What's In My Glass: 7/29/2011

Tonight's beer is Voodoo Brewery's Trapped Under Eisbock. I got this one in a trade (something I'll be talking about more in the future) with Beer Advocate member Soonami. Between the cool beer concept  (eisbock aged on cherries), even cooler name (Ride the Lightning is a killer album), and the fact that this is only one of ~400 bottles in existence, it was an easy choice for my 300th review on Beer Advocate and my inaugural beer on this blog. This brew started it's life as a strong malty (sweet) beer, before being frozen for 3 months. The freezing process allowed a more concentrated version of the beer to be poured off and aged on cherries for another three months. After some aging time in bottles it was sent out into the world. At 14% it's definitely a sipper, I've spent more than two hours (and counting) on this bottle. It's very rich, with not much carbonation, and ends up having roughly the consistency of a milkshake. There are some very cool chocolate and caramel flavors to be found, especially once the beer warms up some, but in the end I'm a bit let down that there's not much cherry/dark fruit flavor. The final product is a pretty good beer, but they evidently aged in in bottles for a year at the brewery, and while the result is a beer that's absurdly smooth for being 3.5x the normal alcohol found in a beer, it's also a beer that has what was supposed to be it's unique touch (the cherries) largely faded away. Hopefully Voodoo tries to brew something similar and gets it out in a little bit less time.