Captain Lawrence Smoke from the Oak (Wine Barrel)

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

Batch #3 (aged for ~8 months). Notes of brett, oak, wine and porter form a not quite harmonious union in this beer. It’s not so much that the flavors don’t mesh, but the base porter seems mildly uncomfortable with its highbrow (or oddball, depending on your preferences) bedfellows. The chocolate and roasty malt flavors are present but more muted than expected. The tartness from the brett and the punchy, fruity wine (though, I imagine the wine was relatively dry) take center stage. Personally, I thoroughly enjoy this battle of flavors, but I could understand an alternate viewpoint. The beer looks like a porter, coffee black, with a big puffy, khaki-cream head. The taste is dry, unsurprisingly. This is a very interesting beer that makes me want to find a source for more from the brewery.

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

Bottle shared by slob (now sloth) at SL. Pour was highly bubbly brown, tannish head color, good lacing. The aroma was flemish sour-like, vinous, touch of bret. Flavor was also vinous, bret-sour, dark malty (short of a really identifiable choco or coffee for me, though - porter elements way secondary / minor under the aging), flemish sour-like in many ways, except for that touch of roast and smoke. Mouthfeel was dry. This has a somewhat sweet and full base, yet it was sour, and it finished light and dry, a really cool brew. Once again, CL does something exotic and interesting, yet not over the top (take note, DFH). Thanks, Bert, for sharing!

Aroma: 9 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 10 | Flavor: 9 | Overall: 9

Adark chocolate colored, medium to full-bodied ale with a tan milk chocolate colored head. Initially smelled cherries which was followed by smoke and then vanilla. I tasted cherries(sometimes syrupy but not sweet), smioke, vanilla, roasted to burnt malts and red meat. Exotic and well worth drinking slowly with dinner.

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

Batch 2; Sampled May 2008
I knew this might be a gusher and I still lost a couple ounces to my counter and sing. A soft pour still produces four-fingers of head in my glass plus another two fingers above the rim. The head is a tight, creamed-chocolate, tan color and the beer is a dark-chocolate brown / black color that is quite opaque even when held up to the light. As I pour this brew a nice wine-influenced aroma wafts to my nose. A deeper inspection yields ample Brettanomyces influence with notes of sweat, musty horse-blanket notes, butyric acid and a sharp-yet-light tartness. Underneath the more dominant funkiness is are some porter notes of toasted grain, lightly roasted coffee beans and if you smell the beer in a sideways sort of fashion (figuratively of course) there is a substantial, bright berry like wine character, a touch of jam and some leather and tobacco notes to this beer. The smoked malt aromatics have almost completely been subsumed by the other aromas, but there is perhaps a touch of saltiness here that could be attributed to it.

Lightly sweet tasting up front with a middle that has a nice berry-like wine character to it that just barely makes its presence known. A lot of the carbonation was lost during the initial gushing and in the 5+ minutes it has sat in my glass, it is still well carbonated though and this combines with a fairly light body to make this pretty easy drinking. The funk is a bit more muted in the flavor than in the aroma, but the Brett influence definitely comes out in the finish; musty, light notes of phenolic soaked cotton balls, butyric acid notes, some acidity that accentuates the wine character and a woody mushroom note. This finishes with a mix of fruit-driven wine flavors, and some porter flavors of toasted grain, roasted malts, toasted bread-like flavors and a touch of burnt grain bitterness. The actual oak contribution here is soft; there is some spicy oak character towards the finish, and a touch of tannic character seems to influence the texture, but it remains a supporting cast member here, which I quite like.

My second pour still has an incredible level of carbonation, this makes me realize how velvety the texture of this beer really is. Despite being very well carbonated the beer feels quite smooth and velvet-like all while foaming up as it crosses the tongue; quite an interesting textural experience that I don't believe I have ever experienced in a beer before. I can't taste any smokiness in this brew at all & I wonder if he left the smoke malt out of this brew completely.

This is by far my favorite of the from the oak beers so far. This doesn't have any heavy-handed hard liquor competing with the funkiness that I really found jarring in the other two versions of this I have had. Instead the wine barrel influence works quite well with both the Brettanomyces and the base porter. I really like the fruit notes that the wine barrel aging have added to this beer, it is nothing heavy, but most certainly a welcome addition to up the complexity of this brew. Sans the slight wine influence, this is exactly as I would imagine an old, pre 1900s, unblended, stale porter would have been like (sans the modern malt formulation of course). This is just a great marriage of funkiness & barrel influence with porter. If it wasn't so explosive already I would love to age some more of this. I definitely came into this with a bit of skepticism, but this has delivered and I am quite happy with this brew; this makes me really want to try the Port-Barrel version.