oh the hell with it. I HATE THE GIANTS SO FREAKING MUCH. My fiancée's younger sister was rooting for the Giants because, as she puts it, Eli Manning is the patron saint of younger siblings. Whatever, that was some bush league bullshit. I'm not saying the Giants didn't deserve to win. Actually, yes I am; eff the Giants. I guess what I'm getting at more is that the Patriots deserved to lose, given how many dropped passes, blown coverages, and REALLY, A SAFETY?!? they had during the game. I am a believer in the power of prayer, but Gisele shouldn't have been praying for Brady. She should have been praying for the receiving corps, the offensive line, and the defensive backfield.
So... that happened...
Today I'm in NYC today and tomorrow for an overview course on regulating Financial Instruments. And I'm staying at the apartment of an old college friend, who is originally from Kentucky. This last bit is important, because this beer I found is aged in Kentucky Bourbon barrels.
Intrigued?
I got out of class at 5:25 and ended up wandering around midtown until Ray got off work. I asked my work colleague Noe how I might kill a couple of hours until I met up with Ray for dinner. Taking Noe's advice, I took a trip to the Time Warner Center, where I discovered the magic that is the Columbus Circle Whole Foods. Now, I like Whole Foods in New York City, because they do beer right. Or at least, the one at Houston Street does - it's got a whole room devoted to hops and barley excellence. Columbus Circle, maybe not so much...
This beer isn't just intriguing, it's phenomenal.
...that is, until I found several bottles of Victory's Dark Intrigue. They have a really small beer section, but maybe it's precisely because nobody goes to Columbus Circle for beer that they still had a few bottles of Dark Intrigue. Dark Intrigue starts off as Storm King Stout, a Russian Imperial Porter with a great following. The Storm King Stout is aged in the aforementioned Kentucky Bourbon barrels for the summer before being bottled and sold on a single day at which it sold out in 3 hours. Now I'll be honest with you, despite Victory Brewing being a scant 2.25 hours from my apartment, I've never had their Imperial. I've had their Prima Pils, which is lovely, and also a few others that demand their own posts. But most of what I've tasted from Victory is light in color and IPA-ish in flavoring (think of them as an East Coast Sierra Nevada). So while I don't have any real frame of reference to how this beer differs from its younger un-oaked counterpart, I can report that this is a phenomenal beer.
Ray is from Kentucky, and we tried this beer in official julep glasses.
Ray and I chilled this down as quickly as we could at his apartment and tasted it. Fantastic. Immediately, one notices a beautifully dark pour and a very floral nose. Depending on how warm the beer was, I noticed aromas of cream, milk chocolate and vanilla. Usually when something is aged in oak barrels, you can smell varying degrees of vanilla. With the Dark Intrigue, one actually smells the oak of the barrels: it reminds one of a damp and cold New England winter, like the kind we're NOT having right now.
This was my view for a good 40 minutes:
sipping, sniffing, and savoring this very intriguing beer.
The flavor was lovely. I got hints of dark bitter chocolate, coffee and vanilla, but it was cut by a strong hop presence that is rare in a stout. The carbonation was lively and delicious, and there was nonetheless a strong alcohol component to the beer. At 9.1%, Dark Intrigue hits hard, but it's so complex it would be a sipping beer even without the alcohol content.
Actually has a bottling date: November 10, 2011.
Like I said, this beer sold out at the brewery in 3 hours. A friend of mine from DC drove through the night and was 78th in line to buy a case (amazing). But it did also ship around the country. The limited release on November 23rd also proves possibly to be their last, they say. That's very sad. As such, I will be on the lookout for more of these and buying up as many as I can. I encourage you to do the same.
