The beers of New River: Bell's Brewery Third Coast Old Ale

This is one of the beers my buddy Hilgar gave me. It was bottled on the fifth of September back in 2014 by Bell's Brewery at their Comstock Michigan location. Originally Bells was called Kalamazoo brewing Inc and was a homebrew supply store from 1983-1985 when they started brewing their own beer commercially. They've gotten allot bigger since then. They have two different brewery sites, a brewpub, a homebrew store, and their Two hearted pale ale (which I'm a huge fan of) was rated as the second best beer in the entire United States. But tonight we have a different one of their beers, the Third Coast Old Ale.

 Now this ones a barley wine, a style I haven't had on this blog yet and I have only recently been introduced to. Barley wines tend to have very high alcohol content for beer, this one is about 10.2%, and this lends to their extended shelf life. Typically you want a barley wine to age for at least a year, this one is almost a year and a half, but I cannot get a solid answer on when they peak.  I'm afraid I'm not in a situation where I can keep an individual bottle that long, so I might as well have it today. You are supposed to serve Barley wine in a snifter, however I do not have one. So tonight we are substituting it with the room temperature super traditional Orion mug.

The bottle says "An ale for those who appreciate complexity and vintage character. fill a snifter and enjoy it now or commit some bottles to the cellar to test you patience" It should be noted that that in America, a barley wine being called and old ale means it is British styled, while in Brittan it means that it's a dark beer made to have an extended shelf life.
It makes an audible hissing sound as I open the bottle, always a good omen. It has a heavy, fruity, malt nose from the bottle. The nose also has characteristics similar to wine, which is part of the reason these are called barley wines in America. The other reasons are that they, like wine, have very long shelf lives and as previously mentioned have a high alcohol content for a fermented beverage.

It has almost no head, but at the same time is a beer so alive that you can actually hear it crackle. The color is like mahogany with stained oak trim. Nose from the mug is fruity like a Trappist strong ale, but not figgy, its like concentrated grape juice, like those frozen tubes of Welches concord grape juice concentrate that almost always have a little sign next to them that say they are a WIC approved food. I can smell the alcohol in the aroma, time to taste. The flavor on initial sip is extremely malty, with molasses tones. I held it in my mouth for a moment to get the mouthfeel, and I got this tingling sensation around my tongue. There was no acidity, just a tingling feeling. And then I discovered that the alcohol had put my tongue to sleep. There isn't an alcohol bite, but it definitely makes it's presence known. It is certainly a heavy beer, I haven't had one with so much gravity in a minute.
I just realized I have been sitting here for about five minutes with the same mouthful of beer, just churning it around my maw. I suppose that's a good sign for this one, you can just sit back and enjoy a single sip.
I need to hunker down and get serious about my academic projects. I have and entire shelf of half finished books I've got to polish off. I was thinking about starting on Lex Rex by Rev. Samuel Rutherford, but I haven't finished Russo's Social Contract, so I should probably hold off until that's finished. The Social Contract is probably one of the most insightful books in regard to politics outside of the Bible that I have ever read. but it is ultimately one long, detailed, empirical argument split into sections. Because of this, it can be quite hard to follow some times and does not lend to being put down and picked up again later very well. If I stop reading that book for so much as a couple of days I have to re-read about half of the previous chapter so I'm not completely lost when I get back to the part I left off at. The one book I'm actually making good headway in finishing is Louis Zampanelli's book "Don't give up, don't give in" which partially follows his life, but is mostly his outlook on life in general, using elements from his life to give examples to points he is trying to make. Other than that is my on again, off again attempts at learning Japanese. At least that's going better than my lifelong failure to learn a stringed instrument. I suppose my most faithful academic endeavor is the one regarding my faith, I do study the Bible on a near daily basis and is has been no end of help to me.

I need to go to sleep now, I wish I had some way to save the rest of this delicious barley wine, but I'm afraid I do not. If you ever come across a bottle of Third Coast you should pick it up, put it somewhere safe, and drink it on a day where you have all of the time in the world to yourself to think about whatever comes to mind. I could spend all day with this beer. I give it my blurry seal of approval.