FiftyFifty Brewing Company - Imperial Eclipse Stout-Elijah Craig (12 Year)

Last week was the Craft Brewer's Conference and World Beer Cup in San Diego, which meant that there were a ton of great beer events in town. With all the great breweries in town for the event, it was hard to pick which events to go to, but there was one in particular that I knew I had to attend - the FiftyFifty event at Hamilton's in South Park.

You might remember the name FiftyFifty as the brewers of a beer I reviewed a few months ago - Imperial Eclipse Stout-Elijah Craig 18 Year, a beer which has since climbed all the way to #80 on the Top 100 List. But FiftyFifty makes another version of Imperial Eclipse Stout that's ranked even higher. And I was finally able to find it on tap last week at Hamilton's. At number 65 on the Top 100, Imperial Eclipse Stout-Elijah Craig (12 Year).

Imperial Eclipse Stout-Elijah Craig (12 Year) pours a pitch black color with no head whatsoever. It looked like motor oil in my glass and I couldn't wait to see what lay underneath the ominous surface. A rich aroma of bourbon, vanilla, toffee and raisin wafted out of the glass and could be smelled from a good ways off. I really couldn't wait to take a sip of this one.

I was expecting a ton of bourbon in the taste, but that never really happened. Instead, I got huge notes of chocolate covered raisin and salted caramel, which left a lingering saltiness on the back of my tongue after every sip. Definitely not what I was expecting, but it left me wanting more and more of this beer. The finish brought a ton of complexity with notes of wood, char and roasted malt with a bit of a dryness from the bourbon. In my opinion, the 18 Year Elijah Craig Eclipse was a bit better, but this beer was definitely Top 100 worthy in my book. I really have to try some more beers in this series.

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 38

FiftyFifty Brewing Co. - Imperial Eclipse Stout- Elijah Craig 18 Year

You would think that aging beer in bourbon barrels would be easy enough to do: Take a decent base beer, throw it into a bourbon barrel, forget about it for a few months and then take it out and bottle it. But, for a variety of reasons, it's not quite that simple. First of all, you can't just take any beer and throw it in a bourbon barrel. If the base beer is crappy, aging it in bourbon barrels isn't going to make it not crappy. You also need a beer whose flavors will be complemented and enhanced by the bourbon. Some beers work with bourbon and some beers don't. But few that I've come across work as well with bourbon as FiftyFifty's Imperial Eclipse Stout.

FiftyFifty is a brewery from Truckee, California, whose beers pretty much never show up in San Diego. However, they have a pretty good reputation, largely based on their Eclipse series. This series of beers began a few years ago when FiftyFifty aged a stout called Eclipse in Pappy Van Winkle Barrels. The next year, they released three different barrel aged versions of it, and this year they're up to seven different versions. I ended up with the Elijah Craig 18 Year version (also called Elijah Craig 20 because the barrel is 20 years old). A big thanks to my friend, Andrew, for finding this beer for me.

Eclipse pours an oily black color with a thin, light brown head. The head might not have been too impressive, but the huge amount of lacing this beer left down my glass was. The smell was, in a word, incredible. One of the best smelling beers I've ever come across. There were rich aromas of coconut, milk chocolate, bourbon, toffee and fudge. It's not uncommon for a barrel aged beer to smell like whatever was in the barrel (in this case, bourbon), and that's it. But the bourbon was almost an afterthought to the other rich and sweet smells here. I could have spent hours just smelling this one, but I couldn't wait to have a taste.

The taste opens with a lot of coconut and chocolate sweetness (almost like a Mounds bar), then changes to flavors of honey, roasted malt and a touch of coffee. The bourbon is there, but it blends into the other flavors so seamlessly that you don't detect any of the heat you get from a lot of bourbon barrel aged beers. This may be the best bourbon barrel aged beer I've ever had, and it's without a doubt one of the top ten beers I've had, period. If you can snag a bottle of this (or of any of the variations of Eclipse), you have to do it. Amazing stuff.

Final Grade: A+

Top 100 Beers Tasted: 34