The Bruery - Tell No Tales

Tell No Tales was bottled in 2017, and this substantially conceived beer is brewed with yams, maple syrup, vanilla, nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger and allspice. Tell No Tales, at this point in its cellaring journey, has its spice additions playing a secondary role to impressive upfront layers of deep red fruits, caramelization and heat. Like Mash & Coconut, especially, this combines careful bitter edges and texture to offset an intensely generous malt profile.

This poured a bit darker for us than Mash & Coconut—a deep caramelized amber, with golden-brown edges and a modest tan head. Lots of rich red fruit, toasty barrels and sweet bourbon land at the front of the aromatics, with notes including maple syrup, brown sugar and cotton candy—lotta generous malts and caramelization at the forefront. A bready, well-toasted core, with subtle spicing adding to the fruity, vinous heat.

A modest framework of carbonation underpins super-rich maltiness here: dense caramels, brown sugar, sweet red fruits, spicy sherry… As with all four of these beers, there’s just so much going on in each one, but they’re deftly composed in a way that allows you to actually dig in and appreciate what’s going on. There’s a nice pop of juicy cherry cola at the tip of the tongue, potent bourbon barrel influence all throughout, and just a super-good showing from the bourbon barrels, working alongside the spice additions to give this a tropical-rum vibe all throughout. The spice is thoroughly chilled-out at this point, giving the core barleywine-like notes a chance to shine—and we think Tell No Tales is doing exceptionally good right now.

While this is drinking great, a bit of additional cellar time shouldn’t move the needle all that much. The spiced-rum vibe of this beer had us thinking of pairings along the lines of spicy roasted pork with citrus (pineapple, mango, …). Rum cake also seems like a great fit.