Captain Lawrence Smoke from the Oak (Rum Barrel)

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

Good god, as soon as the cap came off, like a fire hose gusher! thank goodness for moist towelettes.. . medium brown with a red tint .. crazy foam .. . i hope that snake bites that kid in the face .. . light oak, muddled ruminess, and wood with light fruit .. . good but slightly disappointing.. . Good night, Pumpkin Tits.

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Pours with a dark brown body topped by a thin to medium thick, quickly disappearing head with little lacing. It’s sour with a bretty funk and a slight underlying sweetness with hints of rum. it reminds me more of a Flanders Red (Dutchess come to mind) than a smoked porter aged in rum barrels, but I have to say...I liked it.

Aroma: 7 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 6 | Overall: 6

What do I make of this beer. I'm honestly a bit confused. I mean it's really something that perplexes me. Take the name, Smoke from the Oak. It's a smoked porter aged in rum barrels. Okay, sounds like an awesome idea. But I got no smoke, no porter nor did I get any rum outta this. I did get some barrel (wood) in spades though. Lots and lots of wood. In fact by the time my brother and I had finished this bottle, it was damned near like drinking some kind of chewy burgandy red wine than a porter.

First, the beer is a textbook gusher. I wish I'd had read eaglefan and Sap's comments because it would have saved me some clean-up time. Pop the cap and it's Mt. Vesuvius in on the counter. Great. So I rush pour two glasses and what fills my glass is a HUGE 6 finger head with about 1/2 inch of beer at the bottom. I had to wait 10 minutes before I could actually manage to drink it. Aromas that first hit me is some tart dark fruits. Some light chocolate notes, and roasted notes but damn...they were really, really light. Mostly fruity and funky. Appearance is a dark brown, nearly black with some red highlights on the edges. Flavors....sigh....flavors. Well, it's fruity. Fruity to the point, as I mentioned earlier, of being wine like. It's got some funk to it, which is nice, but the taste is so overwhelmingly tart wood and funk all I can think about is red wine. It looses any semblance of being beer. I mean, I know it's beer but talk about blurring the lines. Consider it blurred.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 9 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

Batch 1 bottle from Slob, courtesy there to for jjpm74, who hooked him up. Opening the bottle began the excitement, full fledged gusher, volcanic flow of foam up and out of the bottle even after making a mess of the counter and pouring off two small tasting glasses of head (which led us to enjoy the rum-bourbon versions blended, hehe.... a nice mix for sure). As you can guess, the appearance was porter like with a big pillowy foamy head, well sustained, highly carbonated mouthfeel, airy even, man, more bret in this one? Wonderful in that case! The aroma was more dark fruity (plums and raisins) than the bourbon version, some rum, bret, some chocolate, chainsaw dust smoke, more malty and flavorful than the bourbon version, yet still not overrun with booz/rum, short of sticky, but sweeter and with more character. Nice character in this beer, and again totally fun and enjoyable. Thanks, Bert and John, a great start to the Christmas Holiday season!

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 6 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 6 | Overall: 7

Batch 2; Sampled November 2008
Pretty darn well carbonated, a careful pour into my large Tripel Karmeliet tulip rises a full-two fingers above the rim of my glass, for a total of seven-fingers of height. The head is a nicely browned, dark tan color. The beer is a dark, concentrated amber / brown that approaches black in color and the beer is pretty opaque as not a hint of light passes through it when held up to the light. The aroma smells of roasted grain, a weird, fruity rum-like note (with a bit of plum in there) and perhaps a touch of funk (I sure hope not though as I had enough of the funk in batch 1). The aroma is significantly burnt, at times smelling like burnt plums, burnt whole grain toast and there is also a significant, though at first not noticed, phenolic smoke character to this beer. The smoke can come off as a burnt vegetal note at times, but does add a savory, almost salty character to the finish of the nose. A touch of spicy alcohol also seems to come from the Rum barrel, though the barrel influence in the aroma is somewhat subtle.

Lightly sweet, savory, a bit hot and this finishes with a smoky phenolic note that sort of turns into a vegetal & plastic like flavor in the long, lingering finish. The upfront sweetness in this seems contributed by rum (both the alcohol and a touch of fruitiness), this beer quickly dries out though as the beer flows across the tongue. This has a nice roast character to it with notes of burnt cocoa, a touch of burnt acidity, a roasted nut note, a chalky burnt grain husk note and a burnt graininess. This is fairly light bodied and, if not for the hot alcohol and phenolics, this would be down right quaffable. Other notes of tart plum / prune, a touch of white pepper, a touch of brown sugar, fig and perhaps just a hint of cola.

As the beer warms up it becomes a lot more drinkable and balance, it loses a bunch of the harsh alcohol and roast notes and just becomes a bit more enjoyable. An interesting beer, it still doesn't quite work for me, but is much better than batch 1. I am a bit surprised how tame the Rum character is, with a 12 year old Rum, I would expect a lot of rich Rum character, but that is just not the case.

Batch 1, Sampled December 2007
Total: 2.8, 6/5/6/5/6 A definite gusher, both the bottle and my tulip glass gush. The head easily fills up the five fingers of space in my tulip glass. It is a dusty, cocoa tinged, brown-tan color and sits atop a basically black colored brew. Funky sour aromatic notes mix in with the cocoa / roast malt character typical of a Porter. The funky notes lean towards an ample fruit character reminiscent of tart plums, green apples and grapes (I think the rum comes in to play here too). The funk produces aromas of moldy leather, touches of over-ripe cheese, musty earth and in combination with barrel notes produce wood-like aromas and spicy oak. The porter contributes notes of dusty cocoa, a dry toasted malt notes, browned biscuits and lightly burnt soda crackers. The aroma is all over the place; strangely I have a hard time picking out either notes of rum or of smoked malt.

The beer has calmed down considerably since pouring it, but it still is a bit frothy as it hits my tongue. Despite being forewarned by the aroma, the beer is a shocking mix of astringent oak and acidic sourness. A persistent undercurrent of moldy, over-ripe cheese lingers throughout the flavor profile. Flavors of moldy cotton and decaying loam intersperse with oak derived notes of spice and tannic wood. The smoke is a bit more noticeable in the flavor, but somehow it only seems to accentuate the harsh phenolics (leaning towards burnt plastic), rather than producing that appetizing smoke infusion I love from Rauchmalz. Quite tart, this seems to accentuate some flavors of tart plums, star-fruit and even something that reminds me of durian.

I usually like really funky beers and this one is super complex, but this one is just jarring; the oak character is too harsh and the funkiness, especially when paired with the sharp roast malt notes just doesn't work here. Hopefully the next batch will resist the wild-wee-beasts as I would really like to try a clean beer aged in a Rum-barrel.