Worried About the Wolf

Worried About the Wolf opens Stout Season somewhere off the marked trail. A cuvée pulls separate beers, vintages and barrels into one expression, and this one divides the work evenly: 30-month Orin from a Russell’s Reserve 10yr barrel; Double Barrel 40P stout aged 15 months in Blanton’s 10yr, then another 15 in Willett 4yr; and young Benthic, seven months into a Willett Family Estate 12yr barrel. Old beer, young beer, dry beer, enormous stout. We emptied them together, gave the tank a whisper of carbonation and left everything else alone. No adjuncts.

The pour is black with an oxblood edge. Bourbon steams thin bubble bursts off the nose and immediately follows you into a dessert log spilling vanilla latte, dark chocolate and an entire box of Fannie May’s assorted, with dried fig and cherry pulling through from the Orin. Then the ground comes up underneath it. Fresh-brewed coffee in the treeline, burnt salted caramel and sugar char, packed dirt and a unique earthiness cut across the richer parts. Extended barrel time rounds everything out toward fudge and praline without sanding away the oak or the heat.

Blending barrel-aged beer this way asks you to trust things you can’t completely know until the barrels are empty. Older beer gets deep and strange but can start showing its elbows. Young beer has muscle without the manners. Here they seem to know what to do with each other. Worried About the Wolf drinks like setting a scene: sat in the woods, dusk around a fire, bourbon, toasted sugar and chocolate above ground, roots and seasoned earth beneath. 16.4% at full warmth, and entirely the product of beer, wood and time.