Russell's Reserve Rye BA Big Bang (2024)
Barreled Souls Brewing Company

This one pours a nice golden dark amber color, with a small head, and a little bit of lacing.

This smells caramel, maple, orange peel, vanilla, charred oak, rye spice, and toffee.

I don’t love American barleywine typically, but this variant, and basically all of the Big Bang variants are tremendous. The rye spice melds with the little bit of hoppiness I can still discern after 13 months in barrels – the hop character comes across mainly like candied orange peel or something, the sort of thing that would come garnished on a spicy rye cocktail. There’s caramel, some barrel-derived vanilla, toffee, and maple – all sorts of the good stuff you want out of barleywine.

This is medium bodied, creamy, rich and sticky, but not overly boozy or syrupy.

Barreled Souls somehow just keeps absolutely belting these out of the park, release after release.

Sweet caramel/toffee malty, a hint of butterscotch, a touch of rye-spice, subtle hoppiness, and a bourbon barrel nose on this one! Taste follows with some sweet burnt brown sugar notes upfront...and then a bourbon barrel and faintly hoppy bitter finish. This is good! As it warms and opens up, however, those faint hoppy notes that were contained while cool, start to peek out more, becomes more aggressive, and clashes with the barrel notes on the backend.