BFM / Terrapin Spike & Jérôme's Cuvée Délirante (Collaboration Ale)
Barley wine made with 20% rye, 80% malted barley, aged in rum barrels.
Made for the "Un Mare di Birra" beer cruise.
Made for the "Un Mare di Birra" beer cruise.
3.2
186 reviews
Saignelégier, Switzerland
Community reviews
330ml bottle served in a snifter.
A: Pours a dark brown muddy cloudy color with a minimal yellow head. No retention neither lacings
S: Very tart and fruity. Grapes, wood, caramel malts and vinegar. Rhum and alcohol in the end
T: Follows the nose. A tart and acid beer. Quite fruity too. Grapes, candy sugar, oak, rhum, malt and yeasts. Upfront is mild sweet, in overall, acid and dry in the mouth
M: Heavy body, molasses. Very low carbonation
O: Very tasty and drinkable beer. As mention before by other reviewers, this beer is much closer to a Wild/Sour than to a Barley Wine. It reminded me their BFM "Abbaye De Saint Bon-Chien Grand Cru (Aged In Rhum Barrels)". By the way, a beer for real men, sissies won’t like it
[ BA Review @ 4/8/2012 ]
En bouteille 33 cl
Genre Barleywine ?
Nez caramel et porto
Amertume agréable avec un corps léger
Acidité améliore le rendu et fait de cette bière quelque chose de très buvable
Légère touche boisée
Smells of a Belgium strong, but tastes like a sour. Considered a barleywine. Pours light and clear.
Swing top. No *pop* of carbonation upon opening. Pours a headless deep brownish-red body. Nose of barleywine, sweet red licorice, and new shoe leather coated with beeswax. Flavour of a merlot doused with watered-down lemon pulp and black cherry pits. Astonding how the thin flavour doesn’t play to the more robust aroma. I can see why others were disappointed with this collaboration brewery’s bottle - while I’m interested in what Terrapin has to offer. Thanks Alessandro for the offering. Cheers!
"So drastically different than the Terrapin bourbon version as to bear no resemblance to that beer. this came in a flip top bottle, and there being no pop upon opening, it was flat as expected. Too bad, because other than having zero head and a flat feel, it was really nice. Taking on more wild character from the rum barrels than expected, it was more like a wild or sour blens than anything resembling a barlwyine. Fruity, sweet, alcoholic and tart. Would have been a 4+ had it not been flat."
2011 Swing top Bottle. Pours hazy brown with no head. Aroma is strong of coconut, rum, oak, raisins, figs. Taste is very figs, blackberry, extremely flat- absolutely no carbonation, medium bodied, a touch of sourness on the back. Good flavor but it’s so flat...and bit stomach acidy....
Cloudy red with no foam. Tart cherry aroma. Little carbonation. Sour wood, dank with deep fruits. Rum barrel hides in the background. Too wild for me.
Pours a murky dull sienna color with a trace of eggshell film. Nose is composty with ketchup, mustard and barbecue notes mingling with a stale caramel sweetness a hint of vinegar and more rubbish on a warm day. Not very inviting... but actually the palate has less rubbish notes and more sour fruit and rotten apple, moldy cherries, underlying sweetness, weird condiment vinegar late palate... interesting but not really my thing.
(bottle - 330 ml flip top - 2011 vintage) Copper pour with no head. Sour and vinegar aroma. Sour and vinegar in the flavor with a sickly sweet aftertaste. Had to dump it. Something clearly went wrong with it. But what kind of a barley wine turns after not even 3 full years? Major disappointment.
Pours a flat murky deep dark brown/red with no head. Light vinous aroma. Tastes slightly acidic, vinous with very little sweetness, but well balanced. Overall a very enjoyable beer I look forward to visiting again.
33cl bottle via trade. Pours a murky brown with basically zero head. Nose has an odd mix of booze, wood pulp and strawberry jam, a little brown sugar, some nail polish, rhubarb. Flavor is really strange, tart, cherries and currants, some stewed mustard greens, a little raspberry vinaigrette, pickled swiss chard stems, oily, a bit medicinal. Oily finish. Very strange. Definitely infected, but also poorly made.
Like others have said, this probably got infected. If it got infected, they should figure out what happened and replicate it. Sometimes, mistakes have really good results. This is a very interesting brew because in the nose it smells 100% like a barley wine. It has a strong raisin note, with other dried fruits along with it. Taste is oak, and then pure sour funk. Finishes with a nice bitter bite in the back of the throat (perhaps from the rye). Alcohol is well hidden. My only regret is not having another bottle to save for later.
2011 Vintage
Tasted on 4/30/14 from a swing-top 330mL bottle purchased at Bruisin’ Ales. Pours clear, dark mahogany with no head, but some thin bubbly lace that quickly disappears. Beers like this are always hard for me to judge. If it were classified as a Sour or Wild Ale, I would rate it much higher, but being classified as a Barley Wine I am pretty sure that it is just infected. The nose is tart and sour ala an oud bruin, but with a ton more sweet caramel and vanilla rum aroma. The flavor is the same, very sour with the same caramel, toffee, and vanilla barrel-aged barley wine from the nose. The body is full and tannic with zero carbonation and a long sour and sweet oak finish.
Caramel, vanilla, woodsy smells. Tart sour taste, kinda flat carbonation. Sour berries, caramel, hints of vanilla, rum, yeast, funky. Dark and cloudy color. Weird, not a favorite.
Aromas of caramel and faint vanilla, tart green apple and tart cherry, and burnt sugar. Murky light brown, raw cider-like, no head. Dry, sour, funky, with some astringent herbaceous notes as well as tart berry and cherry fruit, light maltiness. Light bodied, sharp, sour. Not much of a barleywine, but an interesting beer for sure.
Small bottle in a tasting glass. Pours deep amber with a small head. Aroma of tartness, light toffee and caramel from the malts, light oak, and hints of oak and notes of rum. Flavor the same. Average texture. An interesting beer.
No head, the nose is much more like an oude bruin, than a barley wine. Fairly tart with wood, cherries, green apples. The mouth shows low carbonation with modest amount of tartness, lots of dark cherries and apples. Well balanced and alcohol extremely well hidden. Lingering oaky finish. Nice. I can’t understand why the ratings for this are so low.
Brewed 2011. Pours a viscous murky red brown with no head. Aroma is of sweet caramel malt, brown sugar, vanilla and cask, yeast with some fruity alcohol esters. Taste the same as aroma with some mild bitterness. Palate is a full body, viscous and smooth and mild stickiness mouth feel, mild carbonation. Finishes with a combination of sweet caramel malt, yeast and mild tartness, toffee, some vanilla and woody cask flavor, dark fruit and mild dry sweet alcohol and bitter ending. A bit on the tart side. Overall an easy on the palate barley wine style brew, very drinkable an fairly good brew.
The 33cl swing top bottle pours with a murky red tanned leather looking body that supports a minimal tan ring of foam. The aroma comes across initially as prunes and brown sugar and quickly gets into tart wild yeast and red wine with murmurs of spicy oak in the background. The taste is on the thin side and delivers tart yeast infection (or maybe re-label and triple the price and sell it as a sour) with mild rum booze mixing with red wine and then some big of spicy oak. This is not going all that well.
Fliptop bottled 330ml@VWPBF
Murky brown color, not much head. Toffee, chocolate and glue in the nose. Tart, woody, some toffee, intensionally tart? Not very good.
Tap at Craft Heads. Dark red brown, not much head. Small golden bubbles. Low carbonation. Aroma is lots of alcohol, bit of spice and smoke, quite a kick, fruity too. Taste is great, nice sourness, fruity, get the rum sweetness, really interesting. Lovely. Strawberry, maybe. Oud bruin like. Well nice.
Flip top , muddy orange crimson color, sour rum and cherry aroma, flavor is muddy sour fruit, bitter rum , weak finish
Flip top bottle. Poured a brownish color with a small sized off white head. Caramel, fruity and some woody / earithiness. Had a nice tart / sour finish. If I had this blind, would have guessed a sour.
Bottle. Pours a headless hazy brown beer. Aroma is sour with some dark fruits, alcohol and rum. Taste is sour with some malts, dark fruits, a bit of malt and alcohol. Medium body, low carbo. Quite awful.
2011 11.4 ounce fliptop bottle. Pours a hazy brown color with no head. Aroma of big toffee notes, raisin, caramel, a faint hint of rye, mild rum finish. The taste is tart fruits, raisin, toffee, citrus, rye. Medium bodied, slight heat, no carbonation.
Interesting combination. Complex layers that waver between rum barrel, sour nuances and dried fruits. Zero carbonation pour. Layers of prune juice, dried apricot, and sour, dried cherries, intermingle with notes if vanilla, spice and dusty coco. Viscous and full bodied.. Thankfully the sourness keeps it from being thick, sweet and syrupy. Oude Bruin like, though different due to rum barrel nuances and various stone-fruit layers. Also reminiscent of wine/tawny port... 10% alc. is completely integrated and well hidden. Sweet nuances, though seem to finish dry and tart. Elegant lingering flavors of dusty chocolate powder, vanilla and earthy tobacco. Due to fullness and viscosity, I believe it is best enjoyed as a slow sipper. 10% alc sneaks up on you in end. Good stuff... Unique. Would purchase again. Keep in mind, its a sour, not a barley wine.
--- tasted while on a long journey to understand the world around me...
Smaller flip top bottle. Pours a deep reddish brown color with a small off white head. The aroma and flavor have some of the caramel and fruitiness of a barley wine, but also the tart, woody, strange character of beers that become soured. the ABV remains mostly hidden due to the other things going on.
Sampled Horizontally with the Terrapin Version of this beer
2011 Bottle
Slightly muddied ruby tinted body with deep mahogany and brown highlights, some bubbles and a very nice orange glow - no movement at all. Aroma of sour grapes, oak, alcohol, caramelised sugars, toffee and a huge note of yeast - straight from a belgian lambic. Medium-bodied; Super sour flavour at first - wasn’t expecting that at all from the bottle label - with some light earthy, sugar notes, a little malt flavour and a grapey, herbal, super dry note at the end. Aftertaste shows a good complexity with the sour notes really winning out here coupled with a good pit fruit flavour and depth, but the alcohol is super well hidden, this tastes like a gueuze at around 5/6% not a barley wine at all. Overall, not expecting this beer 1 iota, but it turned out to be a very nice beer, altbeit not a barley wine in the slightest. Get this to do the same horizontal tasting, but if you can’t find the terrapin, get this if you like sour beers and not if you like barley wines! I sampled this stubby, swing-top 33 cL bottle purchased from Liqour Outlet in Boonton, New Jersey on 22-April-2012 for US$9.95 sampled at home in Washington on 22-June-2013.
Bottled 2011//Purchased April 2012//Sampled June 2013
Draft @ Tappeze Pub Athens, GA. So, if you just throw anything you know as a barleywine and the expectations surrounding it out the window, then this is not a bad beer. Muddy red/brown pour with no head. Taste is old wood, berry sourness, alcohol, astringent, apple. Just odd and if you had the version made in Athens, you will know that these are no where near the same beer. I would expect some bugs got in this one, accident or not.
How do you rate a beer that is completely off-style, yet still drinkable? I was told these bottles were infected by a friend after dropping eight bucks on a twelve ounce bottle. Sour, sour, sour. Pours beautiful brown raspberry color. The beer is completely flat and produces no head. Not a barleywine. Sour cherries and unripe strawberries dominate. Bottle - Ale Yeah! - Decatur, GA