Bourbon County

Origin: USA | Date: 2009 | ABV: 13% | On The Beer Nut: April 2010

There was much fuss in the beer blogoshire, and further abroad, about the arrival of this one to the UK recently: just 100 bottles in the country, at £20 a pop. But before the Goose Island brewery was sold to the world's biggest mass-market brewer, its appearance was a far more casual affair. I acquired a couple of bottles of the 2009 vintage back in 2010 and this one has been sitting in the stash ever since.

Slightly worryingly, the cap is a twist-off, peeling away with just the faintest hiss. It glugs out thickly and flatly, giving off a faint beefy Bovril smell as it does so. A proper sniff moves away from that and gives me sweeter hot fudge and butterscotch sauces. The bourbon character comes out on tasting, and rather tasty it is too: sweet vanilla and bitter tar, glowering at each other but neither able to dominate. You get to take your time moving from one to the other because of the massively thick texture. There's also a very real whisky flavour, a pleasantly sweet burn, scorching the gullet and warming the innards: it's one of the truest expressions of whisky in beer I've ever encountered.

This is beautiful, classic, stuff, and completely untroubled by eight summers in my attic. Everything I wrote about it originally still rings true. If you've bought a bottle of the 2016 you probably don't need to think about opening it for a while yet.

Ola Dubh

Origin: UK | Date: 2009 | ABV: 8% | On The Beer Nut: February 2010

With the blog turning a year old tomorrow it's time to get started on a new season of Stash Killing. Harviestoun Ola Dubh is based on the brewery's classic dark ale Old Engine Oil and has been aged in barrels that previously contained Highland Park 12-year-old single malt whisky. Other versions using older casks are also available. I was a little put out by the marker pen phenols in this when I first tasted it so was interested to find out if seven years in the stash would smooth that out.

And yes, it does. What I was expecting next is the lovely rich chocolate flavours to come pouring out, spiced up with some whisky heat, but that's not what happened. While there's a distinct honey-and-vanilla whisky aroma, the flavour is very muted, verging on bland. There's a mild whisky taste at the front, and a touch of bitter tarry coffee, but the whole taste fades out very quickly. I think that's because the base beer doesn't have the body to carry it: this is startlingly thin for the strength. I guess this is why brewers tend to use bigger beers when they're doing the barrel thing.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with the beer, but it hasn't picked up any extra complexities through ageing and has quite possibly lost a few. I was surprised to see the brewery had put a mere three-year best-before on it, but perhaps this is why. Drink 'em if you've got 'em.

Porterhouse Celebration Stout

Origin: Ireland | Date: 2006 | ABV: 10% | On The Beer Nut: October 2006

This is the oldest beer in the stash, by a good couple of years I'd say. It was released as The Porterhouse's tenth anniversary beer and I'm opening it now because I covered the twentieth anniversary one over on the other blog recently. I've also reviewed a vintage bottle of the permanent version that the brewery began producing in 2010, as well as this one at the four year mark. But enough history, on with the drinking.

There's not much of a head to see as it pours, though a thin layer of ivory foam does stay on top of the dense black body all the way down. It smells every ounce of its 10% ABV, the dark booziness accentuated by a black marker pen solvent buzz.

The flavour is amazingly complex. This was a bitter liquorice bomb when it first arrived. Now it has settled down into a smooth and luscious mix of oily coffee and Pedro Ximinez raisin fruit. For a 10%-er it's ridiculously easy drinking, the carbonation low and the texture remarkably light. The finish is pure silky dark chocolate, the only real nod towards bitterness in the whole thing.

A stunning beer, and a shining example of the benefit of letting strong dark beers age for a decade or so.

Rosé de Gambrinus

Origin: Belgium | Date: 2009 | ABV: 5% | On The Beer Nut: March 2009

Framboise wouldn't be my favourite gueuze hack but Cantillon's version is one I always enjoy. This bottle is seven years and two days old so I expected a lot of funk and not so much by way of pink fruitiness.

There was nothing pink or fruity about the evil-looking black liquid trapped between the cap and the cork. I feared the worst but the wet mould hadn't completely saturated the cork and the end facing the beer was still rosy. More importantly, the beer hadn't spoiled.

It's a pale pinkish orange with lots of foam piled on top. The raspberry aroma is astoundingly fresh, all tart and juicy. That opens the flavour but it's fleeting, quickly squashed by fat and funky farmyard brett and then a long tail of dry sourness with just a sprinkling of white pepper sparks.

It's really quite beautiful and remarkably easy drinking. There's no acidic edge to the flavour and no heavy balsamic qualities. This bottle has gone to a better place but I'd say any other 2009s out there will be perfectly fine for a good few years yet, corks permitting.

I Hardcore You

Origin: UK | Date: 2010 | ABV: 9.5% | On The Beer Nut: September 2010

"A while" is how long I said I would leave my second bottle of I Hardcore You back in 2010. I really didn't intend it to be over five years.

The beer is a blend of BrewDog's Hardcore IPA with Mikkeller's I Beat yoU and is all about the hops. Or at least it was. At 9.5% ABV it's doubtless robust enough to survive the years of neglect, but would there still be any sign of the pine or elderflower notes I wrote about first time round?

Short answer: no. The beer seems darker than before, and murkier too. There's a sizeable amount of yeast built up in the bottom of the bottle. Maybe it decided that the residual sugar wasn't so unpalatable after all. It smells mostly of alcohol: white port or one of those lurid Italian aperitif liqueurs. The flavour is very sweet with an almost syrupy cough mixture vibe and just a whisper of orange pith bitterness for any semblance of balance. I tried hard to pick up some more subtle elements in the flavour but there aren't any really -- anything that hasn't rotted away gets buried under the weight of raw alcohol.

It's not awful, but is very definitely past its best -- following Alpha Dawg back in January, this is strike two for the hoppy beers. Thankfully I don't think there are any more in the stash.

Bigfoot

Two of the influences behind setting up this blog come together today. One is the Open It! project started by Mark Dredge back in 2010 which is being revived tomorrow (details here). In short, the laudable aim is to get you to go to your stash and drink the beer you've been hoarding. Exactly what I've been doing here for the last few months. So obviously I need to pick something special as an official Open It! beer. Yes I know it's a day early; I'm busy tomorrow.

The core, kernel and nucleus of my beer stash is the Sierra Nevada Bigfoots I've been buying every year. The last of my 2007s went to its reward some time ago and I decided I'd keep the later ones to do a vertical tasting with a few years' worth and including a fresh one. And then I never got round to it, and then I realised I had too many Bigfoots for a single session. "I know," I thought, "I'll open every second year, odds or evens." And then I didn't do that either, and the sequence kept growing.

Well: no more. I have a blog for writing about vintage beer and an occasion to drink something particularly special, so I'm opening three of my bottles of Bigfoot, opting for vintages that are four years apart: 2008, 2012 and 2016. A Bigfoot Olympiad, if you will.

Origin: USA | Dates: 2008, 2012 & 2016 | ABV: 9.6% | On The Beer Nut: September 2007

I started with the 2016 vintage as a kind of control. My theory, based on past Bigfoot experience, was that it'll be the least enjoyable of the lot. It did look gorgeous, though: a calmly limpid crystal ruby. I expected a burst of fresh west-coast hops in the aroma but that's not there, so I guess that's one advantage of freshness which isn't going to be a factor in this competition. The hops are definitely present in the flavour, however: harsh, bitter, almost plasticky. The malt has surprisingly little to say with just a peep of sweet toffee malt, though the super-thick texture is entirely in keeping with the ABV. If you squint, there's a touch of bitter-yet-fruity Retsina but, by and large, subtlety and nuance do not feature in this beer. That does leave a plethora of edges for Father Time to shave off and smooth out.

Something must have changed in the brewery's legendary bottle-conditioning procedure between 2012 and 2016 as I didn't get anything like as clean a pour from the next-oldest bottle. Or maybe the yeast have just been busy on the quiet. As well as being cloudier, Bigfoot 2012 seems a little paler too. Remarkably, there's much more hop aroma: a distinct fruit candy smell, buoyed up by toffee and booze. The harshness has definitely subsided but it hasn't really been replaced by much. Some liquorice, perhaps, and a dark alcoholic juiciness like port or Pedro Ximinez. Palatable for sure, but I'm not sure it's worth waiting four years of one's life for. The harsh bitterness hasn't gone away and the beer doesn't have the complexity I'd have thought a four-year-old barley wine would have developed. We need to go deeper.

Bigfoot turned 25 in 2008, prompting a temporary change in livery colour from blue to maroon. It was also, Bigfoot trivia fans, the first year the bottles sported a neck label. The obligatory yeast report is that there's a veritable mudbank of sludge in the bottom of the bottle. It smells hotter than any of the others and for a moment I feared the whole thing had turned to whiteboard markers. A sip put my mind at rest: all the good features of the others are there, including the liquorice and boozy raisin, but all harshness, hotness and bitterness are gone from the flavour. Instead it's pure decadent smoothness, the flavours dovetailing perfectly with each other and creating an entirely integrated whole. Only that acetone aroma lets it down. This isn't in the same league as the best vintage beers I've had here. It lacks the complexity of Thomas Hardy's or the Rocheforts, in particular, but it's damn good drinking.

My advice, then, is that if you have Bigfoots younger than 2008, and certainly younger than 2012, leave them alone for another few years. You'll get much better value later on. I, for one, won't be rushing back to my Bigfoot collection for a while, but I'm very glad I took a reading from these samples. And if your stash isn't up to a vertical run-through like this, fear not, GrandCru Beers has you covered and a multi-vintage six-pack of Bigfoot will be available next year. Put it somewhere safe and cool.

Rochefort 8 & 10

Origin: Belgium | Date: 2011 | ABVs: 9.2% & 11.3% | On The Beer Nut: October 2007

My first foray into the Rochefort section of the stash brings a pair of five-year-olds: numbers 8 and 10 in the series. It's a long time since I've had either of these but once upon a time Rochefort was my top pick of all the trappists, especially the 8.

And it's with the 8 I'm starting. The yeast is quite firmly stuck to the bottom of the bottle so I get a perfectly clear deep brown glassful. The aroma is surprisingly subtle, but a lungful pulls out boozy plums and a coarser nuttiness. Although it fizzed as it poured and formed a short-lived head, the surface is mill-pond still after a moment and the first sip reveals it as remarkably flat. Coupled with the dense texture, this produces the sensation of drinking a red wine to begin with, aided by dark plummy fruit. But, after a moment, it miraculously transforms back into beer and there's a wheaty, cakey Christmas pudding flavour and a coating of milk chocolate. The plums and black grapes which add panache to the malt weight taste incredibly fresh, almost juicy. The beer certainly hasn't been ruined by five years of neglect but I don't think it's been enhanced in any way. You may as well drink your Rochefort 8 fresh: no point in taking a risk with it.

With my face already aglow from that, I turned to the even stronger Rochefort 10. It's darker than the foregoing, though no keener to keep a head. The aroma is very enticing: the pure richness of ripe figs and hot fudge sauce. Its super high density is enough to almost make it difficult to sip, but I persevered, feeling every mouthful slip all the way down and form a warming boozy bolus in the pit of my stomach. For flavour, that cakey effect is there again, as are the dark fruits, though the black grapes have definitely turned to dry, chewy raisins. But above them both is a chocolate seam much more pronounced than in the 8, all sweet and quite syrupy. But not sickly, and not hot, bizarrely. This has a lot of the features of very strong beers that makes them difficult drinking, but I think time has rounded them out so the bugs become features: the problems of high alcohol heat have been smoothed away leaving only the benefits. The brewery managed by men of God has turned out a beer that tastes naughty: something about the alchemy of that intense sweet richness, yet lacking in headachey booze, makes me want to do penance for it. Perhaps the five year wait was suffering enough.

Effects of long-term stashing aside, this pair has reminded me that Rochefort beers are of immense quality. When you have the time, the disposition, and maybe a nice piece of cheese, they're always worth it.

An Brainblásta

Origin: Ireland | Date: 2012 | ABV: 7% | On The Beer Nut: February 2008

The Porterhouse has been brewing this English-style strong ale since its inception in 1996. For years its only noteworthy feature was the strength: pints at 7% ABV are still a rarity even now, but the flavour elicited few comments. Served cold from the keg it doesn't have a whole lot going on, dominated by a severe bitterness and its own malt base. And then in 2009 the brewery launched a bottled range which included Brainblásta. Cellar temperature was a massive improvement and with a few months of ageing it mellowed significantly. I've come to regard mature Brainblásta as one of Ireland's most underrated beers.

So, how far can we take this? This bottle is best-before dated June 2013 and I'm guessing it's been sitting in the stash for close to four years. There's a very vinous aroma, warming with a somewhat concerning hint of sherry about it. And that's there in the flavour too, though only a whisper at the back and I would not say that this is suffering from bad oxidation. At the front, the sweet malt smoothness has a kind of chocolate character, yet it's also quite dry: surprisingly thinly textured and with a green vegetal edge from the remaining hops.

There's a lot more happening in this than you'd find in a younger bottle. It seems busier and less integrated. It's probably a better beer after only one year, but after four it's certainly interesting.

Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout

Origin: USA | Date: 2009 | ABV: 10% | On The Beer Nut: September 2008

This got less than 20 words on my blog when I first encountered it, sipping a teeny tasting glass at the 2008 European Beer Festival in Copenhagen. It went on to become a firm favourite over the years, after it became regularly available in Ireland. For a while, I think, it had the big American imperial stout sector to itself. And yet I can't remember the last time I drank it, and that's not because of the double-digit ABV. But it's a classic, I've always enjoyed it: how does it hold up after seven years at the back of my attic?

Like a hackneyed movie drunk I had to double-check the label as I poured: it smells powerfully like port wine as it comes out of the bottle. More considered sniffing provides dense dark chocolate liqueur and a not unattractive meaty autolytic note. I remember it as being pretty hop-forward when fresh, but that's all gone on tasting, with not even a residual bitterness left behind. This is chocolate all the way round, sweet and smooth as you like. There's maybe a burr of leathery oxidation in the finish, but it's barely noticeable, accompanied as it is by a distracting waft of winey booze up the back of one's hooter.

I'm surprised to find that the aroma is this beer's best feature, but what an aroma! And even the flavour has developed a classy aged character. If you can keep your mitts off your stash of Black Chocolate long enough, it's rewarding.

Alpha Dawg

Origin: Ireland | Date: 2012 | ABV: 5.9% | On The Beer Nut: April 2012

You don't age hoppy beers: everyone knows that. Which is why I've moved this IPA to the front of the Stash Killer! queue. I'm just not brave enough to leave it any longer.

It was never a particularly bright and zippy sort of IPA, going more for a serious orangey English thing. First time around I noted that the "sharp resinous bitterness" was the main feature, and it was my understanding that when hop-forward beers mature, the hop flavours and aromas die off but the bitterness remains. But this one has managed to lose its bitterness too. What I'm tasting here, almost four years on, is almost all malt: a powdery Ovaltine malt sweetness. What bitterness there is isn't really hop-related, it's more a kind of metallic aspirin tang with maybe the ghost of those jaffa oranges hovering in the background.

The lesson here is that it's true: lighter hoppy beers don't seem to age as well as the strong and dark. I wasn't a massive fan of this on its first appearance, but time has not been kind to it. Don't let your hops grow old.