Profiled by Ken Carman for professorgoodales.net
Let’s make this clear from the start: you cannot buy this beer, at least not yet, unless someone sells you one of the few pre-bought bottles. How sad for you.
Rocky head: not a lot in a small glass. The first pour: none. Second: better. Black as midnight.
Bourbon barrel aroma mixed with roasted barley. A little dark chocolate with a bare hint of smoke. There’s a nice sweet sense that I am guessing is from the barrels.
Mouthfeel: just a hint of slick and, again, smoke. Roasted barley sense provided the roast with also a whisper of higher alcohol, but only as expected if placed in a bourbon barrel. 6.2 abv seems about right. The body seems fuller that it really is: probably the bourbon and the nibs helped with that.
I have enjoyed many a beer from Jackalope and seen them grow from using a Brew Magic system where the pale, to provide one example, was pleasant, yet cloudy and even a bit milky… in looks only, to a brewery with nice clear beers that kept the integrity of the original recipes, and then some. But this has to be the best beer ever out of the partnership of Bailey, Steve and Robyn.
This was aged with bacon in a bourbon barrel. The bourbon taste, and sweetness, are obvious, yet not cloying. The bacon is more background, but murmurs in the background, almost like the gentler ghosts from The Sixth Sense. Cocoa nibs (I’ve seen this spelled “Cocao” nibs too.) provide a slight dark chocolate bitter that compliments all the other additions. The balance for all added, perfect if looking to avoid a sense of “too aggressive.”
A nice nitro push, on tap, at the tasting room, would be a dream come true.
“Tannakin” was named after a legend about a woman born with hog-like features.
This was a special purchase: the first hand bottled, wax sealed with a logo, labelled beer from Jackalope, Nashville, TN. Only 50 bottles and we got three, sold one to a lady who was desperately looking for one for her husband as a surprise. The second bottle is being saved for the summer when I do beer tastings in the Adirondacks.
If they do not brew this again, I’ll see if I can get some of the more unpleasant Sixth Sense ghosts to rattle their chains in the brewery, 24 hours a day, or the spirit of Tannakin herself to possess the wood this fine beer sat on, until they say, “Think we’d better go ahead and brew more: these ghosts have us over a bourbon barrel!”
Welcome to the new PGA rating system: one beer “Don’t bother.” Two: Eh, if someone gives it to you, drink. Three: very good, go ahead and seek it out, but be aware there is at least one problem. Four: seek it out. Five: pretty much “perfecto.” This beer was rated…
