SF Beer Week begins with a new beer from Anchor: Our Barrel Ale

Meet Anchor Our Barrel Beer. It’s 8.02 percent, aged six months in charred oak barrels that had been used to age Anchor Old Potrero Straight Rye Whisky. They only have about 100 cases of magnum –50. 7 ounce – bottles 12 bottles to the case. No kegs; no 12 ouncers.

The beer, Anchor Proprietor Fritz Maytag said, will only be sold at the brewery. Price: $30 a bottle. It’s going on sale sometime in mid-February, Fritz said.

The taste: It’s a medium brown beer with copper highlights; it pours with a bit of foam that fades fairly rapidly as barrel-aged beers tend to do. It has a nose of wood, vanilla and spice. The taste is very mellow, smooth, faintly sweet with a drying, mild vanilla finish and a bit of warmth from the alcohol.

On first taste, I give it FOUR STARS. It’s a great barrel-aged beer. As one brewer — not from Anchor — said during the presentation: “They really got it dialed in.:”

By William Brand
source