Deschutes Conflux No. 1 - Collage

Brewed by Deschutes Brewery
Style: American Strong Ale
Bend, Oregon USA

Serve in Snifter, Tulip

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Quite simply, the best beer I have ever tasted. I am not blessed with the ability to discern subtleties noted by others such as "very wet wood", or appearance of "fig juice" in the glass. What I appreciate, when wandering outside of a specific style, is complexity, balance and uniqueness---and this had it all. Deep fruity, alcoholic aroma. Deep rich complex tastes which took me through moments of sour Belgian to oaked red, to tawny port to well-aged whiskey, with a lingering complex pleasant aftertaste. A thick lasting head wouldn’t have made sense here, but somehow generous carbonation did. Sweet-sour balance. Sweet-bitter balance. Have never paid anywhere close to $12 for a 12 oz. bottle like I did for this. Vowed never to do it again. But I did. Twice more. And counting. The best thing about the price is that there are still 3 bottles left in my favorite bottle shop. Sorry, got to run before they close.

If it’s this good now, can’t wait to drink it on the best after date! Not sure how they got the best qualities of all these different brews to shine through but someone was working magic. Sour is most prominent in nose and flavor but wonderful Belgian strong esters and dark fruits are there, too. Oak complements an already complex brew with muted whiskey notes sneaking in there. Similar in style to Oerbier Special Reserva but definitely its own unique creation. Amazing.

poured with very little head and a beautiful dark amber color. Meduim to full bodied with strong alcoholic aftertaste. Deliciously sour! Overall a great beer!

Bottle at Waldos Pizza. Hazy medium brown with almost no head. Caramel chocolate toffee and green apple aroma with hints of cherry and lemon. Tart sour apple caramel and chocolate tastes followed by pasted grain and lemon flavors and finishing with strong bourbon, oak, and red wine flavors. Thick smooth and bright palate. Excellent.

Pours a rosy red with an itty bitty virile head. Aroma of vanilla, oak, sherry, caramel and molasses. Mmm smooth, balanced bizness flavors. Massive tannin overload when cold, but let this sucker warm up and you will be treated with a gift of heavenly proportions. Sherry, figs, caramel, vanilla, and a boat load of oaky tannins caress the tongue without destroying it. Man do those tannins smooth out. I’m going to buy a case of this and age it par the packaging recommends. I’ve imparted in the likes of properly aged Thomas Hardy, Ola Dubh and Lees Harvest Ale, and this is as good if not better than all of them. This is one of those beers you can not pass up but make sure you let it warm up.

What an aroma. Strong fruity notes mixes with old paint and alcohol. In a good way. A fairly cloudy orange-brown appearance. not too heady. the only real drawback to this beer. Also some strong molasses barleywine characters in the aroma. The flavor of this is excellent. Fruity and molasses with some chewiness. In a way the flavor really mimics the aroma, but without the hard alcohol taste. Great stuff, but a couple points off for the super high price.

A Dissident and barrel heavy blend falling somewhere between strong ale and wild ale. Sour, sweet, ridiculously complex and smooth with no hint of the abv.

Date: May 29, 2012 Mode: Bottle Source: Blue Max Description: Semi-opaque muddy brown pour with almost no head but retained what was there of it and did have some lacing. Aroma of red wine, whiskey, wood, sour cherry and spice. Taste starts sweet caramel, then shifts sour, gives way to the wood, came back around to the sweet and finished with the rye (spicy) whiskey. Medium to full bodied with a little bit of carbonation. Now I realized why I paid so much for this 12 ounce bottle. Very complex and very good so early on. Bottle says best after 4.30.13 and is 11.6% Alc. by vol.

This is a tremendous beer. I am typically skeptical of mashups of this nature, especially the merits of using so many different types of casks. But there is such quality going into it--I know Fred and Adam but maybe I’ll have to try the Dissident and Stoic, too--the result is fortunately at least no worse than they started with. And it is probably improved by at least some of the cask aging (did they need all six). Great vanilla and woody notes, some bouncy fruitiness, and a warming sweetness--definitely a nice finish. Tremendous beer. (bottle at the Ale Jail backyard beer festival, 2012)

Admittedly, this enigmatic blend took awhile to really grow on me. The flavors just seemed too disparate, at first. Now on bottle number three, I’m beginning to get it. Beautiful sour cherry and pinot aroma with subtle spiciness lurking underneath. Reminds me of a fine Gluhkriek. Flavor has more of the same, with slight underpinnings of chocolate, and bourbon, and stronger hints of rye whiskey. The Dissident is in the forefront, although I can pick up leather and tobacco from the Adam, and citric hoppiness from the Adam. The flavors seem to have begun to coalesce after only a short time, and I could see this being amazing in another year.