Monday, February 13, 2012

There are so many words on this bottle!

Breweries: Terrapin & Brasserie BFM SA
Location: Athens, GA & Switzerland-Suisse
Name: spike & jérôme's
Type: Collaboration Ale & Cuvée Délirante or "Barley Ryne"
ABV: 10.0276%




This was a Christmas gift and a super unexpected one at that. I had been eyeing this beer at a local shop but couldn't bring myself to purchase it. Thankfully, my future mother-in-law had an insider report as to what may be a good gift idea. First off, great bottle. Anything that has a levered action ceramic stopper in it is pretty awesome. And it's reusable! Not quite 12oz this fit into a goblet nicely without having to worry about run-over or left-overs. As noted on the awfully bombastic label this beer is comprised of 2/3 ale and 1/3 ale that has been matured in a rum oak barrel. This is my first ever rum barrel aged beer. I've had plenty of beers that grow up in bourbon barrels so needless to say I was a bit (OK, slightly more than a bit) interested in this beer. Also, this beer was created when Terrapin's brewmaster (Spike) took a trip to Europe and met up with Brasserie BFM's brewmaster (Jérôme) to collaborate on an interesting brew. What came of that fateful meeting? This guy, with the 8,000 word label. I kid, it's very informative and very pleasing to the eye. And the beer? Imagine the darkest apple cider you've ever seen. Now blend it with caramel and you will have a pretty good facsimile of what this beer looks like. Absolutely no head. None. I'm not joking or exaggerating. That wasn't upsetting though... I just expected some sort of thick cream colored cap for this viscous brew. The bouquet was something of olfactory opulence. Where I expected to get sugary rum notes I got tart and sour fruit notes. There is also a fair amount of rich and sticky malt to the nose. Before even drinking S&J I thought this is going to be like any other barley wine and the fact that it was brewed with 20% rye was going to have little impact. Well... I'm not sure how to put this lightly. This beer was bad. Really bad. One of the only beers I had ever tried and immediately wanted to spit out. I'm wondering if I got a skunked beer or something because there was absolutely 0% carbonation to start with. Secondly, that tart and sour note in the bouquet? That was reproduced identically in the taste. There is very little to recover from the taste after the cloud of sour fallout lands on your pallet. Now I did something I don't always do. I went to the internets to see what others had to say about this beer and I found that, for the most part, reports are favorable. My experience? Not so much. What sucks the most about this is that even if I had waited longer to drink this (due in part to the encouragement of the bottle telling me that S&J "ages well) it still would have been skunked and probably even worse. To be honest, I choked down 3 fairly small sips of this. I don't want to give it a number of mugs due in part to the presumed fouling, however, I won't be going out of my way to try another. Sorry folks, I'm chalking this one to bad luck. Now I'm going to go rinse the sour of my mouth. Bleh.

*UPDATE* After speaking with the owner of the establishment from where this beer came from, it's not at all skunked. It's supposed to be sour. I just happen to think it tastes like shit. That's my opinion and I'm sticking to my guns. You may like it if you're down with flat beers that taste like unsweetened citric acid.

0 Mugs. ZERO. As in the other half of binary code. NONE.

3 comments:

  1. Bummer. Sorry for your disappointment. I know it makes you really sad.

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  2. It was terribly disappointing. I'm almost certain it was a skunked beer. Simply awful.

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  3. Never thought I'd see this from you... tried and immediately wanted to spit out... that has to be a BAD beer.

    I once got a 12-pack of Sammy Light that was WELL past its drink date... I was scared for like a month.

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