This bottle of Broken Dream has been aged in Jim Beam bourbon barrels and it’s frighteningly drinkable.
There’s a delicious woody sweetness with a hint of liquorice and strawberry laces that masks the booze and softens the coffee, chocolate and digestives of the malts and the spiky holly and brambles of the hops.
In this particular beer the ageing has brought a fleshy sweet black cherry richness, some good boozy whisky heat and a hint of sherry filled wafers and trifle.
What this beer wants me to do is drink it in big mouthfuls and so I have to keep reminding myself that it’s bigger than it feels and that I need to get up in the morning.
In my opinion barrel ageing doesn’t always work, and we seem to be seeing just about every brewery slinging their beer into them, but when it does work it can be brilliant.
And Siren’s Jim Beam aged Broken Dream is just that, brilliant.

Source: Cotteridge Wines