Work Life Balance
Fair State Brewing Cooperative

Been sitting on this one awhile. Really dark and thick pour with brown highlights on the edges, tight mocha head that is giving way pretty fast. Nose is blackened malt and port.

Taste is quite sweet. Rich toffee, plums, dried currants, wet cork, blackened malt, treacle, earthy woodiness, marishino cherries. Mouthfeel is beyond full, in the desert wine range. Finish is like a rum fruitcake. A powerful brew.

 

 

 

Big dark fruity Barley Wine with rich notes of molasses and toffee.

Black cherries, raisins, figs, blackberries...just a wonderful vinous dark fruit impression on the flavor...almost port like......combines with that rich chewy toffee and lighter molasses notes.....love the flavor of this...a very light smokiness to this as well

Aroma brings some hints of leather along with the vinous notes..

Body is full but not immense....carbonation is on the light side of medium...works well.

Hits the mark for an malty English style BW....would DEFINTELY purchase this again. Great beer.

Poured from a can at fridge temp. Pours very dark brown - almost stout level darkness! An inch of light brown head forms and then quickly dissipates. The nose is fantastic. Roasted malts, charred wood, coffee grounds, and some burnt toffee.

The taste is intense. I honestly have a hard time understanding how this is a barleywine. Big molasses, smoke, burnt toffee, roasted malts, and a somewhat odd sweetness. Definitely honey and maple. To be honest, this is improving as it warms a bit.

Mouthfeel is pretty thick. Sweet on the aftertaste.

Poured from a can with birth date of OCT/27/22 into a snifter
Appearance – The beer pours a dark brown amber color with a dense head of tan colored foam. The head has a fantastic level of retention, with it very slowly fading to leave tons of foamy lace on the sides of the glass.
Smell – The aroma is big of a boozy and grainy smell with a large showing of molasses and toffee. Along with these smells comes some notes of diesel and a bit of leather. Some cough syrup and cherry are there as well, giving a very medicinally boozy smell to the beer overall.
Taste – The taste starts out with a sweet bready and doughy taste that has a bit of roastiness and a lot of graininess mixed within. The sweet is a mix of fruit and sugar, with cherry, prune, and raisin mixing with molasses and toffee. There is a bit of oaky booziness right at the start, with this getting stronger as the taste advances. While the booziness is there, it is not as big as I would have anticipated from the nose, and certainly not as expected for a 13 % abv brew. Toward the end a bit of herbal and light medical flavor comes to the tongue, leaving one with a sweet and malty and moderately boozy medicinal taste to linger on the tongue.
Mouthfeel – The body of the brew is creamy and thick with a lower carbonation level. For the style the feel is quite appropriate and makes for a slow sipper.
Overall – A bit on the sweeter side with a big malt and bit of medicinal flavor. Overall, decent but not one I will likely come back to again.

 

From a brewery I've never heard of in a nondescript can, I have no expectations. Damn, this is absolutely marvelous. I'm going to start with the mouthfeel which is incredible. It's both soft and airy while being full and creamy. The perfect vehicle for the dynamic combination of toffee, figs, and chocolate. It's sweet for sure but has a wonderful depth of flavor. The 13% is nowhere to be found. Thank you so much for this gem @Beersnake1 , I was absolutely blown away!

Just released, Work Life Balance is impressive. There is very little in the brewer's history to indicate they could create a brew this complex within what probably is one of the world's Top 10 complex styles.

Work Life Balance is, well, like balancing work and life. Not easy to do... and it takes experimentation to get it right, and more work when it's not right. All of which is why I'm impressed that Fair State can learn from all those experiments and produce an English barleywine that rivals those across the pond that have been working on this for centuries.

Work Life reveals layer after layer of flavor; complex yes, but just when my buds think this B-wine might get too sweet, something bitters-up the palate. Sometimes it is hops, sometimes bitter-sweet chocolate, sometimes coffee. But here's the bottom-line: Work Life Balance stays in balance.

This being my second from Fair State, I already made my micro-review and extolled them at an outlying 4.75 Overall. I continue that here, primarily because they are the MN-WI farmer-worker solution to crowd-sourcing. Genuine. Effective. Intent on quality. And I want more. (Unfortunately, I can't remember where I bought Work Live Balance, but I want even more.)

Pour is deep brown / mahogany. Dense half finger of khaki foam fades to a ring around the glass with decent lacing.
Nose is toffee, plum, dark fruits
Taste follows. Toffee, dark fruits, molasses, toasty, fig, cherry, raisin - subtle hints chocolate and marshmallow. Hint of warming alcohol in the stomach. Very rich and malty. Has port flavors.
Thick, full, smooth body.

Canned 10/27/22; drank 11/27/22 @ the Yarchives.

Opaque brown appearance.

A rough pour yielded a HUGE tan head; a thick curtain of tree-rung lace.

Sweet fig booze heat & faint leather notes in the nose. Bordering on nail polish levels of heat here...

Creamy medium thick mouthfeel.

Sweet fig & a lot of booze heat flavors; mild leather notes and even more heat on the finish.

The sweetness & booziness really push this near nail polish territory. It's ultimately drinkable but not one I'd recommend.

Poured from 12oz can. Dark black color with a small head that quickly settled. Dark fruit in the aroma such as dates and figs with a touch of alcohol. Flavor is rich with notes of licorice with a finish of dark fruit and alcohol flavor and heat. Big body and pleasantly carbonated. I think this beer would be an excellent candidate for aging to allow the alcohol to mellow and the malt flavors to develop.

A big English Barleywine. It pours dark black slight touch of amber with a mocha head . Smell is malty toasty with fig and raisins . Taste follows the nose malty and thick ,dark fruits molasses very toasty . Mouth feel is sweet malty and thick this is a sipper and glad it was a 12oz can.