by Lee Williams | Feb 16, 2015 | Vault Reserve: February 2015
Wild Beer Co. Wineybeest | 11.0% ABV. | Imperial Stout | Evercreech, England | 750ml bottle | This spectacular beer is Wild Beer Co.’s luxurious and much praised 11.0% ABV. Imperial espresso chocolate vanilla stout Wildebeest aged in Burgundy Pinot Noir barrels for nine months. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Wineybeest. Only two oak barrels of the beer have been produced and only five hundred bottles released. In keeping with our mission to source the best and most exclusive limited release beers for our Vault Reserve members each month, we’ve secured one tenth of those bottles just for you. Wildebeest is an incredibly rich, unctuous and desserty beer, loaded with sweet vanilla beans, Valrhona cocoa nibs and roasted Colombian coffee. To this already multi-layered and sophisticated sipping ale, the extended nine month red wine barrel maturation delivers a vinous and jam-like red berry quality that is akin to the cherry topping on an expensive cheesecake. In other words, it just makes the whole experience even more indulgent. From massive saisons to sours and strong ales, Wild Beer has produced no shortage of very high caliber beers suitable for cellaring. In addition to Wildebeest and Wineybeest they’ve also produced Whiskebeest, which as the name suggests is a whisky cask aged version of Wildebeest. In fact, so prolific and consistent have the Somerset brewery been at cranking out cellarable hit after hit, that you’d be forgiven for not having a cupboard full of Wild Beer goodies. Wineybeest then has pedigree and follows in some very well established and highly regarded footsteps, and it definitely comes through in the beer. Hyperbole and...
