Such a bad idea

So, no matter what your friends tell you, don't order two twenty ounce glasses of 10% abv beer. I am a lucky man and my evening of drinking only ended in me being overly loud and verbose. two twenty ounce beers, at 10%, is roughly 6 and 2/3 beers. In two glasses. Yikes.

To be fair, they were delicious. At my new favorite pub (apparently), Victoria Gastro, they have a Sunday evening happy hour which is half off draft beer. You can get high quality beer for less then a five spot. This particular evening, I was torn between Heavy Seas Below Decks Barleywine that was Bourbon barrel aged, and Cabernet barrel aged. Truly a dilemma for the ages.

As stated above, after some encouragement from my friends, I ended up getting both. Now, I've never tried Below Decks before, but I could tell right away that it was a pretty tasty barleywine. The dark fruits and candy sugar make it quite drinkable, despite it's high alcohol content. The beer itself isn't particularly adventurous for a barleywine, but the barrel aging changes the game.

Now, a lot of breweries are doing barrel aging - it's sort of the cool new thing. And I for one couldn't be more thrilled. I love barrel aging - it imparts delicious flavors and mellows beers pleasantly. I expected to really like the bourbon barrel aging, but I was surprised to find that I favored the Cabernet barrel aged variety.

The Bourbon variety had some tasty notes of oak and vanilla, but a sharply alcohol bourbon taste combined with the high alcohol content to make the beer a little too boozy for me. The Cabernet variety, on the other hand, had a really nice acidity and tartness that worked well with the dark fruits and masked the heavy booziness of the beer.

Overall, I'd highly recommend giving either of them a try, as they were both very impressive beers. But not both. Even if you can get 20 oz. of both for under ten bucks. Pick your favorite or share with a friend, but even one of these beers will end in a cab ride home, or bringing a DD.