Rye Barley Wine
Flying Lion Brewing

Poured into a Fremont small snifter. Pours a dark reddish orange with a half finger light khaki head with good retention and nice lacing. Aroma of dry biscuit malt, dates, raisins and a touch of coffee. Flavor is deep biscuit malt, dates, raisins and a touch of coffee and rye on the finish. Medium bodied with moderate creaminess, nice mouth feel. A quite interesting and satrisfying take on a barleywine. It has a kind of old fashioned profile that is not quite English, being more malty and less dark plummy fruit and not the traditional American heavily hopped fruity profile. In fact it leans in the direction of a rich old ale style. There were a number of malt forward barleywine that I liked many years ago, among them Mad Rivers' John Barleycorn, which I haven't seen for a long time. It's nice to revisit this style of barleywine and this one has the additional interest of rye to liven things up. The taste is very sneaky, mostly uniform malt at first, then revealing dark fruit notes and finally the rye and coffee-like character in the finish. I really enjoyed this. Flying Lion is stepping up its game with this and the rye stout in cans and I will be keeping an eye on them.