Trade, North Carolina edition

By Matt Schreiner in Beer on Friday, July 28th, 2017

Thanks to another beer site that I won’t mention here, I have made a number of Internet friends over the last two years who I will regularly trade beers with. Scot constantly tells me that I do that blog on this site enough. And since he is right, I got inspiration for a couple of blogs to do with my latest trades, thus serving two masters, I guess.

The first one will be of a beer sent to me this week in a box from Ryan, a guy who lives in the Atlanta area. He and I first started trading because he was offering Creature Comfort’s Tropicalia in exchange for Three Floyd’s Zombiedust, and I was the first one to jump on it. He and I have been trading for a couple of months, as I t get him Floyd’s and other Chicago area beers for anything he can get me Georgia, Florida, and the Carolinas (he got me my first Burial beer, which was amazing).

Anyway, to the beer!

El Paraiso by Wicked Weed out of Asheville North Carolina is a bourbon barrel aged Imperial Coffee Stout with caocao nibs and coffee beans. It’s a terrific barrel aged flavored stout. As way of comparison, I had a Southern Tier Creme Brûlée last night, and that’s an example of a beer that’s too sweet. This one is a good example of how to balance flavors, but maybe the barrel helps.

It was bottled 2/17/17, and I drank it in a spiegelau.

Poured a lot of foam, still has a good amount of lacing after a while. One of the better looking stouts I’ve had in a while.

Smell is strongly sweet with plenty of chocolate and a slight presence of coffee and barrel.

The taste is the best part of this beer. I’d imagine there might have been a bit more barrel heat when it was fresher, but I think if the chocolate has faded by now, it may have been too sweet then. It’s got nice roastiness with plenty of chocolate and a mild barrel burn. Only weakness is a lack of coffee flavor, especially for a coffee stout. There’s a slight bitterness on the back end from the coffee, but if it was stronger, this beer would have been extremely well balanced instead of just well balanced.

Feeling on this is great. It’s not too heavy, maybe slightly too thin, but there’s very little oiliness to it. There’s a definite alcohol presence, but it’s not too strong. It’s very sippable, really flavorful, and quite enjoyable.

One of the best barrel aged I’ve had in a while (to note, the best recently was Three Floyds French Vanilla Militia 2017, but that’s on a whole other level).