The Bruery Bois

Brewed By: The Bruery in Placentia, California  

Purchased: 750ml bottle bought at Binny's in IL; 2013 

Style/ABV: Old Ale, 15.0%

Reported IBUs: ?

Whew, 15.0%? Are you kidding me? About The Bruery: 

The Bruery are based out of Placentia, California. As with many craft breweries, The Bruery began as a homebrewing adventure when Patrick Rue, his brother Chris, and his wife Rachel brewed their fast batch of beer. Patrick Rue continued to homebrew during his first year of law school, until he decided that he had a passion for brewing beer. The Bruery opened up in 2008, and since then, they have built a reputation around their experimental, and wild ales brewed with a Belgian flair. To read more, check out the Breuery's website.

The Bois is The Bruery's 2013, 5th Anniversary release. The Bois clocks in at an impressive 15.0%, and is brewed in the English-style Old Ale tradition, using The Bruery's in-house Belgian yeast strain. This beer is also blended using the solera method: a portion of each previous anniversary ale that has been saved in The Bruery's barrels is blended in with next year's release. This beer should feature huge dark fruit, vanilla, oak, and burnt sugar aromas/flavors. 

The Bruery Bois

This one pours into a swampy dark brown/reddish body that is deceptively opaque in low light, especially towards the bottom 3/4s of the glass. Some hazy, gold light is peaking through towards the surface, but that's about all you get. The head on this one is a red/tan/brown color, and started out as a pinky's worth but quickly faded into a ring around my glass. There's both glossy alcohol legs and sticky lacing. This beer looks like shit. It looks like it's been through hell, and it has. This is what a blended beer aged in barrels looks like, and I couldn't be any happier about that.

The aroma on this beer is rich, thick, and strong. It's reminiscent of a Bourbon County Stout or a He'Brew Jewbelation Sweet 16 Anniversary Ale...there's rich wood and barrel character, a huge layer of chocolate fudge/brownie/brown sugar/molasses, big oak/bourbon sitting in the back providing some vanilla sweetness, and lots of fruit. There's definitely some tart cherries on the nose, raisins, dates, boozy and booze-soaked fruits, rum, and some cakey berry/pomegranate thing. The nose hides the booze well, but this is still a boozy beer by all means.

As you'd probably expect, this beer has tons of wood, bourbon, and trailing booze on the finish. The booze provides heat, and also burns a bit going down. What is maybe less expected is the huge punch of tart fruits I'm getting in this. I'm getting dates, rum-soaked raisins, chocolate-dipped cherries, light tartness, pomegranate  and berries. There's also a ton of sweet molasses/sugary complexity fighting the fruity booziness. And I'm also getting some rich brownie/fudge. Nice stuff.

Honestly, you knew what you were in for. You don't show up to drink a 15.0% monstrosity for nuances. This is a big, boozy, full-bodied sipping beer. This is a beer to share with friends, and mull over. The palate depth is huge! Each sip coats your tongue and fills your mouth, and the beer lingers on the palate well past the 20 second mark. After a half minute when the beer fades, you get lingering alcohol in your throat that rises up and down, warming your belly and hitting the back of your tongue like a bourbon cumshot. If ever there was a beer to drink on a cold winter day, it's this. Complexity is good, if not better than good. There's a lot going on here: dark fruits up front, boozy rum-soaked raisins; that rolls into HUGE booze, oak, bourbon, brown sugar spice; there's some molasses/brownie/fudge on the finish, and you get warming booze and all the jazz I mentioned in the above paragraph on the finish.

Rating: Divine Brew (4.5/5.0 Untappd)

I gotta go with a Decent Divine Brew on this. This is some epic sipping shit. Nevermind that a 12oz pour is like drinking three beers. A whole bottle is like a 6-pack. I guess that almost justifies the price at around...what was it? Like 30 bucks a bottle? Ouch. B-U-T, the price does seem kind of reasonable when you consider what goes into making this beer. It's oak aged. It's a blend of beers that are up to four years old. It's also huge at 15.0%. This is a big, complex beer, and despite the price you should almost pick up two bottles so you can age one for 2 years, or 5 years, or 10, or even longer. If I was pairing this beer with food, I'd pair it with pecan pie, a cold winter day, or even some dry chocolate cake with some sort of fruit component. But mostly, I'd treat this beer like a spirit and drink it by itself in a snifter after dinner.

Random Thought: I'm not going to drink this whole bottle by myself. That would be insane. Right?