Deschutes Not The Stoic

The Deschutes Brewery is in Bend, Oregon. This 12.1% ABV beer is a Belgian-styled Quad brewed with pomegranate molasses with 15% aged in oak wine barrels and 15% aged in oak rye whiskey barrels.

The beer pours a medium dark brown with trends to garnet. There is a short and thin head of off-white to light tan foam. The aroma is like the ingredient list, malty, caramel, pears, plums, pomegranate, wine, and rye whiskey notes swim around each other. The taste hits all the notes of the aromas, well balanced and melded together. This is so nice, malty, fruity, with the best parts of wine and rye, warming, drinking sweet, yet tangy, with the oak unobtrusive, but keeping the sweetness from being cloying. The beer drinks full, but not heavy, with a tingling moderate carbonation. Deschutes successfully and deliciously puts together beers with ingredient lists that would fail at the hands of many other breweries.