barleywine

Beer Roundup #8: Three American Barleywines

Food and Drink

Old Horizontal - Victory

To Buy or Not to Buy?

1 = horrible
2 = bad
3 = average
3.5 = good (many better beers out there; won’t buy this again)
4 = very good
4.5 = great
5 = rare best

 

A Note on the Style:  American Barleywine

(This style note is essentially the same as the one from my post “Beer Roundup #7:  Three Midwest English Barleywines.”)

American breweries produce both types of barleywine, the malty “English” style and the hoppy “American” style.  As I’m more of a malt guy, I prefer the sweeter English style.  The hoppy American style comes with hop bitterness to rival even the most mouth-puckering IPA.    All barleywines have a stiff malt backbone and generous sweetness, but the hop-forward American-style is often so bitter as to be indistinguishable from a high-alcohol double IPA.  Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are double IPA’s; I love me a double IPA when it’s got intense sweetness to offset the high IBU, like Bell’s Hopslam, Dogfish Head 120 Minute, or Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree.  Same with American barleywines:  as long as it’s both bitter and sweet, it’s got my attention.

Bigfoot, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.
Rating:  4.39 / 5
12 oz. bottle (4-pk), 10.2% abv, 73 IBU.

A glinting copper pour into a tulip glass, with an inch of off-white fluffy head that plasters lace on the glass.

The syrupy viscous feel in the mouth is too wonderful not to mention first. The first sip comes with a short-lived sugar sweetness. Then bitter grapefruit renders the sugar a memory. The citrus morphs to tarry pine. Whoa, this brew is too bitter. I immediately want to throw this in the cellar to teach it some manners.  That said, there is a secondary sweetness that calls out from the bitter abyss, alluding to a caramel malt sweetness that’s promised with a year or two of cellar aging. But the spicy alcohol heat teams up with the bitter hops to silence such rumors.

Stepping back to take in the aroma, a pungent honey and ripe melon seem to confirm the ghost of the sweetness. As the glass warms, the bloated bitterness deflates a bit, and a moist, grainy bread emerges, allowing that original simple syrup sugar to creep back into the room.

Rough-edged and impressively huge, like Greenflash Barleywine, this brew lacks the balance and polish of my favorite American barley wines:  Bell’s Third Coast Old Ale and Alaskan Barley Wine.

Beer Line, Lakefront Brewery
Rating:  3.96/5
12-oz. bottle (4-pk), 12.5% abv, 52 IBU.

Sticky, two-finger creamy head and lacing. Rouge-brown amber fluid.

My least favorite beer aroma hits the nose first:  leather. Milky rice pudding and wonder bread make up the malt bill. Brown sugar and vanilla, plus a mild booziness.  Very little hop bitterness in the aroma.

In the mouth the leather greets the palate, first, unfortunately. There’s a waterlogged driftwood that seems wedded to a chocolate-toffee sweetness and a nice estery burn.  Finishes with a loamy top-soil earthiness and a floral bitterness.

Medium- to full-bodied. Creamy and slick, a sticky, bitter finish.

This afternoon I was overly impulsive, buying two 4-packs of this brew.  Perhaps my judgment was clouded by the joyous memory of two recent Midwest barleywine discoveries:  1) just last month I cellared three four-packs of the enviable Stevens Point Whole Hog Barleywine (Wisconsin); and, 2) last month I was floored by Schell’s Stag Series BW (Minnesota), on tap at Mason Lounge.  Those two are a cut above this Beer Line barleywine (Wisconsin).  I don’t think I’ll be buying anymore of this one.  (Going by my ratings system, 4.0 is the cutoff point for purchasing any beer again.

Still, this is a fairly delicious barleywine, more English-style than American. I’ll throw the remaining seven bottles in the cellar.  Maybe a year might do good things, especially with the 12.5% ABV.

Old Horizontal, Victory Brewing Company
Rating:  4.41 / 5
22-oz. bottle, 11% abv, [85] IBU (estim.)

A bomber poured into a tulip glass creates a seriously handsome, ruddy copper glass of beer. It’s topped by a finger of fluffy off-white head that stays and stays, with sticky lacing.

Hoppy aroma, though quietly so.  An indeterminate spiciness.  Sweet grain. The alcohol is present.

Flavor in the mouth opens with sweet bread and red wine, plus a spicy alcohol.  Becomes instantly bitter from the citrusy hops, which dominate through the middle palate and onward through the finish. The sweetness rings as an echo on the backend, though sweetness here is refracted by the intense, white-grapefruit bitterness.

A medium- to full-bodied, luxurious mouthfeel, with a lively carbonation.

Classic American barley wine, very much like Bigfoot, though even bigger (except for the aroma). Intensely hoppy and spicy. The one drawback might be the near eclipse of malt sweetness by the tannic wine and citric bitterness. Nothing a bit of cellaring won’t cure.

Beer Roundup #7: Three Midwest English Barleywines

Food and Drink, Health

Whole Hog BW

To Buy or Not to Buy?
1 = horrible
2 = bad
3 = average
3.5 = good (many better beers out there; won’t buy this again)
4 = very good
4.5 = great
5 = rare best 

A Note on the Style:  English Barleywine

I prefer the malty “English” style barleywine over the hoppy “American” style.  All barleywines have a stiff malt backbone and generous sweetness, but the hop-forward American-style is often so bitter as to be indistinguishable from a high-alcohol double IPA.  Don’t get me wrong, some of my best friends are double IPA’s; I love me a double IPA when it’s got intense sweetness to offset the high IBU, like Bell’s Hopslam, Dogfish Head 120 Minute, or Founders Devil Dancer.

Despite my preference for the maltier English barleywine, it’s curious that I’ve found way more good American barley wines than English ones.  

How to explain this?  Is the English style BW less common in the US?  Not really.  Nearly every brewery that produces American barleywines also produces English ones.  The more likely explanation:  brewing a good English barleywine is more of a challenge because it doesn’t have the pronounced hops to balance the jacked-up sweetness.  Hence, many are sickeningly sweet, like Anchor Old Foghorn or Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot.

But all three specimens below are really good.

Stevens Point Barley Wine Style Ale (Whole Hog Series), Stevens Point Brewery

Rating:  4.44 / 5

12 oz. bottle (4-pk)  10.2% abv, 73 IBU.

From a very reasonably priced 4-pack ($7), the first sip has me totally psyched.

It’s not a great looking pour into a tulip glass, with barely a half-finger of white head atop the opaque, red-tinged, brown murk. Sticky lacing, with legs.

Very little in the aroma, probably just too cold. But bready, mildly floral, and of course malty in the nose, plus a grape-like, mildly acid wine character. Even after it warms, the nose remains reserved.

But in the mouth, now this is a provocative surprise. Stevens Point Brewery, for those of you not from Wisconsin, is an old-time adjunct-lager outfit, one of the oldest breweries in the US. My Midwest beer friends rarely say anything nice about SPB, so I wasn’t expecting a lot from this brew. But this is right up my alley. It’s a complex sweetness, like that of my two favorite English BW’s,  JW Lees Harvest Ale and Midnight Sun Arctic Devil. The grainy biscuit flavor is what backstops the sugar-sweetness, not any bitterness. Some will call this cloying. I love it. The sweetness rounds out with an estery, mossy oak. The butter/caramel is of the burnt variety. There’s milk and coconut, too.

The mild to moderate carbonation is a welcome cleanser and leavener of the oily-sticky feel.

I’ve gone back to Riley’s Wines and snatched up the last two 4-packs. One goes in the cellar, the other down my gullet!

Schell’s Barley Wine (Stag Series), August Schell Brewing

Rating:  4.46/5

On tap,  9.5% abv, 80 IBU.

I wasn’t expecting a whole lot, thinking of Schell as merely an adjunct-lager outfit. What an awesome surprise.

On tap at Mason Lounge (Madison).  In a snifter, a handsome pour, a clear coppery amber with a finger of white head and good retention and lacing.

The aroma is a bit reserved.  There’s a diacytel caramel, dried fruit, piney hops, and a bit of sharp ethanol.

Flavor in the mouth offers sweet caramel, stone fruit, a bit of citrus, and a floral hop bitterness on the back end.  Finishes sweet, with a hint of grassy hops.  Alcohol is hardly there.

Upland Winter Warmer, Upland Brewing

Rating:  4.05 / 5

On tap,  8.5% abv, 47 IBU.

Pours a hazy, ruddy copper, topped by a fluffy, two-finger head.

A seriously complex aroma, the sweet swirls with the hops.  The hops come as white grapefruit and a bit of must.  The lovely roasted caramel struggles to dominate and ultimately does.

In the mouth the malt/hop tension from the aroma comes down solidly on the side of the malt.  Simple syrup on the front end, sweet butter and bread in the middle, plus fig and cinnamon-raisin ice cream on the back of the tongue. Goes down with just a rumor of bitter hops.  

Feels like a much bigger beer than it is, chewy, even.

Not nearly as good as the other two in this review, but it gets points for availability, as it’s pretty common to find on tap in Midwest bars in the colder months.

Beer Roundup #6: Three from My Cellar

Food and Drink

bourbon County brand Stout

THREE FROM MY CELLAR

To Buy or Not to Buy?

1 = horrible
2 = bad
3 = average
3.5 = good (many better beers out there; won’t buy this again)
4 = very good
4.5 = great
5 = rare best

A Note on My Cellaring Experience:

Two things had me feeling anxious about all the beer in my cellar.  First, my wife and I moved apartments last summer, and all the beer suffered a potentially bruising trip, jostled in the back of a moving van in hot weather.  Second, the storage unit in the basement of our new apartment building didn’t stay cool summer long.  In fact, for a period of at least a week or two, temps down there rose into the upper 70s if not lower 80s.  Thankfully, I didn’t detect any ill effects in my test samples at the end of the summer, nor in any of these three beers, here.

Brewer’s Reserve Bourbon Barrel Stout, Central Waters Brewing Co.

Rating:  4.88/5

12 oz. bottle (4-pk)  9.5% abv, 70 IBU.

This is the “2012” from my cellar, 13 months of aging.

Pours nearly perfectly black, with a rim of tanned leather at the 2mm of fast-dissipating khaki foam, plus bits of lacing and legs of running alcohol on the glass.

In the nose it’s an umami cocoa, first and foremost.  How choco-wonderous.  Then aromas of toast, burnt sugar, and bourbon, with hints of coffee and vanilla.  But one really has to work to get this complexity, as the aromas are whisper quiet.  (In fact, I’ve demoted the aroma score.)  The oak barrel is nice.  People talk about toasted coconut in the aroma, but that’s one note I’ve been unable to fathom.

In the mouth it’s a spumoni ice-cream cross of vanilla and chocolate.  It’s so good, one tends toward big mouthfuls to swish from side to side, front to back.  It’s nearly the vanilla heights of Southern Tier Creme Brulee Stout.  Perhaps it’s the aging, but the bourbon comes muted. (But my wife feels the bourbon is highly present.)  Roasty malt and charred oak walk with maple syrup, burnt caramel, and chewy biscuit.  Then the dried fruits come, some raisin or prune, and a candied cherry.  The merest suggestions of pine-hops and anise twist the thumbscrews of complexity.  It all washes down with coffee and cream on the backend.

Medium- to full-bodied, fabulously smooth, with a modest carbonation and a mild boozy heat.

Decadent, delicious.  It goes down fast.  Something this rich, you would expect it to be a one-and-done type of deal.  But I feel I could have several. Perhaps that’s the beauty of a sub-10% abv.

I’m just as impressed with this as I am BCBS or Mikkeler Black Hole or Midnight Sun Berserker.  It puts into perspective Tier 1 vs. Tier 2 imperial stouts.  Now relegated to Tier 2 are:  Stone Imperial Russian Stout, Founders Breakfast Stout, Southern Tier Mokah/Jahva, Weyerbacher Tiny, and Goose Island Big John.

Brewers Reserve Bourbon Barrel Barleywine Ale, Central Waters Brewing Co.

Rating:  5/5

12 oz. bottle (4-pk)  11.2% abv, — IBU.

This is a “2013”, so eleven months of aging.

A clear reddish-caramel in a tulip glass, with almost no head, even after an moderately aggressive pour (hence the 11.5% alcohol).  Lacing is sparse, but with serious stick-to-it-iveness and dripping legs down the glass.

How I miss this aroma.  Brings me right back to snowy April of last year.  Bourbon in the nose seems nicely muted compared to my memory of it.  I remember the bourbon being more pronounced in the aroma.  The vanilla, too.  Oak and char and melted butter bring further bouts of nostalgia.  Brown sugar and raisin, too.  Yeah, baby.

In the mouth the aging is instantly evident, with the hop bitterness knocked way back (though there’s still a ghostly, earthy pine bitterness on the back-end, for sure).  Pushing against the simple-syrup sweetness, the quiet hops present about an 80 or so IBU.  The flavor is wonderfully round:  soft sugar cookie, ice-cream-caramel swirl, fig and prune, then the bourbon.  I put more in the glass, and pie crust fills my nostrils.  Plus Juicy Fruit Gum and marshmallow.  It’s massively toffee sweet, and yet the mild hops and tannins from the oak–not to mention the brightness of the still-respectable boozey ABV–bring balance.  It drinks like Dogfish Head 120 Minute.

Despite a fairly significant carbonation, the smoothness makes me want to cry.  It gives the feel of a super-syrupy moscato di asti.  Definitely more an English Barleywine profile, at least after the aging.  How astonishing to experience true beer nirvana.  I feel like I did two years ago sipping a JW Lees Harvest Ale for the first time.

CW’s detractors denounce them as a one-trick (bourbon barrel) pony.  Not only is this wrong (duh, Illumination?  Exodus?  La Petite Mort?).  But even if true, this is bourbon-barrel aging at its very best.

Bourbon County Brand Stout, Goose Island Beer Co.

Rating:  5/5

12 oz. bottle (4-pk)  15% abv, — IBU.

This is a 2012 BCBS, so 18 months-old.  It’s much smoother, sweeter, with less astringency than it had last year.  There’s still almost no head to speak of, poured into a snifter.  It looks like soy sauce with some floating bubbles.  I might have said it also smelled of soy sauce, or at least chilled soy sauce.  Then I realized the aroma was tart plum, fruitcake, and moist spice cake.  Wow.  What eye-popping clarity in this complexity.  I’m beside myself (even if my less craft-beer-minded guests are non-plussed) with how amazing an aged BCBS is.  The most astonishing surprise here is a distinct peppermint stick aroma.

Can you say “Port Wine”?  My wife just asked me what I would think if tasting this without knowing anything of its provenance or vintage.  I tried to imagine it, and I think, yep, port wine.  Charred nuts, dried fig, and burnt raisins make for a thematic, seasonal flavor–it’s that fruitcake flavor from the aroma.  The bitterness resembles molasses more than it does hops.  Balance comes from the spicy alcohol.

Creamy and thick on the palate.

I can only say thank God I’ve got four more 4-packs in the cellar.  This is the shiznet, by all standards.