 Thank you for checking out this episode of brutal battle beer break today. I'm going to be trying a beer by brewery I'm very excited to try something by because I've never had any other stuff This is by Odell out of Fort Collins, Colorado And it is their barrel thief which is a oak barrel aged imperial IPA and it is 9.4% alcohol by volume I ended up getting this because Odell actually does not distribute in Maryland But I do have the rare beer of the month club through beer month club calm Which I highly recommend they have a lot of really good stuff come through You'll have to decide if it's worth the price But the good thing is that if you see something coming out For a month that you're not that interested in you can just defer and not use that month of your membership So you can just keep basically bumping it for months until you see something you really like So you get a lot of options and then you can just pull the trigger without having to pay for everything along the way So really good beer month club calm. Check it out. Anyway, I want to get into this Good little corking cage number here for the barrel thief Now I'm interested to see what happens with this because I've had Hoppy beers in which they've been oak barrel aged and I'm not a fan And I've had it go the other way as well Sometimes the oak works really well with it or any wood really and sometimes it kind of just really makes the hop style too much That was a struggle Nice pop though very satisfying Pour the sucker out here. Hopefully it was worth all this work, you know Decent amount of head coming out on it. Go ahead turn. Oh, I didn't show you guys pretty cool label barrel thief There you go guys stuck in the barrel. It's like jail. These guys will band its handkerchief on so pretty cool I can already smell the aroma coming out of me Very very orange almost like a slight Brownish tinge on that orange a nice big white head to it Looks on the thick side Whoo, very very very robust aroma a little grapefruity orangey But it's less it's less of like Fresh well, there's a little bit of a fresh aspect in there for the citrus But it's it's more like sugary kind of concentrated sweetness like it was dehydrated. This was really good Super citrusy just like you would think like a West Coast IPA would be Well imperial in the sense I get a little bit of the oaky characteristic, but I Was actually expecting the the citrusy aroma to be significantly less because of the oak barrel aging But it's not so let's see if that translates in the actual flavor. Oh Wow, I actually get a lot of wood coming through on it a lot of oak That is interesting. I'm gonna need to process this for a second. Huh? It is good. I was confused at first because I was not expecting the oak to be that strong Especially not up front. I figured it'd be more toward the back of the flavor But it hits you strong like right up front. There's some nice citrusy aspect in it But like I said it just like in the nose There was more of a like a dried citrus because because it's more like a sweetness to it It's pretty viscous as far as I Imperial IPA's go. It's you know much more thick big mouth feel to it almost a little bit chewy a little bit Botanic that because you kind of get that from the wood It's like, you know kind of taste a little bit like a block of wood kind of but the wood is almost has like a bit of a spice Aspect to it. It hits you so hard Real interesting. I would not say this is amazing Because there's a lot of wood going on on it. I think I'd like a little bit less wood But it is good nonetheless certainly. I'll drink this. I don't think it tastes like the 9.4% though I think the wood the tannic aspect of the wood and the bitterness that it imparts is helping to kind of hide a little bit of that ABV so that's nice. Let's see if it has anything interesting Just not not much tropical fruit hop character that tangles with hints of vanilla dried fruit and toasted almond It's toasted almond. I can see them. I can see a bit of that vanilla actually No, I don't think I can get toasted almond. I actually ate some almonds a while ago Don't get toasted almond, but the vanilla. Yes Solid beer interesting beer very interesting beer not a bad offering by Odell especially to be my first so Odell I look forward to trying to get a hold of your more of your stuff and hopefully I do and I've heard great things so Awesome. Anyway, thanks everyone for checking this out and just like I'm doing go have yourself a good beer