Boston Brewing Co. - Sam Adams "Tetravis" quadruppel

I first came across this a few years ago when I was at Costco - they were selling a mixed 3-pack of these for $25. They're part of the Sam Adams' "Barrel Room Collection," a line of barrel-aged beers made in the Belgian monastic tradition of blending and aging. Never before having had them, I bought the 3-pack. Today's is called "Tetravis" and is a 10.2% ABV Belgian quad, In case you missed my explanation of what a "quad" (or, more accurately, quadruppel) is, look no further than this post from 2013.

According to their website, the brewery developed a special strain of yeast called "Kosmic Mother Funk," which is used in all of the Barrel Room Collection beers. The beers are then aged in Eastern European oak barrels that once was used to age Italian brandy.

Photo taken from the Barrel Room Collection website

Aging beer in barrels is nothing new, and in fact, most aged alcohol uses barrels. Whiskey, wine, beer, brandy, cordials and cognacs all use barrels of various woods for the aging process. And there's also a big market, especially for brewers, to buy second-hand barrels that have already had alcohol aged in them. The spirits formerly aging in them have imbued the barrels with certain properties which the brewers clearly want to exploit. So, in our case, the Barrel Room Collection brewers wanted to take advantage of the properties of that specific oak as well as the brandy.

So on to today's beer. I really like the shape of the bottle, which is topped with a muselet-and-champagne-cork top. Drinking this makes me feel like I ought to be in a castle somewhere. But be careful with the cork; it's under pressure and could injure you if you point it at your eyeballs or other mechanics of nature, so to speak.

The beer pours a nut-brown eye, with some white foam bubbling up and a light nose of yeast. Here's a GIF of the action:

I decided to let this one sit for a few minutes to open up. It's got a nice deep brown color, and candles to a really neat electric caramel color. It's fizzier than I expected.

Ater the first couple sips, and a few minutes warming up, it has powerful up-front yeast and wood flavors with sugary spice tastes. It develops into an interesting dark-roast malt flavor that wraps up with a nice finish of raisin and clove. The beer is sweet, thick and heady with a pleasant aftertaste.

It was cool to try something off-the-beaten-path, especially from a macrobrew like Sam Adams. They're so widely-distributed with dozens of varieties that it was cool to come across something a little more craft-y.