1st Anniversary Barleywine
The Old Bakery Beer Company

super impressive use of ingredients that normally find their way into stouts, not barleywines. i love the twist of plot here, partially bouron barrel aged and finished with oak chips, cinnamon, and cocoa nibs. i love the aroma, its huge and super woody with a ton of vanilla on it, really smooth, earthy, and newish too, more of the oak chips than the barrel i reckon. the nibs are awesome too, maybe not so much in the aroma, they dont smell like much, but in the taste they are really forward. they are so often used in conjunction with coffee or heavy dark roasted malts that we lose their essence a little bit, at least as an individual actor most of the time, but here they add a roasted bittering element, rue raw dark chocolate, and a nice almost ashen earthy layer, great with the wood! the cinnamon is there for the senses too, but is not too heavy, more of an accent flavor to the sweet caramelized grains in here, and just the slightest bourbon taste as it finished. really compelling stuff! only medium bodied and not super sugary, the nibs and oak help with that, but i like the barleywine not being one of those 13% abv giants, this is much more drinkable of course, and i think the extra ingredients show though a little better in a beer this size. i actually liked the second anniversary beer even better (big stout in port wine barrels), but this was one of the best beers we had in here, and a heck of a one year anniversary brew, this tastes more like a 25th anniversary in terms of quality and expertise. loved it!