Mary's Maple Porter Cask

Last week we featured an interview with Mary Wiles of the Brooklyn Brewery, and spoke about her role as the brewery's Quality Control Manager. We also spoke with her about the beer named in her honor, Mary's Maple Porter, and the maple syrup from her upstate New York farm, with which the beer is made.

Can you guess which is from the cask?

Recently we were able to try both the regular version of the beer along with the cask version!

Don't expect to see this sight too often.

The cask version had a mildly roasty brown malt nose and an almost Ringwood yeast-like aroma -- a somewhat buttery nose. And in the after-taste, it was a bit sweet, yet still roasty, with a mild licorice note.

The standard version of the Porter had a hint of maple sweetness in the finish, mixing with a mild roastiness in the aftertaste. The non-cask beer had a more perceivable bitterness than the cask, while the cask beer seemed slightly sweeter and more full bodied, as well as a bit more tangy.

Also, it almost seemed that there was a touch more maple flavor in the standard carbonated version of the brew, and a more complex maple aroma in the cask edition -- interesting!

At one point we combined the cask and standard versions, and the combination of both yielded an expected balanced profile, however with the addition of a vanilla note in the aroma and flavor of the melding.

Either way, cask or standard, this is a beer in its own class and category. Drink it while you can! You probably won't drink a more interesting beer associated with a Budweiser brewmaster any time soon -- until the imperial bourbon barrel/maple aged x-ray moondust bud-lime-light fermented with 10000 year old yeast from China beer comes out. Hey -- I'd try that!