Bourbon Barrel Wee Mac

So last Monday I got a call from O-Dawg and it was big enough news to make me turn around and hit the nearest liquor store I could find. The newest King's Reserve limited release by Sun King is their Bourbon Barrel Aged Wee Mac. It is in cans at your local liquor store, just remember to go the refrigerated section like everything SK does.

My favorite everyday beer is Sun King's Wee Mac. I get down to the brewery almost every Friday because you can get an entire growler for $5. It's smooth and tasty. It has a strong sweet flavor but is light enough that it's still drinkable... nay, chuggable. When I heard that they were going to barrel age one of my favorite beers I needed to try it.

The Bourbon Barrel Wee Mac poured out a deep reddish mahogany. There was a nice lacing of off-white head floating on the top of the glass. It smelled like vanilla and bourbon laid over beautiful toasted malts and caramel. The flavor is incredibly clean. It has hints of caramel, toasted nuts and bready grains. The flavors imparted from the Bourbon Barrel aging gave it great vanilla and oak undertones. It all blended together very well. There wasn't much of a hop finish but the barrel aging made up for that with a solid finish of its own.

O-Dawg and I were just talking about how hard it is to find a beer with a lot of flavor that doesn't have high abv or crazy amounts of hops. The Bourbon Barrel Wee Mac is 5.3% abv and only 23 IBUs. They pack so much flavor into this beer despite the low stats. I could drink this everyday, all day if it weren't for the cost. I wish more people tried to impart this sort of flavor into every beer they make. It isn't quite sessionable but close enough for me. Maybe we need a new term, like American Sessionable and call it anything under 5.5% instead of 4.2%.

I give it a solid and resounding 5

Weigh-In: O-Dawg
This little treasure came in two packs.  Not two packs of bombers, like little Kings Reserve 12oz cans two packs. I really didn't know how to react to that when I was stopping in at the brewery to pick these up (price was around $20).

The Kings Reserve line of brews from Sun King are super tasty brews that end up (just like Dark Lord) taking up tank space for an extended amount of time with more than your average usage of beer crafting materials tossed in.  All that time in the tanks and beer material adds up to a great beer with a higher than usual price tag.  Did this put me off?  No.  Just a data point of reference.

The first can went down during the week with the wife.  Movie night with "The Apparition"!  Not a great movie, but not terrible...  The beer made up for the movie.  The second was de-stressing with friends over a nice oily maduro cigars.  In both instances the flavors came through as Big Guy described above.

Two points that weren't mentioned that I think I should add are there is a nice mellow bourbon finish that is just fantastic.  It is the perfect balance of booze heat and oak/vanilla balanced with the beer, not overpowering it.  The other point is that after half a glass I started to notice an almost buttery/cream flavor that was not unpleasant at all starting to coat my pallet.  I liken it to the buttery/cream flavor that you get during and after eating Blondies Cookies.  Makes you hungry right?  Mouth watering yet?

Easy 4

Kilt Lifter

I was at Shallos a few nights ago and decided to start running down their draft list. This is a feat most mortal men cannot handle on their own, so we got some friends together and got started. One of the standout beers for me was Moylan Brewery's Kilt Lifter. This being my sixth Scotch ale review, no one should be shocked that I picked this brew.

Kilt Lifter is a wee heavy, which means that it has a higher amount of alcohol. This one is 8% abv. The beer pours a nice red brown color with a cream colored head. The head goes away pretty quickly. It smells bready and malty with just a hint of the booziness inside.

The beer itself has a nutty red/amber sort of flavor. Heavy with breads and a bit of cinnamon. All this is pretty sweet, verging on overwhelmingly so, but it does come around with a bitter smoked oak flavor mixed with the hops that helps settle it all down. The bitterness lingers a bit followed up by the boozy taste that you may expect from anything with this high of an abv.

It is a smooth almost creamy beer, which surprised me because so many scotch ales are lighter than they look.

This was not my favorite Scottish Ale, but it was well worth the drink. I give it a 3.5

Wee Muckle

Hip - Hip - Hooray!!! Hip - Hip Hooray!!! Hip - Hip - Hooray!!!

I am always pretty excited when I can get my hands on a few cans of Wee Muckle by Sun King Brewery. A Wee Muckle or Wee Heavy is the strongest of the Scottish Ales. This one comes in at 8.8% ABV. Since it was a can, I have had trouble finding the exact IBUs. It has a heavy caramely malty smell right when  you crack the can (as you can see, I was able to grab this in one of Sun King's pint cans. They are the perfect size to fill your favorite pint glass). You can smell the booziness of the alcohol as you are pouring it into your glass.

It poured out a milk chocolaty brown with about a half inch of tan head floating on top.

The beer has a very complex flavor. Right from the start you get hints of chocolate but they fade away as the more complex flavors of caramel, vanilla and dried fruits. Not surprising with such a hgih ABV you could also taste the alcohol in this, which is not something we expect from our average over the counter beer. The beer is very sweet and very heavy. I have a feeling finishing the entire four pack would fill you up and start getting you tipsy. The beer is not quite as heavy as a syrup or liquor in your mouth, but maybe as thick as a port wine.

This is an amazing beer for fall time. The beer is hearty and comforting. The added alcohol value warms your whole body from your stomach out to your arms. It is full of flavors that remind you of the harvest and settling down for a long cold winter. It is a touch sweet, but other than that it is very well balanced Wee Heavy.

 I am saving a can for the first real snow, because nothing would be better than sitting in front of a fire with a can of this watching the snow fall.

I give it a 5

Wee Mac

So this is one of my ABSOLUTE favorite beers. It is the beer that turned me onto fresh local beer. I could drink this every day and become the Even Bigger Guy, if that was not completely irresponsible. It is 5.4% abv with 23 IBUs.

One of my favorite days of the week is Friday. Yes it is the end of the work week. Yes I get to go home and see my family, but I also get to hit up Sun King Brewery for growler fill Friday on the way home. Growler fill Friday, is when you can get any of Sun King's three flagship beers for just $5 a growler. It is hard to find a better deal on craft beer anywhere. Since today is Friday, I recommend that you head down to Sun King and check it out for yourself.

Wee Mac is a Scottish Ale. It is a beautiful red brown color. When poured it has just a slight amount of light colored head. The beer has a malty body that tastes of fresh bread, caramel and a hint of nuts. It reminds me of eating my mom's raisin nut bread when I was a kid. The IBUs are pretty solid, which gives the beer a nice finish and rounds it out so you could have a few of these in a sitting without getting a belly full of sugar. The mouth feel is lighter than you would assume based on its color. 

The flavor is dominated by sweet maltiness, but the complexity keeps me coming back. This beer is a great one for whatever you are doing. 

This is one of my all time favorites. Great job Sun King. Glad you're in my back yard.

I give it a 4.5

Professor Beer:

Sun King's Wee Mac is also a favorite of mine.  It's easy to drink, and is one of my go-to beers wherever it's available.

 

80 Schilling Scottish Ale

So after my post yesterday, I had to make sure I got down to Bier Brewery to grab a taste and a growler of the 80 Schilling Scottish Ale. This is one of my favorite styles of beer and I was not as in love with the 60 Schilling as I thought I would be.

This is Bier Brewery's 80 Schilling Scottish Ale. It had 14.8 IBUs and was 5.5% abv. I was expecting his guy to have a little bit of a higher abv than it did.

The 80 was a nice improvement over the 60 I just talked about. The beer had a rounder and more robust flavor with the complexity that the first one was missing. It poured more of a dark brown, molassesy color, instead of an almost black oily color of the 60. The head was thin and went away very quickly. 

It had a great malty start with a nice crisp hop finish. There were hints of caramel and hazelnuts throughout.  The hops at the end were the perfect closure to a nice rounded sweet beer. It still maintained the lightness on the tongue that the 60 schilling had, making it a super drinkable beer. This is one I could sit down and have the entire growler in a night, and in fact I am calling some buddies over to do just that. Since so much of what they do is limited release, I suggest that you make the drive down to Bier and pick one up before it is gone.

Great job by Bier, I give this one a 3.5

Scotch Ale

I love scotch. Scotchy scotch, scotch. Here it goes down into my belly. -Anchorman

Come on, who doesn't. Today I wanted to get into the scotch and Scottish ales. Both of these are types of malty pale ales that don't have a ton of hops, traditionally made across the pond.

It happens to be one of my favorite types of beers, so today I decided to go big. Triton and Bier both released their versions, and I scored a growler or two.

Triton made McQueenie's (Smoked) Scotch Ale - on the right
Abv 5.3%
30 IBUs

This bad boy poured a dark brown to black with very little transparency. The head lasted for about a minute before it disappeared leaving just whisps floating across the top of my beer. It has a smoky smell, letting you know something out of the ordinary is coming. The initial taste is sweet, malty goodness, but then you get something different, smokiness.

It actually reminded me of the peat flavor of some scotch whiskeys. Although I did think this was a stand up beer, the smoked flavor was a touch overwhelming  as you started on your second or third. It was a neat idea and I give the guys over at Triton props for giving it a try. Go try them out. I give this beer a 3.5

At Triton they also had a cask version of this (picture on the right). It upped the smokey flavor and added a very good oaky note. The carbonation was obviously lower than the standard beer on tap, but totally worth trying if they still have it in when you stop by to visit. I preferred the cask ale over the tap. If you are going to go different you may as well go big with it.






Bier made Scottish 60 Shilling. (I will be reviewing their 80 Schilling when it comes out next week) - on the left

The Schilling scale exists because at one point in jolly old England you could buy beers with different amounts of alcohol. The higher the octane, the higher the cost. Sixty Schilling was pretty much the standard everyday beer.

This pours dark brown. It smells sweet and tastes it too. When I had the first sip, I thought that the beer was a bit lack luster, but as you get into the glass there are a lot of redeeming qualities. The flavor is quite good even if a bit less in your face than a Wee Mac (by Sun King) or the McQueenie (above).

It has a light maltiness that you could drink on for hours. The consistency is more like a standard ale than the heaviness of a porter. The finish is just hoppy enough to cut the sweetness. I will say there was more complexity then I originally gave it credit for. Thank God I got a bullet, so I could sample a few glasses before coming to a conclusion.

Give them a try. I give it a 3 and anxiously await their 80.

All this talk of scotch, and I think I need the real deal, looks like a Glen kind of a night...