Happy Thanksgiving! My dad and sister are here from St. Louis and my in-laws from in town are here. Either my sister or my dad bought this for me last Christmas and my sister really wanted me to open it and share it with her. It’s a big beer that’s aged in a bourbon barrel with cacao nibs and vanilla beans.

Location: Poured into a Teku pint glass from the 750ml bottle at my home in Bloomington, IL.

Numbers: 14% ABV, ~420 Calories

Appearance & Aroma: It’s a solid copper color and fairly clear with a small off-white, creamy head that fell after a few minutes. It has an awesome boozy-wheaty-bourbony aroma that I could sniff all day.

Taste & Feel: The body is very full and the mouthfeel is smooth and slightly viscous. Up front there’s a wonderful carmel-malty sweet flavor with bourbon that’s almost like a light bourbon-caramel candy. In the middle, the malty flavor is a great malty-wheat that’s slightly sweet. The finish is an incredible combination of caramel malty-wheatiness and bourbon flavors, and the boozy, malty bourbon caramel flavor lasts a couple minutes in the aftertaste.

Food Pairing: Of course, today, there’s nothing that pairs better with this beer than turkey. Any other day, this would be an incredible beer with BBQ, with a nice vanilla or custard dessert, or as a dessert all by itself.

Overall Impression: I’m a big fan of bourbon, and have done the Kentucky Bourbon Trail twice. One of my favorite pairings with bourbon is caramel candy – so you get lots of caramel, vanilla, barrel, and bourbon flavors with the sweetness balancing out the booziness of the bourbon. This is the liquid version of that. This is a damn great beer, and I’m definitely going to seek it out at my local liquor store or when travelling.

My Rating: