{"id":536,"date":"2008-10-21T00:01:22","date_gmt":"2008-10-20T11:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=536"},"modified":"2011-03-02T15:12:32","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T02:12:32","slug":"harringtons-big-john-special-reserve","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2008\/10\/21\/harringtons-big-john-special-reserve\/","title":{"rendered":"Harrington’s ‘Big John Special Reserve’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Harrington's<\/a>
Harrington's 'Big John Special Reserve'<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Verbatim:<\/strong> Harrington’s ‘Big John’ Special Reserve. Something relatively random that George apparently forgot he’d picked up somewhere along the way. It’s a strong dark ale, matured in Bourbon barrels. As you can see, it pours with quite enthusiastic bubbles, and they definitely hold a very strong whiskey nose. Almost disconcertingly so; it just smells like a big glass of that, rather than beer. But the taste is refreshingly beery, and very smooth. Nice maltiness, chocolate roastiness, and a bit of a caramelly kick — like a great big melted Toffee Pop. Soaked in whiskey.<\/p>\n

Afterthoughts, November 2010:<\/strong> From memory, the ‘Special Reserve’ bit came from the fact this was actually Bourbon barrel aged; the regular stuff is Bourbon infused<\/em>, methinks. And it’s another great example of how some beers are tricky to pick, in terms of their official style. The RateBeer.com nerds have the former as a Scotch Ale and the latter as a Dunkler Bock. If I had to put a sum of my own money on it (or, more to the point, if I had to tag a blogpost one way on the other), I’d think the Bock guess was right; the body and the finish seem more lagery than aley, but we’re in pretty stab-in-the-dark territory here, I’ll freely admit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Verbatim: Harrington’s ‘Big John’ Special Reserve. Something relatively random that George apparently forgot he’d picked up somewhere along the way. It’s a strong dark ale, matured in Bourbon barrels. As you can see, it pours with quite enthusiastic bubbles, and they definitely hold a very strong whiskey nose. Almost disconcertingly so; it just smells like … Continue reading Harrington’s ‘Big John Special Reserve’<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[14,9,29],"class_list":["post-536","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-diary","tag-nz","tag-lager","tag-facebookers"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":811,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/09\/20\/harringtons-saddleback\/","url_meta":{"origin":536,"position":0},"title":"Harrington’s ‘Saddleback’","author":"Phil","date":"September 20, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Given the nature of the place he runs, our Overboss can be a surprisingly... incurious drinker, sometimes. 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