Deschutes Brewery is in the Up From the Cellar spotlight this month and we first cut through the wax on the bottle of The Stoic. Now this bottle had a “Best By” date of August 2012. So we are a year and half past their expert opinion. Which I trust because they deal with this beer more than I do. That doesn’t bode well for the taste on this beer though.
Thankfully, my Ratebeer review of the beer comes from around the time that I bought this bottle. So now I can compare what I thought then to now with a little more accuracy.
From 2011: This is a big and smooth beer. Slightly viscous. Big raisin and prune type flavors intermingle with just a touch of oak in the background. A by the fireplace beer.
Oh the wax seal on a bottle. How I am fearful of and challenged by you. I actually was able to gain a foothold for the opener to pry off the cap without having to hack off too much wax which was an accomplishment. As I cleaned up, a gentle cork sized bubbling very slowly foamed up the neck. I would have had to wait another 30 minutes probably for anything to actually gush out.
This version had pomegranate added and 16.5% was aged in oak wine barrels and another 16.5% was aged in oak rye whiskey barrels. Why that very precise amount, I don’t know. Maybe they tasted 17% and said that was too much.
The pomegranate is potent in this. Sticky and sweet. In both aroma and taste. Still has some bubbles to it which helps alleviate that minor flaw. There is a minor undercurrent of tannic wine notes but it is below the surface for sure. It doesn’t taste boozy at all though. Which I thought it would be from the whiskey barrel. The more it warms up in the glass, the more prune type of notes rise up. But they never reclaim the top spot from the pomegranate.
THE VERDICT – I guess we learned today that pomegranate doesn’t drop out of aged beers. Good to know! Both of the barrel aged portions must have though which robbed this beer from being balanced. I mentioned viscous in my initial review and that is still here too. It is quite silky in the mouthfeel. It is less a “fireplace” beer now and much more of an after dinner sweet drink in the vein of a sherry. I would have to label this experiment as not working. I should have took the labels word for it.
How do you select which beers to cellar?
I have a bottle of stoic that’s been on the shelf for a few years too! Never had it so no reference point, but this will be interesting to compare. With the exception of Abyss (blessed be the Abyss), I don’t intentionally cellar anything. Bottles get past a certain point because there is always something else to drink and a year or two just goes by.
I was a bit haphazard at first but from here on out I will be saving a bottle of anniversary one offs over 10% in abv or special beers (again over 10% that I purchase on vacations). My third reason would be as tests/experiments in say, how fast hops drop out or how long until a beer becomes less alcohol “hot” and more mellow.
And the next bottle I am bringing up is Abyss. From 2009!
I will be interested in what you think of Stoic when you decide to open it up.
And I agree that without a spreadsheet or system beers can be opened up too late or too early and with so many good, fresh beers to buy it can be more of a gamble then anything.
Watch out for that 09′ Abyss – If I remember correctly, that was the batch that had potential infections (although not every bottle expressed that issue). Just opened a bottle of 09′ Mirror Mirror which also had potentially been infected. The brett was pretty overpowering but I drank most of it anyway to justify the time I had left it in my cellar. Unfortunately, 2009 was not the best year for Deschutes…
My bottle was fine. No funk or craziness. Just aged. I got lucky, I guess.