Stone Coast Jacksons Winter Ale

Brewed by Sunday River Brewpub and Restaurant
Style: Barley Wine
Bethel, Maine USA

live rating @ gingerman w/ Pda fone. draft pint smells of alchy raison, sweetness, sherry, strong. taste is a bit empty w/ slight bourbon. nice enough with sweetness but a bit weak. pretty light with a small bitterness.

Bourbon barrel aged version, at the ABF on 6/17/06.
Very thick-looking, dark mahogany-colored body sports a dark beige head that is small and recedes to a ring, though providing staunch lacing. Extremely unfiltered and quite opaque. It looks scary….
A collision of thick, sweet malt (heavy cream, vanilla, chocolate, moderate roast), strong (but not harsh) bourbon and strong toffee/maple notes. There are a fair bit of dry, vanilla-like notes that help smooth out the wood, but the tannins are quite light, so it dosent take much effort. Strong chocolate and toffee are rich and linger long, providing quite a strong aroma. A bit of crunchy, earthy, woodiness definitely helps the complexity of this otherwise sweet malt and maple monster, so in that regard, the barrel does help the beer, but I still think it’s a bit too overt in the nose. Light warming on the end, but otherwise immensely well-masked is the alcohol.
Rich toffee and maple syrup sweetness is delayed at first, by the strong bourbon notes. Tannins, if there are any to begin with, are swallowed by the sumptuous malts. Quite sweet and sticky but with very clean flavors, no oxidation and little/no apparent alcohol. Low carbonation keeps it rich and decadent, but I wouldnt call it cloying or syrupy at all. No hop/yeast apparency either. Still, the bourbon flavor dominates the beer too much for my liking.

Sweet maple syrup character shines through in both the aroma and the flavour. Aroma is quite sweet with some touches of alcohol. Hazy reddish-brown coloured body is topped by a low but lasting, off white head that recedes eventually to ring. Maple is the star of this one but it also shows some caramel malts, and some notes of citrus. Sticky and somewhat watery in texture with carbonation that is quite low. An interesting take on the style and surprising to see a beer of this age that still displays so much maple. Sampled on tap at the Extreme Beer Fest 2006.

Sample at EBF 2006. Near-opaque hazy-dirty dark amber with little head....lots of maple and caramel in the extremely sweet nose, virtually no hop character but pleasant for what it is....sweet, slightly sticky body, touches of anise and oregano show through, but mostly it’s comprised of tons of maple and molasses, very dessert-like through the midpalate....thankfully, the finish dries it out somewhat and faint citric hops finally make an appearance....this was on the verge of seriously disgusting cloyingness, but is saved at the last moment. Drinkable, not really exciting, but different from most massively hopped American barleywines.