Terrapin Side Project Gamma Ray

Brewed by Terrapin Beer Company
Style: Barley Wine
Athens, Georgia USA

Bottle via trade from Emacgee. Hazy golden in color with a large off white head that retains pretty well. Aroma of wheat, earthy hops with a touch of citrus, light fruity esters, honey. Taste is sweet and has alot of wheat, some honey sweetness, some fruity esters are apparent..hop character is light to moderate, mostly floral with a touch of earth, big bodied. Alcohol is there but relatively well hidden for the strength. Nicely done, has some nice complexity. Thanks Ethan.

Bottle shared with tjthresh: Rich amber hue topped by a small frothy head and produced okay lacing. The nose detects wheat husks, barley, candi sugar, hints of honey and rye, apricot and herbs... quite phenolic for the genre. Starts to smell a bit buttery as it warmed to near room temperature. The taste starts with sweet malt and ripened fruits with twangy wheat and yeasty overtones, hint of honey but seems one-dimensional and not very "barley-wineish". The mouth feel is oily and warming, does a good job of hiding the 11% alcohol. This comes off more like a weak mead, needs a serious shot of hops.

bomber from emacgee...

pours an odd color of hazy orange amber on the paler side of copper with a soft white head.

strong aroma of honey followed by estery floral bananas, wheat, malt, earth and finally something sour akin to apple cider when it is left too long and allowed to ferment. maybe sourwood honey IS really sour? that noticeable?

that same rotten apple juice character carries over into the flavor. eventually i can overlook it to notice flavors of earthy honey, orange, bananas,clove, a ton of flowers and dusty wheat. it’s got a sour floral (not the good kind) finish that never disappears and by the end starts to make my stomach hurt. even if it tasted good it would be a bit one dimensional?

medium body though not cloying or sticky. seems odd given the prior reviews? it’s got a massive amout of honey flavor yet none of the sweetness. very strange... this thing’s a rotted mess. perhaps a flawed bottle?

on the positive side the alcohol is never allowed to be tasted... only felt in the limbs as they go numb. 6/4/4/3/8/2.5

22oz bomber. The beer poured tan/old gold in color with a soft haze. The head was thick and white and left slight amounts of lace on the glass. The aroma was sweet with notes of banana and wheat. The flavor is very malty with a good bit of malt sweetness - wheat malts, soft fruit and banance, and light amounts of honey. There is a soft noble hop presense at mid-palate, notes of bitter-orange-honey, and spices. The finish is full and sweet with wheat, banana, and honey. The mouthfeel is tingly with carbonation - spritzy and dizzying like its weaker brethren - and full in body. Overall, a nice beer, but I had a better impression of the oak-aged cask version I tried at Brick Store Pub the other month.

Bottle from MSchae1017. Thanks! Pours orange and semi hazy with short lived white head. Smell is strongly of sweet wheat. Taste is smooth and very wheaty. Some yeatiness and some honey sweetness. Kind of like an an imperial honey brown. Smooth creamy, and pretty easy to drink, with a bit of alcohol in the flavor. Not very complex, but just a lot of buttery smooth wheat sweetness.

Slightly hazed orange gold color with a minimal off-white head. Poor retention, a little lacing. Aroma is candied citrus, with some bananas and phenols. Tastes like if you made a puree of fruit salad and caramel and spread it on some sweetbread. Kind of a mess but not offensive. Sweetness is very high but the body is a little too light to support it.

For the life of me I cannot remember how I got this bottle. It must have been a trade and probably during the time RB was down. It may have even been from BA, but damn, I have no record of who gave this to me. Nameless trader, I thank you. Shared at Indra’s Strong Ale gathering. 22oz bottle that was fridged for a few months (I always intended on drinking this over that time but it never came to be). Poured into a snifter glass (that theisti would later break). It has a dark golden color, surprising to me, even for a wheat wine. It is definitely different, it may even be more of a braggot then a beer. Aroma is very floral honey with strong ester coming off the yeast. Or maybe the honey is just amplifying similar ester-like aromatics. Taste was similar with a mish mash of honey, sweetness, yeastiness, and floralness. Very cool, and nothing like I would expect, especially from Terrapin. It’s not heavy or boozy, the floral and sweetness seem to be able to cover that up. Easy drinking stuff, not something I would want to age. I recommend it and would drink it again for sure.

Bomber from Knightly. Poured translucent brighter orange with very little off-white head sticking around.. cool color though. The aroma was on the sweet end with semi-dry honey and some sort of floral character at the forefront (chamomile?).. toasted wheat sourness and dry herbal notes around.. smelled like a mead fermented over a bed of wheat (which is not by any means a bad thing). The flavor was centered around the honey, also giving it a mead-like feel to it.. pale malts and a splash of caramel joined to provide some support.. spicy and sour wheat and floral bitterness on the edges, all amplified by alcohol warmth.. finished with more floral notes and honey. Heavier-bodied with low-to-medium carbonation on the palate.. spicy and on the warm end, but it held together fairly well.. bonus point for not being like anything I’ve tried before.