I was a little worried when I popped the top on this one. I was going for my third bock in a row. What if it turned out to be just like the others? What if I was stuck in an unrelenting loop of similarly tasting bock beers? Silly me.
Silly because I didn’t consider my source (the bottle was a gift from Adam). Silly because I didn’t trust the brand (which I loved when I lived in Seattle back in ’93). Silly because it came in a cardboard box. And if that’s not a sign of elegance, I don’t know what is.
I’d put this up there with some of the great Ithaca Excelsior! brews: big, complex and tasty, a beer worthy of discussion. It smells like a bock, with a deep, roasted, slightly sour aroma. It tastes like a bock way back in the tongue, but it also has an added bitterness from the oak and cherries. Worthy of its packaging, this brew kept changing from moment to moment, each swallow taking on a handful of different twists and turns.
In the end, I think they overdid it just a touch with the oak. Deep into the swallow, I would be reminded of Ithaca’s experiment with an oaked nut brown. Two beers, two styles, yet with very similar finishes. Yep—got to be the oak. But man—I’d drink this again, for sure.
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