Simpatico
Antares

 

 

 

 

 

(Served in a snifter)

A- This beer has a hazy pecan brown body with a thick creamy egg cream bubble head that fades to a thin ring. There is a gentle carbonation gliding to the surface.

S- The light dry toffee notes are otherwise pretty clean with a strong cider note that grows in the finish.

T- This beer has a touch of dry malt flavor and then a soft dry green note in the finish. There is a cidery taste that comes through but otherwise this beer is very clean.

M- The light mouthfeel has a soft alcohol burn in the finish.

O- This beer has no malt backbone or any malt flavor and the alcohol is full with nothing to balance or support it.

Poured from a 25 ounce bottle into a pint glass

A: Pours a murky light brown with a hint of gold. Very hazy. A vigorous pour yields a small, white head which fades quickly.

S: Smells malty, similar to a brown ale. Otherwise bland

T: Caramel malts give a light toffee flavor. There is a notable herbal flavor, almost an off-taste. Bitter with noticeable alcohol flavor.

M: Light and uncarbonated.

O: Did not like at all. Tastes nothing like a barleywine and has a lot of strange, unpleasant bitterness. Leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

750ml bottle poured into my Rodenbach tulip... Pours a light brown, with a golden hue. A decent white head leaves a finger cap, good lacing... The aroma is floral alcohol. A hint of malt. A very faint bw aroma, but very boring... The taste is equally bland and boring. Malt with a hint of alcohol and hops. Finish is very chemical. This is not very good and not worth trying.

Pass

750 mL courtesy of kp over on ratebeer. Pours deep gold with copper core and tall off white head. The aroma is a bit spicy and mixes with the additional notes of apricot and mildly musty sweet malts. The taste begins with slick sweet malts and sweet apricots. It then gets a bit more fruity with apricot skin and apple skin tartness mixing with plenty of malty and fruity sweetness. The hops seem to show up with some late addition to the boil spice hop flavor and a dash of earthiness.

Served from 750 ml bottle into goblet.
A - 3.5 - Slightly cloudy but not opaque; rich amber color. Head is off-white, thick and creamy but fades fairly quickly. The Belgian lacing is impressive.

S - 4.0 - Light malt, with crisp, grassy hops notes. There is also some alcohol esters and spicy notes late in the sniff. I was expecting more malt from a Barleywine.

T - 4.5 - Moderate hops bitterness. The taste is dominated by clean and slightly sweet malt. There is some fruitiness from the yeast. Alcohol is there, but not assertive. No flaws or off-notes at all.

M - 3.5 - Medium bodied with smooth and moderate carbonation.

D - 4.5 - This beer is not like any other barleywine I've had. It seems like a strong Belgian Golden ale fermented with a clean American or British ale yeast so that it has the malt and hops of a Duvel-type without the Belgian yeast characteristics. This is a very well-made and clean tasting beer that achieves a near-perfect balance among the flavors.

Reviewed from notes

Pours light colored and murky, I never would have guessed this was a barleywine. The aroma doesn't give anything away either, as it is mostly light bready malts and some floral and citrus hops.

The taste once again is nothing like a barleywine. Normally I would just assume that this was miscategorized on BA, but it says right on the bottle that this is a "Barleywine Ale"....a pretty poor attempt at one really, but judged on its own merits rather than that of the style it is still fairly drinkable and light with a decent sweet malt base and some unfortunately muted hops.

Really tough to rate this one...according to style it is an F, but on its own it is probably a B- or C+....I think I'll go with something in between.

I picked this up at Sal's in Addison, IL on my last beer run. I never saw an Argentinian beer before, but I do like barleywines, so I plunked down the $7.49 for the wine sizedl brown bottle and took it home to try it.

The beer poured a hazy golden orange color that made 1½ finger's worth of white head that lasted several minutes. It also left behind a decent amount of lacing on the glass.

There isn't a lot of smell to this beer. While there is no skunkiness, there certainly is a faint and unpleasant barnyard smell combined with a little bit of fruitiness.

This is an odd tasting beer - not particularly good but not altogether horrible either. Although you can taste the malt and fruit in here, the beer is more bitter than anything else. It's like the fruit used isn't ripe enough. Then there's the high alcohol which isn't all that well hidden. It's just a mess on the taste buds - lots of flavors that don't blend well.

The mouthfeel is really nice. A full bodied brew that is smooth and creamy on the tongue with low carbonation.

With 10% alcohol you can't drink a lot of these at once, and combined with just a so-so taste, I don't know that you'd want to anyway.

750 mL bottle poured into a tulip glass.

Appearance: Pours a very hazy golden apricot color with some visible carbonation. Off-white head has good retention, becoming a heavy film with some big bubbles.

Smell: Faint smell of yeast, malts, apple, and pear.

Taste: The flavors are a bit tough to pin down. There's a good deal of fruity sweetness, yeast flavors, malts, and then some grains towards the finish. A bit of sourness and bitterness in the aftertaste, coupled somewhat with the sweetness.

Mouthfeel: Light- to medium-bodied with light carbonation.

Drinkability: The flavor gets quite tiring after about half a glass, so not the most drinkable in that respect. The ABV is rather high, but I don't really taste the alcohol.

Not sure that this is really a barleywine, as it is rather fruity. Fun to try and a bit different, but I won't get this again.

750 ml bottle. My first barley wine from Argentina and it was not what I was expecting. Everything about it is unusual. The color, the smell and then the taste which I expected to be intense but was somewhat subdued. Mouth feel is somewhat watery but the warmth tells me the alcohol is their. I spent the whole bottle just trying to figure out the many flavor notes and while I didn't like it at first it managed to grow on me midway thru (perhaps it was the alcohol).

I can't get over the semi-sweet taste which seems to lesson as you go but is not what I would expect from this style. I would rate this an interesting experiment but one that I will probably not embark on in the future.

Poured from 750 mL bottle into snifter.
A: Pours a nice cloudy golden yellow color with 1 inch frothy white head. Decent retention.
S: Grainy hops, mild malt notes, and a hint of yeast. Weak.
T: Hmmm...not good. Poor balance and the end result is quite bad. Bitter alcohol notes predominate. Faint hops and malt.
M: Syrupy and bitter...not nice.
D: ABV not well hidden. This beer looks good, but after that it takes a nosedive. Well over half of this wound up down the drain. Honestly, I would avoid this. Terrible for style. I'm surprised RBC sent this out.

750mL bottle split between my wife and I, acquired in mid-July during a trip to Binny's. I felt obligated to write this review (my first on BA) to defend this beer's honor. It seems many other people's bottles got mishandled, or perhaps suffered from bottle shock.

Appearance is appropriate for a barleywine, a medium copper with light orangeish highlights.

Smell is fairly faint, a little weak, but there are definite malty notes, with some Belge-ish yeast accents as well.

Taste is where I feel this beer actually does quite well - the flavor is big, malty, and clean, with a finish of unripe banana. Warming alcohol lingers in the background, filling the mouth with just enough of a prickly hot sensation, but aged well enough to be rounded. There is a slight bitterness in the finish, but it isn't "off" at all.

Mouthfeel and drinkability are both good enough, though the mouthfeel is a little thin - it is bottle conditioned, and in a champagne bottle, but only with a European cap - they may have underpitched the priming agent on this particular batch, as the carbonation is on the low end of the scale, even for a barleywine. I feel it is very drinkable, and would actually be a good introduction to most novices to the barleywine style, which can be astoundingly decadent and sweet to those who don't drink "big malt" beers regularly.

Again, as I said, it seems some people got bad bottles. That is too bad, because I think it is absolutely thrilling that beers of this caliber are coming from places like Argentina. I aged my bottle for about 3 months, which may have served the flavor and conditioning better than drinking it off the shelf.

Golden color with white head. Smell is sweet malts. Taste is more so. I've aged this for about 10 months, so there's a bit of the oxidation as well, which improved the flavor. Mouthfeel is medium to thick with medium carbonation. A ho hum beer that I received in the Michael Jackson "Rare" Beer Club last year. This was the beer that made me cancel my membership in the club.

A tribute to our South American friends on Cinco de Mayo, our corona holiday.

Purchased at Binnys in Chicago ~$8-$9.

Pours a slightly surprising light color. Looks like a solid IPA, or a slightly light DIPA. Very nice head on this one; fluffy and attractive.

The smell is also just a bit light for the supposed barleywine we are dealing with. A little honey, very light spicing. Not nearly as forward and bitter as one would expect with an A.B.

Silk body feels lush and lovely on the tongue....until it hits your taste buds. Something is rather off here. Cant say i've tasted something quite like this. A good bit of sweetness. The very light and fine carbonation makes the body outstanding, but the rather odd combination of flavors does not make me crave every sip. There is certainly a good shot of alcohol bringing up the rear, maybe not so much in the taste as I can feel in my head after 3-4 sips.

Interesting to try. I had thought about letting this sit for a couple years in the cellar to make amigos with all its other barleywine friends, i'm just not sure that aging would have pulled the flavors together much, maybe just mellowed this subtle head-heat.

A: Golden amber/brown color with a small white-ish head.

S: Sugar, oak, malt

T/M: Nothing great here. Tastes somewhat sugary, with some spice-like flavor profiles. Decent drinking, medium-bodied.

D: Ok drinkability but at such a high abv, not what I'd be choosing to drink on a regular basis.

Very light and clear golden color with a small head that quickly dies. Nose mainly smells of manure, but also shows light traces of sweet malts. Flavor is very sweet, simple and light, devoid of much describable character. Light hints of rough, grainy malts, along with similar manure notes as in the nose. This has to be one of the worst BW's out there.