Tuesday, March 29, 2016

Odd Side Ales Hipster Brunch

12 oz bottle - traded for.

So every once in a while I trade beer. One of (I mean a couple of) my friends compared this to Pokemon card trading. And yeah I guess its kind of like that.

But, it's one of the few ways I can try beer that isn't distributed to NJ or NY.

This beer was very highly touted on Beeradvocate.com (a website I frequent for forums, ratings, and trading), however it (and Odd Side Ales) most recently came under fire for dealing with a beer infection poorly. I had hoped that the infection hadn't affected the bottle I traded for.

Hipster Brunch is an imperial stout brewed with bacon, coffee, and maple syrup, and then aged in bourbon barrels. It clocks in at 10% ABV.

Hipster Brunch pours black with a 2 cm milk chocolate colored head.

Smells vanilla, maple, and salty bacon. But there's some tart cherry in there as well. Which is not a good sign.

Taste is more promising up front: first salty bacon (where's the smokiness?) and sweet maple and vanilla. Not getting any coffee which is disappointing. There's some sour/tart cherry on the end. Clear sign of infection. I'm happy I opened and drank this right away. I feel like waiting even a week more and this beer would be undrinkable.

The beer has a fairly thick feel to it. Had there not been that sour/tartness on the end, I feel like this would have worked really well with the beer.

Overall I feel like this could have been a great beer. It just falls short based on a couple of things:

1. The fact that there's most likely some micro-organisms in there creating some unintended flavors. With a manufacturing date of sometime in November of 2015, there's no way that the flavors of a 10% imperial stout should change this quickly without the influence of unintended bacteria/micro-organisms.

2. Can't taste the coffee!

3. There's no smokiness to the bacon. I would have guess salted caramel instead of bacon had no one told me what it was.

4. I think I would prefer all of these items in a non-barrel aged imperial stout. It seems like there's almost too much going on here.


Overal Rating: 5.35/10

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