BARLEY ONE
Swiftwater Brewing Company

Drinking the 2016 release in 2022, and time hasn’t done this many favors. Muddy look with a fizzy head and bits and pieces at the bottom of the bottle (that wound up in my glass). Aroma is nice enough if pretty standard but then on the palate you’re left with a muddled mix, some dark fruit and toffee notes, a touch of wood and whiskey, moderately bitter and tannic finish. Feel lacks smoothness and roundness in the mouth, and overall it’s a middling experience. I’ll drink any barleywine (!) but I wouldn’t drink this again.

This Barleywine is foggy, burnt umber, copper with a thin, rocky, almond head. A ring of lace becomes spotty after several sips. Effervescence is clearly visible within a Dogfish Head snifter glass.

Soapy malt is the first impression. Caramel and some generic fruitiness, perhaps Juicy Fruit gum, follows.

The flavor opens with biscuit malt and is sweet up front, yielding to bitterness. There is far more grain than anticipated from the style. Warmth releases pine tar which lingers in a long, modest finish. The finish never quite ends, allowing spicy pepper with advanced warming. The flavors in my opinion were best, in fact much better, at about 60 degrees.

The slick, creamy texture is consistent with a full body. Fine carbonation is ample, while the alcohol is quite present with little heat.

This is a fine beer. Swiftwater has many more-impressive offerings. BARLEY ONE is firmly within the American Barleywine style. However, it lacks the shine that this style often showcases. I finished this glass quietly out on the porch while listening to birds on an early mid-Spring evening. The rest of the bottle will pair well with cold sirloin.

 

Poured into a tulip, the appearance was a semi-dark amber/red to brown color with a nice sustaining finger's worth of white foamy head that slid off at a moderate pace. One ring of foamy lace sat near the top and stretched into some nice boozy legs.
The aroma has a magical blend of sweet red delicious apple to some sweet and spicy woody barrel tickling a little bit of vanilla, cherry, the sweet side of the tobacco leafiness and ended with a nice clean earthiness.
The flavor was mildly sweet drawing upon a nice leafy to earthy portion meddling with the sweet apple and cherry tastes and then a moderate sweet whiskey tone that leads into the aftertaste with some apple, vanilla and red cherry.
The mouthfeel was about medium bodied with a fairly decent sipping quality to it due to some dryness and noticeable booziness, yet it was non-distracting. Carbonation felt fine and there wasn't anything cloying. ABV felt nice.
Overall, very nicely aged barleywine, leaning towards the American style? I'm not so sure since I didn't get much or any hoppiness for the American side. However, this was a 2016 aged bottle, so I get that, there may have been a fair amount of hop dissipation. I'd still have again.