Random Tuesday Tasting Part 2

Continuing yesterday's post, there are four more beers left from the Random Tuesday Tasting. After the Olde Burnside cool ranch beer, we opened a bottle of Marin Barrel Aged Old Dipsea Barleywine.

You may not have heard of Marin's here on the east coast, but they are connected to Moylan's which sends a few beers over here. It's more well known on the west coast though. Slight bourbon nose with a bit of tartness. Not sure on the latter flavor but I wrote it down so who knows. Lots of bourbon followed, some barrel, but not much barleywine. Nice looking beer but the base just wasn't strong enough to hold up to the bourbon.

We moved back to a couple sours after that starting with a bottle of Cascade Bourbonic Plague that Eric brought.

We don't see much of Cascade especially not their rarer stuff like this so I was excited to get to try it. Plus it has one of the coolest beer names out there. I believe it's a sour porter with at least some aged in bourbon barrels and some in wine barrels. Major point in the nose was vinegar. As I got used to that, some cinnamon appeared as well. First sip was quite sharp with a bunch of different flavors all fighting to appear. First wine, then bourbon, then the sourness. Just super complex with all the flavors eventually melding together to get bourbon butterscotch. This is definitely one where a small 2oz sample wouldn't have done it for me and the mostly full glass made all the difference in enjoying it.

Next was another sour, Odell Friek.

Musty fruit nose. No sugar sweetness at all left in this one. Very still, no real carbonation either. There was enough fruit flavor in it to keep it relatively enjoyable, but I found the body sort of thin and watery. As I got more used to the beer, the fruitiness did start cutting through the watery body making it a bit better. Not the best sour we had that night but, well, we had some awesome ones so it was hard to compete for sure.

Last and most definitely the oddest, we opened a bottle of Twisted Pine Ghost Face Killah, a blonde or wheat beer made with six different hot peppers including the ridiculously hot ghost pepper. And, yes, I believe this is partially named after the rapper. Or completely named. Something like that, I don't know rappers, okay?

Smelled completely like hot peppers and nothing else. Just ridiculous. My first thought was holy crap, this is freaking spicy. It basically set my mouth on fire. Pretty crazy. I got a little used to it as I drank more but it was basically a glass of fiery peppers. I won't say it was bad though I didn't think it was that good either. It's just unique really. I think Craig liked this one and was surprised by that.

Fun little bottle share that was quite a bit larger than expected for a Tuesday night. As I said yesterday, the Allagash Balaton was probably the best though the Cascade Bourbonic Plague in this post was pretty awesome too. I will say even if I didn't like the Ghost Face Killah, it was damn unique so it had that going for it. I'm pretty lucky to have such nice friends willing to share such awesome stuff with me on random nights.