What I Drank Last Weekend - Late August Edition

A trip to John's Marketplace last Friday (we'll discuss John's at another time) produced two new beers to my list:

• Sanctuary (Full Sail) - a Belgian dubbel, this is one of the seasonal rotations from Full Sail and, to be honest, they usually run the gambit from Not Bad to WOOOOOOOOOO. This one fell more toward the former side of that spectrum. Bready, biscuit smell, just what you'd expect from the style. But if you had asked me what the abv on this beer was after the first taste, I would've guessed 9 or 10. Seven? Getthehelloutofhere.
  
  It needs time. There's a good beer in there with some excellent flavor and a dry sweetness, but a year on the shelf is not the worst idea in the world. I'd be very interested in re-visiting this, but cannot recommend it as-is after my experience.
  
  
• 30th Anniversary - Jack & Ken's Ale (Sierra Nevada) - this is the third of the four-bottle series that Sierra Nevada is doing for their birthday. The first one, a stout, was amazing. The second, a Helles bock, was good, but not something I would sprint back to the store to obtain. This is a 'black barleywine' and another beer that needs some time to mellow the hell out. Dark fruit like plums and dates are present in both nose and taste with a pretty aggressive hop-bite. But as with Sanctuary, it's hard to get by the burn of the alcohol cutting through the flavors. Barleywine, in my opinion, is phenomenal if you leave it alone for a year or so and I believe this will be pretty damned good, say, this time next year. Just not something I'm reaching for in this status.