Cigar city makes some awesome beers, some are big and fulfilling like apple brandy Huna, others are nuanced and tasty like that gem 2012 guava grove. No one can cast malt into mash tuns irreproachably without overstep or error.

To err is brewer and the humble plans of one man pushing grain around with a paddle sometimes yields sticky caloric disasters, the likes of which only a Mexican bakery can articulate. If you have had a BIMBO treat, you know of the evil to which I allude.

This is cigar city’s most massive beer ever crafted, a rum barrel aged barleywine . They call it a quad, but, regardless of what strain they used, this is a sticky massive sugar bomb of a barleywine. Let’s be clear: cigar city makes some amazing, god tier barleywines. Leon was absolutely phenomenal, however, this exists squarely within the penumbra of ” would not bang.”

So what went wrong?

Here’s the dream on paper:

“Forgotten Island is aged in Appleton rum barrels, originating from Jamaica. This distillery makes the oldest barrel-aged rum in the world. The barrel lends notes of vanilla, molasses, orange peel, cocoa, brown sugar, nutmeg, hazelnut, apricot and peach. This plethora of flavors and aromas from the rum barrels intermingles with banana, clove, cinnamon, fig, plum and brown sugar aromatics and flavors from the quadrupel, creating a crescendo of elegance in a long flavorful finale.”

Print that out onto a piece of resume paper and dip it in mallow foam and gently push it into your O ring. You are in for some seriously sweet unpleasantry.

It isn’t the alcohol, that actually helps this rum porta potty, tipped over with milky brown foam cascading on the walls. It is the nose of intense Carmelized figs , plums soaked in brandy, prunes rolled in brown sugar and then spit into your mouth by a Filipino escort after she just took strong pulls of E&J, and a vinous waft like if you dropped a Malbec boilermaker into a dr pepper. It is everywhere and missing it’s mark at every cascading hay maker.

If you were hoping for a delicious clean and highly attenuated Belgian experience, well hang your hopes at the door of this beastly sweet key club . All holes will be filled with residual FG that is probably higher than your Gpa.

It just doesn’t work well, I took down 8 ounces and felt like I earned one of those millennial participation trophies they give to pte diabetic kids who are patently shitty at tee ball.

It’s too much of everything and your non beer friends will look at you like you enjoy pumping Magic shell straight from the bottle down your gullet. You will be judged, there will be blood.

Merry Xmas eve, have fun dumping all those high abv gems that you can’t drink on your extended family. Ask them what they think of White Chocolate for me.

God damn this beer is back on point in a huge way, not since the days of massive abv and small runs has this beer been this tasty. When Dark horse is on point they crush it out of the park, no more dr pepper aspects, just boozy caramel chocolate goodness.

Really tasty stuff, can’t wait to get double BALs in my mouth.

Keeping shit warm and classy during these frigid 68 degree nights.

Ok so let me try to give you a grasp on how wonderful and odd this old barrel aged zymatore is. So it ostensibly started in Switzerland with Abbaye De Saint Bon-Chien – BFM (Brasserie des Franches-Montagnes), you might recognize those dusty old biere de gardes of innumerable vintages sitting on the shelf due to their $28 price tag. Plus, most of these new tickers only pay top dollar for adjunct stouts and haven’t figured out what a biere de garde is at this point, thank god.

Ok so now we have these Connecticut ballers, OEC Brewing (Ordinem Ecentrici Coctores), who are they? Well while their name is not grammatically correct Latin SICK BURN, they note: Our brewery is not the creation of a sole individual rather an Order of individuals. Ideals, techniques and ingredients come from places as near as the orchard to more than 1,900 leagues aways.

The fuck does that mean? No clue. Will investigate further.

So from this I am guessing they sourced the original biere de garde and united it in a blend of these moscatal casks thousands of miles away. Who knows.

The batch size was 350 liters so you know these hot massive distro just falling off the shelf at Binny’s.

The look is that amber muddier pallor of a biere de garde with faint brick red and a turbid red hue. Awesome carbonation and gentle soapy cling.

The nose is exceedingly complex, taking the solid malty base of the BdG and building a lightly tannic Pinot noir meets sherry, figs, currant and bruised peach. Lightly acetic in the closer akin to very old rodenbachs.

The taste is incredibly vinous and has a chocolate and plum aspect to the closer that again is dizzying in execution. It never loses it’s focus and maintains the distinct Belgian yeast, faint cherry tartness and a tannic closer like port wine. It is phenomenal and highly worthy of some mouth time. Give this some mouth hugs, you know you need more biere de garde check ins on Untappd you sans culotte drinking ticker.

But srs, this is god damn phenomenal, dry, tart, and a musky light oxy profile make this highly crushable as well. Put that in your tongue tongue sticky sticky yum yum

I don’t know who made this, but I will find you.

Actually I don’t know shit about rum so that is a bit of a canard. I was gonna do another CLASSIC cagematch, but the differences wouldn’t make for a lot of yukyuks as the difference between the 17 and the poverty tier 10 are more nuanced. This is one of the proofed down; not even cask strength , stepped on product from btac.

At first blush it feels like, do you not trust us btac? Can we not be trusted to water things to our own preference. That diminutive spearmint asshole sazerac 18 waiting in the wings with baited breath. Despite the seemingly unremarkable breakdown, this juice shines like Cuba in Radio. It looks fantastic and, like it’s poverty tier cousin er10, it looks radiant and wouldn’t give clues to its serious age.

The nose has a fantastic balanced waft to it of caramel, light toastiness, nougat, vanilla, and some coconut. It just seems so tame and approachable that it creates an anomalous situation where you ask: who is this for? Entry level baby palates won’t pay $300 for this shit, they’ll stick to the basic tick version. Bourbon ballers deep in the game will just move on to the gts or WLW, so who can this middle ground of Kate Middleton refinement be made for? Wealthy Asian foodies. That’s my most likely/tacitly racist explanation.

That’s not to say this isn’t amazing, it is. You get a gentle, manageable experience of sweetness, faint clove and leather, toasted creme brûlée, and a closer like peanut brittle. It is wonderful; but there are plenty other blended offerings that cost far less.

This is for the dude who gets the cayman r, that person isn’t hardcore but wants people to know of his/her refined tastes, even if they aren’t exactly economical. It is crushable and a “session” bourbon because it is so delicious and tame that you can drill it in the same manner as pappy 15/20 without contemplation. That’s not exactly perfect praise, though. Most would consider a spirit worthy of reflection to be a laudable quality. This is just a simple pleasure, that happens to be wildly expensive, like getting your dick sucked by a clown.

I can’t knock this for not being more outrageous or less expensive, but in the canon of the btac ballers, it certainly is far from the most interesting.

Ok maybe the cheaper alternatives aren’t EXACTLY as good.

On Instagram straight flexing

Endlessly drinkable, refreshing with a touch of cornbread sweetness. A clear example of the polarity in new Glarus offerings. Their oud bruin will be lackluster, then the Berliner will crush it out of the park.

I like the binary nature of how they do things, it’s literally black and red roulette. No double zero.

Rip Soulja Slim. No jokes here. Just rip.also free c murder.