The quirky brewmeisters at Shmaltz Brewing Company are the creators of some of our favorite craft beers. Best known for blurring the boundaries of beer styles and their punny, pop culture laden names and labels, Shmaltz brews include HE’BREW Beer and the sideshow-inspired Coney Island Craft Lagers. Their latest offering is the limited edition barrel-aged Funky Jewbelation.
The bottle’s a blend of 6 beers: 3-month-old Jewbelation Fifteen, a vintage Jewbelation that aged 9 months, a one-month-old Bittersweet Lenny’s RIPA, a 14-month-old Origin, 2011 Reunion Ale aged 7 months, and Messiah, aged 14 months. The blend was then aged further, with 73% in rye whiskey barrels and 27% in bourbon barrels. The result is a 9.8%-ABV behemoth that packs a punch in more ways than one.
The beer is indeed funky, in all the right ways. It pours out dark, deep and mahogany with a medium tan head and strong whiff of spirits. Things start out sweet and sticky, with hints of chocolate, caramel and vanilla but then take a balanced turn towards tart with notes of booze, barrel, bitter and what one taster described as "blood." Not in the gory Twilight or True Blood way, but you know how when you eat marrow you get those fleeting moments of mellifluent metallic, iron-y taste in your mouth? Funky Jewbelation is exactly like that. Definitely a sipping beer to be served in a snifter.