Terra Incognita

Terra Incognita is an 8.5% ABV ale aged in whiskey barrels is a collaboration between Boulevard Brewing of Kansas City, Missouri and the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company of Chico, California. It was brewed and bottled at Boulevard. The beer uses pale  malt, amber malt, and malted and unmalted wheat, hopped with Bravo and Styrian Goldings, then dry-hopped with East Kent Goldings. It is then barrel-aged for nearly three months with Brettanomyces yeast. It is a blend of 45% toudre-aged beer (a toudre is a large wooden container traditionally used to age wine), 30% Templeton Rye barrel aged beer, and 25% fresh dry-hopped beer.

The beer pours a very dark mahogany to black in color. There is a huge, billowing, foaming, bubbling head of very light tan foam. The aroma is quite funky, floral, yeasty, fruity, tangy, with some sweetness and vanilla, woody, whiskey hinted at more than present. The taste follows the aromas quite directly, the finish is tangy, woody, astringent, and moderately bitter. It has the intense, fine, tingling carbonation of bottle-conditioning. As in the aroma, the whiskey hangs like a thick fog, omnipresent, but not substantial. Quite an interesting beer, but I wouldn't mind they let it pick up a bit more rye effect.