 Thanks for checking out this episode of brutal battle beer break today I'm very excited to do a beer that I've had sitting in my cellar for a little bit of time This one's actually by crux fermentation project, and they are a small brewery out of Bend, Oregon I had done one of these for their I believe their outcast IPA, which I like very much So this will be the second offering from them. I've had and I have high hopes for it This is our tough love and their tough love is a Imperial stout that is bourbon barrel aged with Kentucky bourbon barrels for nine months In addition to that I have aged this an additional two years after it was put in the bottle, so Hopefully it's gonna be very good. I have very high hopes for it once once again this one had some wax on the top and I went ahead and took that off ahead of time because you don't want to see me messing with getting the wax off But that says to me there shouldn't really be any oxidation going on with this one of the big problems with you know Letting a beer ages if there's not wax, you know or something else to keep the air from getting under potentially You could come up with some pretty off flavors from oxidation in the beer So this one should be good now this one was given to me by my awesome mother-in-law Once again, there have been some other beer. She's given me that I've had on the podcaster done this with Awesome, it's very nice when you have a mother-in-law who's looking out for your beer interests. So don bowling. Thank you very much 11.5% I'll call by volume not sure if I said that already They have a little bit of information on an information card that they put on there It's got their little emblem down there crux fermentation project. Let's put that down out of sight And you have to see their labels their labels are very cool Always something interesting going on with them. I believe I showed it on the outcast as well. So here goes the tough love There's ton of bourbon. Oh, man. Are you kidding me? There's a cork in there, too. They tricked me Now I'm gonna have to go get a corkscrew Good thing we are also a winehouse. So I keep a corkscrew Clothes at hand. I didn't know they were gonna do that to me No Just imagine if I had not already taken the wax off Then you'd be sitting here forever watching me do all this stuff It's really in there I Got this oh And now it broke off Just a reminder to everyone when you're going Take a cork out of any sort of bottle you might want to go ahead and take the corkscrew all the way down Don't get too eager because otherwise you're gonna get what I just got a broken Don't want especially because if you get it far down start shredding You get that in your beer wine, whatever and everything is good Just gonna pour a little bit of this sucker It's pouring dark pouring very dark makes me happy As you can see it's very dark around the edges It's a little bit of a reddish Aspect to it brown going on as well not a whole lot of head to it Typically don't get that with higher ABB beers Get the bourbon right up front you get some oaky aspects you give vanilla you get a nice Cocoa dark chocolate get a caramel-y note from the bourbon Lot of bourbon lot of bourbon coming through on this, but it smells smooth. There's no Crazy assault with alcohol going through your nose because sometimes when you smell a bourbon barrel aged beer It'll you know the alcohol kind of burn your nose going up This smells very smooth out So here we go. It's tasty. It's very tasty. I get so much like vanilla caramel Milk chocolate. It's like a sweet milk chocolate in there The bourbon is so soft in this beer the malts are so soft in this beer It's a delicate imperial stout done with bourbon barrel aging, and it's nice This is such easy drinking super easy drinking starting to get a little bit of burn coming up slowly from the back of my throat But it's super it's super slow and it's just creeping ever so slightly and it's not like a real tough burn It's just kind of like more of like a dull warming type burn Yeah, all those notes Get the wood out of that tons and tons of bourbon caramel vanilla milk chocolate like I was saying Get a little bit of a licorice finish on it as well Little bit of a coffee aspect to very complex very tasty. This is bourbon barrel aging done very well I'm happy to say had high hopes for this and it's nice. It's super nice people who like bourbon barrel aged beers that aren't Too astringent that aren't you know kicking you over with the spirit aspect to it You're getting the spirit flavor here of the nice bourbon aspect, but the alcohol is not crazy. It's not too aggressive It's so smooth and easy This is a nice beer. This is a very nice beer problem is small brewery out of Oregon The only way you can get is if you're close to it or you have an awesome mother-in-law or something Who will get you a beer like this? So make those connections Cuz damn I know this isn't out all the time. It's kind of a special release. I believe it's their banished series So check the internet look at their website and see when it's coming out And like I said make those friends so they can get you this beer Damn fine beer damn fine beer. Hope other people can find it and if you can hit me up Let me know what you think brutal battle podcast at gmail.com will also take any sort of suggestions I got to cheers this to everyone out there hell of a beer everybody go out have yourself an awesome beer Preferably a barrel-aged one tonight to cheers me back. Thanks so much everyone and Go have an awesome beer