Brewery: Innis & Gunn
Location: Edinburgh, Scotland
ABV: 7.2%
Version: 330ml bottle
Source: Sainsburys

What we have here is the Innis & Gunn Oak Aged Beer put through a lengthier maturation period, a whole 99 days in total, and the brewery decided to bottle some of it in a limited edition this year. I actually bought this a while back so stocks may well be depleted by now; there certainly wasn’t any on the shelves when I was in Sainsburys yesterday. There isn’t any information about this particular brew on the Innis & Gunn website, so I’ll have to précis the blurb on the side of the box.

The beer is brewed using Optic and chocolate malt from Scotland and Goldings hops from Kent. It’s then put into American white oak barrels and left to mature. Once they reckon the time is right the barrels are emptied into a marrying tun for further maturation, allowing the flavours from the individual barrels to blend together and mellow. Finally, the beer is poured into bottles and left to mature for another month. So is this lengthy and dedicated process worth the time and effort?

First up, the beer is a bit darker than the original, with an additional reddish tint to the dark brown colour. Opening the bottle, after letting it spend some time chilling in the fridge as per instructions, lets out that characteristic delightfully warm oakey aroma with a touch of toffee, very like a well-matured whisky. This really is one of the best smelling beers around. Onto the tasting and we get the familiar flavour of the original Innis & Gunn oak aged beer; smooth oak and malt notes, dried fruit, toffee, vanilla, some honey sweetness but with a slightly hoppier element adding some bitterness. The hops don’t infringe as much on the flavour as the blonde version, but I still thought they reduced the smoothness and mellowness that I love in the original. If they bottle some more next year I might try it again, just to see if a different batch is any better, but I’ll not be going out of my way to track down any more just now, especially when you factor in the £3 cost of a bottle.