Innis & Gunn Cask Strength Oak Aged Beer

Innis & Gunn
Brewed at Belhaven (Greene King)
Style: English Strong Ale
Edinburgh, Scotland

Serve in English pint, Trappist glass

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[January 2007, from Waitrose, Marlow]. I note that the beer is stronger than your regular ale, but comes in a smaller bottle, so I assume the extra 40p of my hard-earned cash I had to part with was for the value-added packaging! Having finally extricated my beer and made a quick visit to our cardboard recycling box, I was able to get at my beer and... woah, this is a weird one. The horrible sour smell from the bottle nearly put me off drinking it, but I persevered. The texture is smooth, but it’s the taste that grabs your attention. Tastes sweet, then more sourness, then as you get into it I caught glimpses of malt, vanilla, unripe bananas (I think this accounts for the sourness), ripe bananas as well, whisky, lemon and caramel. Oooh, was that some sawdust as well?! And.... errrm... margarine? I got the impression that someone is going for the complexity of a trappist beer, and simply hasn’t had enough practise at at mellowing the flavours so they complement one another. Instead the different levels of taste fight for dominance in your mouth with the sour green banana coming back to give the others a good hiding at regular intervals. So we have enormous depth but no refinement - the layers of flavour simply don’t sit easily with each other. Some will find this beer interesting, others simply bizarre - I’m wavering between the two. It’d probably be a good introduction for a newcomer to the noble art of beer tasting, and certainly provokes discussion. However, at present I’m not convinced that this beer is actually designed for drinking! I know for a fact I’ve never tasted a beer like this! Maybe it would mellow with cellaring (although I firmly believe that beers should be sold at the ideal drinking age, so I’m not having with any of this storage malarkey!). I also note that the brewers have only been in business since 2003, so I’ll be interested to see what their future beers are like - this one is intriguing and shows promise, but needs a little more time spent getting the recipe exactly right - if they keep persevering with this I think it could become a super beer. Perhaps it would also help to bottle condition it? Errm... is that cough mixture coming through now? *hic* feeling a bit drunk... and very confused... what just happened to my mouth?

rbesg07, first beer of the day. dull amber coloured with minimal head; simpl vanilla and caramel aroma; some honeyish sweetness but nasty bandaids in the finish

Bottle poured into what looked like an oversized champagne flute. A truly different beer than I’ve.tried. strong strong smells of vanilla and oak. Tastes like vanilla, toffee, caramel and wood. Went down real easy. Would definitely order again.

Thanks to PaulUnwin for the share. Pours a clear amber-orange with a small off-white head. Nose is big oak, vanilla, wood, slight peat, a hint of smoke and lots of malt throughout. Flavor is similar with oak, wood, vanilla, big malt, slight peat, and small smoke throughout. Light to medium in body and enjoyable overall.

The waffs of vanilla and wood are great on opening the bottle. So to the oaked flavour through the beer. This served to remind me well since I had not had it in 3 years. What I did not remember was the high residual sweetness and low bitterness. Pulling apart the beer this one was not seasonalble or satiating, seeming more like a tricked-up high gravity brewed lager with a high mash stand temp to give excess dextrins. With all the flavours going on from the oak, it needed less sweetness and more balance to make me have another ... which is still sitting there ... looking at me!

Clear copper color. Not much aroma-some caramel and oak. Sweet beer-lots of malt, caramel mostly with light hints of oak. Nice beer. Easy drinker.

Bottled, 330ml from Sainsburys in Banbury, aged 4 yrs. Dark copper with white head, floaters. I’m finding that many of the I&G beers are on the sugary sweet side for me, this has a heavy caramel note with hints of burnt mollasses. There is an overriding alcohol note, not sure if this is from the barrels, but I’m not really noticing an oaky flavour. Overall quite reasonable though.

Sampled at the last Toronto Food and Wine Festival. Tasted bitter and of oak, if my memory serves correctly. I didn’t mind it at all.

I adore all things Innis & Gunn. This one is particularly excellent. I enjoyed the nice sweetness paired with the crisp finish

Clear bottle. Poured clear amber brown with no head. Aroma of heavy oak, vanilla, malt, citrus. Taste is also very oaked. Plenty of malt, citrus, and whiskey come through as well. Body is not too big, with light carbonation. Overall, an interesting bottled brew.

UPDATED: MAY 14, 2009 The colour is dark yellow/brown-like. Almost like a darker Trocadero or scotch. Copper is the word I’m searching for. The aroma is fruity. I can smell pineapple and coconut. The flavor is both fruity and strong. Honey and oranges comes to my mind. It tastes almost like scotch. It really stands out from many other beer types.