Dry Dock Oaked ESB

Brewed by Dry Dock Brewing Co.
Style: Premium Bitter/ESB
Aurora, Colorado USA

Serve in English pint

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Pour on tap with sampler at brewery, reddish almost brown pour with white head, aroma has notes of tart lemon, hints of oak, slight dusty earth and grass notes but the tartness blankets it all. Taste is a mix of tart fruit, hints of lemon and big oak, touch of biscuit and caramel, finishing fairly bitter. Weird, and the ESB doesn’t blend well with the oak.

Tap @ brewery. Cloudy, brownish orange appearance with a tan head. Rich, toasted oak that mostly consumes the aroma besides hints of vanilla and caramel. Red fruity, caramel malty, toasted oaky flavor that has limited carbonation and is surprisingly boozy and hard to drink. Not a good idea.

UPDATED: NOV 23, 2010 On tap @ the brewery’s taphouse on 11/12/10. The chalkboard claimed this beer has an ABV of 5.8% with 43 IBU. Pours out hazy brown with orange highlights. Small, light khaki head. Aromas of wet soggy wood, some pine resin, syrup, and a fresh waffle cone from an ice cream shop. Taste has a strong oak hit, followed by roasted malt with medium hop bitterness. Not as sweet as the nose predicted. It’s ok, it just tastes too much like beer fermented in wet wood. Their regular ESB is better.

Snifter at the brewery - why do people oak beers like this? - it is so easy to leave it in the oak too long - tastes like oak - vanilla - oak - light caramel - oak - mild fruitiness - oak - faint stale hops - oak - I guess you really need to like oak to like this - tastes like fresh oak barrel and muddled maltiness - you could have put a barleywine or imperial stout or sour ale in the new oak barrel, but no...you put an friggin’ esb in there - ugh!