Weyerbacher Insanity

Brewed by Weyerbacher Brewing Co.
Style: Barley Wine
Easton, Pennsylvania USA

Sweet aroma of caramel and bourbon. Very sweet taste up front with a bit of bittering on the back of the tongue. Nice barley wine. It needed more time to age in the bottle.

pours a clear amber with sweet cinnamon aroma. sweet fresh front with warm dry finish. sweet bourbon presence. complexity evident from the cask, a good mix with a Barley Wine.

22oz from late 2004 or early 2005, purchased at River City Cellars, Richmond (I think). This has long been one of my very favorite Weyerbacher offerings, but honestly the age doesn’t seem to have done it many favors. The lustrous mouthfeel seems to have thinned out a bit. The warm, creamy, vanilla/oak flavor seems to have gone a bit boozy. And the palate’s slightly too thin. I could be remembering it over fondly (it’s been a while since I last sampled), but it also could just be on the downside. Willing to rerate a fresh one, but it’s still an enjoyable beer.

Clear, molten red pour; a well behaved skin of off white foam. Warm, fruity aroma of dates, bourbon, raisins, and a blanket of alcohol and sugared butter that isn’t too rough. Toffee cake and lots of doughy cinnamon tinted malt veils the heat quite nicely if not fully. Firm, confident sweetness of walnuts, pecans, and berries; earthy, and very dark. Caramel and anise glaze the bitter skin of cherry, fig and bright strawberry sweetness, but the malts here seem tired and loosely gathered; alcohol tends to to predominate with a really noisy vanilla and hot oak attitude. The oily nuttiness and dense gingerbread remain quite pleasant throughout, however, and lend themselves to the type of earthy tang common to steak sauces and spiced barbecue. The bit of age this one has undergone, somewhere in the range of six to ten months, has served to temper it just slightly, and the sterilizing power of nail polish heat is still stubbornly present. Some cool apple and honeydew melon sweetness comes through toward the finish, carrying a surprisingly pleasant and balanced tone into a degenerative bathroom scent on the back of the throat. Some kind of undercooked french toast sweetness beside the dirty bourbon in the finish. Slightly weak, but not poorly made, and certainly not uninteresting; still, the barrel aging doesn’t really pan out with much success. Thanks Jason!

22oz bomber picked up at Belo Vino in Ann Arbor 05/06. Nothing like a bomber of an 11% ABV beer to nurse all night. Pours a clear orange-ish copper with nice half inch tan head. The aroma seems like sticking my head into a recently emptied oak whiskey barrel. I get whiskey, oak, grain alcohol, maple leafs and just a hint of dark fruit like raisins, figs and grapes. The taste starts sweet with some light dark fruitiness from dark grapes, raisins and maybe some plums. Then the oak and whiskey flavors take over and carry the experience into the finish. There are brief moments of sweet dark fruitiness and even some faint caramel. At the finish is a noticeable warming that borders on hotness. Not the type of brew I crave 22oz of. But it was an interesting experience.

I pour this into a tulip glass and get tremendous head on a normal (not down the side) pour at 50 degrees for both the beer and the glass. The aroma, very much like the flavor is sweet and when held sideways to a bright halogen light, the color appears to be a dark, but red amber. After the first few sips, the head disappears, except a fine film on top with a thicker hill around the side of the glass. The taste to me is very ’Belgian-ish’, which is delightful, however this is not a beverage I could consume in the summer, though it seems apropos for that time of year when it first seriously begins to turn cold.

Light head on an amber body. Obvious particles floating in the beer. Has the aroma of JD with just a little bit of hops. Taste is very strong JD with vanilla from the oak and a long finish that coats the tongue in vanilla flavor.

22oz. Finally, a Weyerbacher beer that actually benefits from being barrel aged. Syrupy brown pour with a head that doesn’t last. Might be cold, but the aroma is a bit muted - oak, cherry, vanilla, hops, caramel malt, alcohol. There’s an earthy and musty quality to it that’s good initially, but begins to wear on me a little. Abrupt bitter finish. It’s good.