Sun King Brewery Diddy Muckle Barrel Aged Beer Review

By Richard Thomas

Rating: B

I can recall more than a decade ago, when bourbon barrel-aged beer was an in-house fixture of just a few craft brewers, and the only one bottled and in distribution was Alltech’s Bourbon Barrel Ale. Now they are just about everywhere, and that includes Sun King Brewery in Indianapolis.

Diddy Muckle is the bourbonized version of their Wee Muckle, which in turn is a Wee Heavy Scotch-style ale. Since this is a whiskey media site, some explanation of what that means is in order: a Scotch-style ale is full-bodied and malty sweet, and thanks to a mix of not being as hoppy as English ales and incomplete fermentation (some sugar left over and not converted to alcohol), they tend to run with caramel and toffee flavors. This is before putting one in a bourbon barrel for some months.

Knowing that, this beer is exactly what I expected in the flavor department. It’s loaded with molasses and vanilla, along with a pretty solid note of toffee. “Wee Heavy” is also an accurate descriptor, because while this ale certainly has a body to it, it’s not nearly as heavy as some other bourbon barrel ales I could mention.

That separates it from most bourbon barrel beers in my book. A lot of those porters, stouts and ales have so much heft, I can really only recommend them for dessert drinking. I adore them in that role, but I just can’t sit around and sip on the porch or the bar with something that carries so much weight as those often do.

This one has substance, but you actually can have a couple of pints of it before filling up (or at least I can, if I’m taking a while). It’s not just a dessert beer.

Sun King’s Diddy Muckle comes in pairs of pint-sized can/bottle hybrids, and packs 8% ABV.