it happens, more specifically a 13.5% imperial stout aged in bourbon barrels with coffee and cacao nibs. Sounds wonderful, doesn't it?

Years ago when I first started looking further afield from your run of the mill ales and standard Belgian fare, I happened upon Lost Abbey. They seemed to come up time and again on American beer blogs and YouTube videos I had been reading/watching. When Beer Geek Nation uploaded a review of Serpent stout I just had to get a bottle and that I did. It certainly lived up to the hype and maybe one day I will crack another bottle and review it here. But when I found out they had thrown Serpent Stout in a bourbon barrel and added cacao nibs and coffee to it, I was on the search to find a bottle of what is Track #10 Bat out of Hell.

Now I have no idea how old this bottle was, and there is nothing on the bottle to indicate the date it was bottled on, but it is at least 2 years old. Popping the cork I could already smell the coffee and bourbon, once in the glass it opened up a bit more with milk chocolate and dark sugar sweetness. 

The taste is layers of coffee and vanilla, but that milk chocolate has turned dark with the associated bitterness you get with high percentage dark chocolate. All the coffee and dark chocolate bitterness is perfectly balanced when the caramel sweetness kicks in. For 13.5% there is no heat or booze on this, a dangerous thing given how smooth and easy drinking it is. That smoothness is mirrored in the mouth feel, it is like engine oil and coats the entire mouth.

All in all this is another perfectly balanced imperial stout, all components working together in harmony. I was sad to see the bottom of the glass, but I will no doubt seek out another bottle of this some day and I would recommend you do too.

The stash must die!

It’s a new year, a time for reflection and new beginnings. Or new endings?

It has been two years since my last post and I haven’t really thought about posting in any of that time. So why now? Well I had a plan for this year, it includes beer and I thought I could probably document it.

Firstly, when I moved house it became apparent just how many beers I had squirreled away, a frightening amount to be honest, I’ll not go into numbers but I could set up a small shop (for a while anyway).

Secondly, last year we lost some good folk along the way, saw the turmoil in the world increase, U2 kept on playing music and I have had, on more than one occasion, a chat about life being short yada yada yada.

This prompted me to think about all that beer sitting there and what if something unfortunate happened to me. I would never get to experience or taste those wonderful beers, and some other beer wankers (you know who you are) would get to drink them in my absence. I can’t have that lol. Therefore as the title suggests, the stash must die! Before I do :)

Starting shortly, each weekend I will be plucking a beer or two from the stash, uncapping/corking it and enjoying it. Some on my own, some with friends, but all will be savoured and hopefully not drain poured. I plan on letting you know, what the beer is, why I sought it out, how I acquired it and of course did it live up to expectation.

Now I did start this during the tail end of last year, opening some of my bucket list beers, so to give you a taste of things to come I give you Avery Tweak

Avery Tweak

This is a bourbon barrel aged coffee stout; massive in flavour and abv, coming in at 16%. It takes their Mephistopheles stout as its base, adds coffee and then barrel ages it in bourbon barrels for about 4 months. The non barrel aged version was called Meth Addict, but was deemed inappropriate so they changed it to Tweak for the barrel aged version. I don’t know, I would have bought a beer called Meth Addict. On a trip to the States I had sampled some of Avery’s wears, in particular their Raja DIPA, The Maharaja DIPA and Ellie’s Brown Ale. All awesome and they made me look further into their other brews, and Tweak hit all the notes as their beer for me (I happen to be a fan of big stouts, throw them in a barrel and you have my attention). Being unable to find it anywhere and even less so on my return to Belfast, I have always kept an eye out for it. As luck would have it, the wonderful Beergium got some in at the start of last year and an order was made.

Did it live up to the hype? In several words, it did and then some! It stunk to high heaven of coffee, roasted cacao, vanilla, tobacco, barrel and booze. This all followed through on the taste, but had an unexpected sweetness, not cloying, just the right amount to balance the coffee bitterness and booze. Although it hid the abv, there was a warmth at the end that just reminded you it was 16%. All in all, this is a lesson in how to make this style work, everything coming together and nothing overpowering everything else. Highly recommended and I would definitely get some more given the chance.

Happy new year folks, hear is to living life and killing the stash!!