Here's one I first sampled from a bottle, June, 2006. I'm drinking now from a freshly tapped keg. 10% ABV. Notice how this is, if you read the label, #1 in the series of Jewish Stars. One and only, so far. We've yet to sample Wood Allen witbier, Eddie Cantor eisbock, Mel Brooks barley-wine, and so on and so forth...
The ale named after the former Leonard Alfred Schneider departs the bottle and enters the glass a robust red, shadowy, clear, with a high head, creamy/tannish toned. Looking lovely.
Aroma: Fat malt, outsized yeast, liquid bread...is this a doppelbock? But there's so much hop!...sniff again... Wow! Loud hop, rich, burnished, barleywine-like. Grapes and other dark fruits are at hand, feeling like a burgundy wine, perhaps due to the high alcohol, or the huge maltiness.
Now, let's taste...Woo! Bam! Whap! Shamalam! Enormous malt floods the mouth and is assisted in it's it's efforts by the blazing sidecar of hops. Big, big, big on the palate, outsized all the way, spilling flavor all over the place. Delicious dark fruits, grapes, cherries, more...Reminds me very much of a Bigfoot or similar barleywine-style ales. This is where the line between "American Double IPA"s and barleywines really blurs, the malt is as big or bigger than the hops in this one, and the flavor is almost the match for a barleywine.
And the 10% doesn't hit...right away..oh, no, you'll feel it, though...
I didn't really taste the rye at all, but it works so damned well, it doesn't matter.
(Wait, ...now, I'm tasting it...yup, it's discernible...)
I love it. I think Lenny would love it. Rest his smutty soul. R.I.P. (A. true American hero.)
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