Nebula - Extended BA (Basil Hayden)
Barreled Souls Brewing Company

L - pours black with garnett around the edges
S - oak, sugar cookie, plum
T - creme brulee, candied orange peel, molasses with a moderate barrel char finish
O - Sweet, but very complexly so; this is quite the treat

This one pours a golden dark brown color, with a small head, and not much lacing.

This smells like maple, caramel, brown sugar, tobacco, oak, chocolate, and vanilla.

This is a sticky sweet malt sledgehammer, in the best way. There’s a lot of barrel here, as it’s aged for a few months later than their barleywines are typically aged. There’s vanilla, tons of caramel, oak, and some tobacco/herbal bitterness from the barrel, and it all dovetails really well with the maple, sweet breadiness, brown sugar, and dark fruit from the barleywine base itself.

This is pretty thickly bodied, not all that boozy, but definitely reminiscent of sipping on port or something like that.

This is basically barleywine candy in the best way – it was extremely enjoyable.

Pours a fairly thick mahogany/ebony with rapidly falling mocha colored head. Viscous, zero head retention & lacing

S: Plenty of barrel, vanilla, dark fruits

T: Bourbon Barrel, leafy hops, cola, boozy figs & treacle upfront. Once warm, brown sugar, maple candy, plenty of barrel warmth, Finishes with a Bourbon/ Maple flourish, lovely brown sugar & Oakyness/Sour Mash as well, some vanilla & a kiss of Treacle

MF: Chewy, low carbonation, plenty warming

Really enjoyed this one, ABV is well hidden other than the fact it just gets you in the end.. If all was as good as the flavor; world-class

Sampling a cellar temp 500 ml bottle poured into my snifter. Bottle was picked up at the brewery in October. Bottled on date is 6/15/2023.
the beer pours a relatively dark mahogany color with almost no light passing through my glass. A creamy khaki colored head of .5 cm foams up but fades to a sturdy edge layer that remains through sampling. Some scattered lattice when I swirl or sip the beer.
Aroma on this beer is toffee, bourbon, vanilla and brown sugar. No hops and not boozy either. I also get hints of some dark fruit, plums and raisins are what Im picking up. But the sweet sugary ness and bourbon are dominant on the nose.
First sip reveals a sticky textured fairly thick body and very fine prickly carbonation. This beer is a bit of a sipper on the physical traits.
Flavor is sweet malt, with brown sugar, toffee, caramel, bourbon notes and some candied fruit. Definitely a sweet and barrel forward beer. Never any hop character and the booze is not hot, fusol, or black pepper. Pretty drinkable, minus the stickiness. Ill be finishing this beer over the next hour or so. Enjoying this one quite a bit.

 

More barrel than Barleywine.

On tap:
A deep rust-tinged brown beer that is seeming opaque. A dirty-tan collar holds a creamy thickness. Dark brown sugar and date aromas jump from the glass, along with fleeting moments of coconut, chocolate, and plum or dark cherry.

As a barley wine, this runs as sweet as the nose foretold, with a bit of alcohol present in the end. The bourbon barrel is definitely present here, but the beer seems under-attenuated or/and lost in brown sugar sweetness and coconut vanilla. The very end of the beer sheds some of the sweeter notes and I get some cherry, leather, and barrel tannin that I wish made up more of the taste.

So, it’s a bit too much of a dessert beer for the base style, in my opinion. And I think I would enjoy it more if it weren’t so, but it didn’t weigh on me as much as I expected after the initial sips.