If you ever venture out to Atlanta in search of beer, don't forget to make a stop in Decatur. About 20 minutes from downtown proper, it's easily accessible on MARTA and well-known in beer circles for the Brickstore Pub on the square. Just a few blocks away, however, and equally deserving of praise is Twain's, a brewpub, sports bar, gaming center and literary Mecca all rolled into one. Twain's is a brewpub, meaning they make their own beer, and they have a definite fondness for aging it in oak barrels before they serve it to you.

Such was the case for their Oak Barrel Aged Dunkelweiss beer that I sipped yesterday before lunch. When I asked the bartender about it, she told me that it had sat in Jack Daniels whiskey barrels for a full year and a half before they declared it done. I got a 13 ounce glass for a mere five bucks, a bargain at twice the price I think. The beer emerged a dark brownish black color with a light creamy head formation and a hugely bold whiskey and banana nose. The choice of dunkelweiss was an interesting one to age (I've enjoyed stouts and brown ales given the whiskey treatment here before).

At any rate, the beer was wonderfully complex in the palate, retaining it's clove and banana flavors from the base beer and supplementing them with rich vanilla, chocolate, raisin, dark fruit, oak, and warming whiskey. The latter suggests a higher alcohol content but I was told the 5.6% by volume dunkelweiss was aged with no fermentables or yeast priming, so that would seem to be simply the power of suggestion.

A world class brew by any measure.

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