Telegraph Unblended Barrel Reserve Porter

Formerly brewed at Telegraph Brewing Company
Style: Porter
Santa Barbara, California USA

Sampled during the First Annual Stone Sour Fest. Dark brown with a tan head. Aromas were roasty chocolate with some sour notes. Flavors were classic porter dust. Not very sour actually, and a slightly bitter finish. Pretty good.

On tap at Stone. Pours blackish w/ minimal lacing. I thought this was aged in a whiskey barrel from the aroma and the flavor. Smells like an old malted whiskey barrel w/ some vegetation. Surprisingly light nectar w/ minimal residual effers. It’s almost flat. Flavors are unusual and as I said before exhibits whiskey overtones. It is quite complex but not real enjoyable. The sour character is defined and so is the oak w/ no detectable sweetness at all.. Other nuances of a floral perfume, vegetation, slight black cherry w/ a mild roast component. The finish has the hallmark souring and leaves the palate a bit confused.

Sampled on tap at the First Annual Stone Sour Fest, July 2007
This beer has quite a funky nose to it; it is so funky it seems almost unintentional. The aroma is lightly tart, yet has caramel and toasted malt notes to it. It has a funky mustiness to it and almost a leather-like quality to it as well. The head has some good staying power and is light brown colored. The body of the beer is a hazy brown color.

The taste is dry, yet it still has quite the brown ale profile; notes of toasted malt, caramel, browned, biscuit like grain and a light burnt soda cracker flavor. This beer in some way is clean compared to other sour beers here today, yet it still has a light tartness and even an underlying funkiness that some of the other sour beers have not had. This has a phenolic note that is almost plastic like and is a bit hot. This is actually a bit unbalanced as the phenolics seem to dominate the flavor profile after a bit. The brown grain character seems to accentuate the phenolics at times too.

This definitely seems unintentionally funky to me; it doesn’t quite work, but was still worth a try. The flavors are interesting (especially the combination of dark malts and funk), though a bit harsh in the end.

On tap at Stone. Very dark brown with no head. Chocolate malt aroma. Chocolate and roasted malt taste with oak notes and a clean finish.

Sampled at the 1st annual Stone Sour Festival 2007. A barrel reserve porter that is sour? Wierd. but not bad. Different for sure.

Draft-14th brew of Stone 1st Annual Sour Festival, July 22nd 2007. Shared this cool day very mellow day with bikesandbeer, wetherel, westsidethreat, padrefan, fordest, denverlogan and many others. Pours dark brown with a half finger tan head. The nose is very sour and very funky and pretty damn weird. The taste is sour and light and really not very porter like in any way except perhaps appearance. Weird.