Cerebral Brewing has released Monsters of the Night Sky, the newest entry in its Monsters series and, by the brewery's own account, three years in the making. Rather than aging one beer in one barrel, Cerebral built this release as a blend of three separately barrel-aged beers, Celestial Origin, Here Be Monsters, and Double Barrel Here Be Monsters, that spent an average of 31 months across Willett Rye, 12 Year Elijah Craig, and Hidden Barn Bourbon barrels before being blended and conditioned on Cook Islands vanilla beans.
That blending approach is worth pausing on: instead of picking one barrel type and letting it define the beer, Cerebral is stacking rye and two distinct bourbon barrel characters together, then layering vanilla over the top as a finishing note rather than a base flavor. The brewery's tasting notes, cotton candy, Tootsie Pop, and dried cherries, read more like a candy shop than a typical barleywine, which suggests the vanilla and the barrel char are doing real work to soften the beer's dark, oxidative edges.
Bottles go live on Oznr starting Friday, August 14, with pickup at Cerebral's Congress Park location running through Sunday, August 30.
Source & Editorial
JollyPint independently prepares release articles using information published by breweries through newsletters, websites, and other official public communications. Brewery-supplied descriptions and tasting notes are reported as provided, while editorial context is added by JollyPint.