REVIEW #90: Irish Whiskey Cask (Innis and Gunn)

Pours black with the faintest glimmer of red. The head is long lived and light tan in colour. The aroma is of rich chocolate and marshmallow. Smoky, creamy and chocolatey are the adjectives that spring to mind at first. There's lots of carbonation for a stout and quite a thin body too. These could be seen as flaws but the rich, rounded, complex, grainy flavour - hallmarks of an aged ale - and heavy alcohol (with faint whiskey burn) makes the beer feel robust. The finish also bears these signs with plenty of wood and green apple in evidence.

This beer, a Scottish stout, was aged in oaken barrels previously containing an unnamed triple-distilled Irish whiskey. My guess would be Jameson, they're the biggest whiskey distillers I can think of anyway, but I'm no whiskey expert. The length of maturation was 60 days, plenty of time of flavour-imparting molecules to leach from the wood into the conditioning beer. Be wary of the clear glass bottle though; keep it out of direct sunlight to minimise the risk of a light-struck ('skunked') beer.

• MALTS: ? 
• HOPS: ?
• IBU: ?
• ABV: 7.4%

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------