Tree Of Life - Blended (Batch 3)
Tree House Brewing Company

 

I am sampling a cellar temp 500 ml bottle that I purchased at the brewery quite a few years ago. Bottle has been in my cellar since my purchase. NO date stamp on label or printed on bottle.
The beer pours a clear dark mahogany color and rests slightly darker in my glass with almost no light passing through. A dense creamy beige to khaki colored head foams up about a cm and fades to a sturdy edge ring that lasts throughout the sampling. I get a dense lattice when I swirl the glass.
Aroma is malt driven with toffee and caramel mixing with brown sugar and a decent hit of fusol booze. I do get a little raisin fruitiness too. No hint of any hop character on this nose.
First sip reveals a medium body with sticky texture that coats my palate on each sip. carbonation is minimal and almost feels still to this taster. Feels like a big sticky barleywine on my palate.
Flavor is similar to the nose advertisements with sweet maltiness dominating the taste. I get toffee and brown sugar with some liquor soaked raisins and a bit of fusol booze and bitey black pepper. Surprising this is still pretty hot at only 11.8% and several years of aging. No hop character here either. I also get a bit of a roasted malt note on my lips after each sip, but this is way in the background.
This is an enjoyable beer and checks the boxes as a barrel aged English barleywine, Id gladly drink another bottle if someone had one around!

 

If a beer has never given an out of body experience, then you've probably never had Tree House's Barleywine. Bringing new life to the ordinary beer drinking routine, this ale is saved for a session of the spectacular.

Tree Of Life, Batch Three pours a rather handsome deep and tawny mahogany with near bright clarity. With a sultry, savory and port-like scent swooning the nose, the initial taste is syrupy with maple, brown sugar, toffee, candied fruit and candied nuttiness.

As the delicious elixir broadens across the middle palate, the tastebuds soon saturate with the beer's sticky sweet maltiness. Laced with alcohol warmth and spice, the sugars turn honey-like with the acceptance of dark, dehydrated and pitted fruits of date, fig, raisin, plum and prune. Trending savory with sherry and port wine, the late palate is soft and herbal with hints of curacao liquor applying a slim balance to the malt-leading session.

Full bodied, chewy and pleasantly cloying, the beer provides a slow sipping session that easily replaces dessert at the end of any meal. As it lingers indefinitely with sweetness, the tastebuds are thoroughly satisfied with the more savory and toasty flavors that the ale leaves behind.

 

Pours a very dark copper-brown color with minimal head. Kinda thin. Bog boozy aroma, lots of brown sugar, caramel. Flavor is brown sugar - very sugary, followed by caramel, light bourbon barrel. Very tasty. Syrupy texture, light carbonation. Overall. Very tasty brew.

1/29/22
500 ml bottle
4.25 rating

6/6/23 update - pours very thick and viscous. Flavors seemed to develop with aging. I now get toffee, dark brown sugar, honey, molasses, and light raisin / fig on the palate, in addition to the above. Glad I sat on this one for an extra 18 months!!!

 

Blackish dark brown body with a tan collar. Bourbon and dark fruit dominated nose, some dark oak and mild chocolate in the background. Taste adds brightness to oak and dials it back, grape, molasses, dark nut, and caramel, but it is very, very sweet, to the point that finishing it became a chore. Feel is sweet, rich, full, syrupy and boozy. For a blended beer the complexity cloys with the sweetness, depth is limited. A disappointing diabetic nightmare

 

 

 

Barely creates a dusting of deep tan across the surface but really wasn't expecting much more, curiously then leaves an extended streak of lacing when the glass gets tilted. The liquid is a dark mahogany brown with a reddish cast to it, but held up at a distance might as well be black. The nose is of course sweet and rich, focusing on grilled nuts, molasses, caramelized brown sugar, milk chocolate, cola bean, plum to prune fruit, there's also a strong salt aspect for counter-balance and overall not finding it excessively boozy. Medium-bodied, yowza, here the initial impression is salt all the way. Took me two to three decent sips to get to the chocolate, vanilla, caramel type stuff. Much smokier here than in the nose. Carbonation barely registering. Nuttiest through the finish and as aftertaste, needs the sweetest parts to recede first. Again not finding any burn but the ABV registers in the noggin. Does a good job of coating the upper regions of the palate even though reluctant to consider it an "inner mouth perfume." Not finding it all that complex but enjoyed it well enough this cold and rainy eve.

 

Muddled dark reddish-brown with a short tan blanket dying in uneven mounds.

I'd previously translated b1 more as an American barleywine, but this one seems to have leaned away, making long strides in the English direction, delivering qualities of walnut, caramel, and an almost cheesy, boozy oak.

The viscous medium body has a tingly carbonation that comes to a semi-dry yet semi-sticky finish, where toffee and peanut brittle come out in the fairly hot aftertaste. The hoppiness seems almost nonexistent by comparison to b1.