Zero Fvcks Given

So I've noticed barrel-aging beers end up in one of two ways: either sweet or even too sweet, or on the sour end somehow. I had orginally noticed more sourness with brandy barrel-aged beers. I like it when breweries make the same beer with different barrels so amateurs like me get a chance to figure out the differences in barrels more. But I'm not sure sourness is only about the barrels. It seems more apparent that some brewers can produce that quality regardless of what kind of barrel they're dealing with. And it's also clear it seems deliberate, not by accident. I'm a little tired of the beer industry producing apples and oranges and calling them all apples. Either that or I'm not good enough at figuring this out yet.

I'm not a sour-beer hater. I just don't like getting surprised by a beer being tart. I find it a bummer when I see a special beer in a restaurant and I'm wondering if I'll never see it again, it's a $12 pour or something, and I'm deliberating with myself and then pull the trigger on it... and then it's sour.  No, I enjoy sour beer when I'm going to a brewery specializing in sour beers and that's their specialty and I try a whole myriad of them. Or it's a really hot day and I reach for something unambiguously sour like a geuze.

Anyway, this is the 15th anniversary beer from Ale Asylum. I commend the 3 years of barrel-aging and all the hard work they put into this beer, but I don't think it's one of their home runs. It's that sourness that puts me off a bit. It's still a nice and rich beer, that at 7% ABV is impressively-low in alcohol – most of the 3-year BBA stouts are going to have evaporated so much water they'll be pushing into the 12%+ ABV range.

My first impression might not have been the best, but I got plenty more of it to shape my final opinion with.