Oblation
Troubled Monk Brewery

 

650ml bottle - well, now I at least know what the hell 'parti-gyle' means, for the record - something like 'first runs' (my toddler is barely out of THAT phase), or the sort.

This beer pours a clear, bright medium mahogany amber colour, with two thick fingers of puffy, loosely foamy, and bubbly tan head, which leaves some undulating and approaching landfall lace around the glass as it lazily recedes.

It smells of super-sweet caramel/toffee/treacle malt, a bit of white pepper and cinnamon-esque spice, honeyed bland crackers, muddled tropical fruity notes, some very faint under the basement stairs mustiness, and a plain leafy, herbal, and wet grassy hoppiness. The taste is still rather saccharine caramel and faintly biscuity toffee malt, a hard to differentiate exotic citrus and generic fruitiness, indistinct earthy spice, some understated musty yeast essences, and more tame leafy, weedy, and piney verdant hop bitters.

The carbonation is quite weak in its hard to get a grip on frothiness, the body a solid middleweight, and mostly smooth, with a genial creaminess availing itself pretty much from the get-go. It finishes still way too sweet, the pastry-esque malt and attendant fruitiness carrying the day.

Overall, this is a sadly simple and overwrought in its sweetness version of the style (which falls neither in the Yankee nor Limey camp, squarely, IMHO). However, it's tasty enough, that is if your sugar tolerance is right up there with this one's purported 'ode to the freaking gods'. Gah - tongue-scraper, where are you?

This is an extremely tasty beer. Born of a batch of Insomniac, then coddled and matured. It surprised me with its controled sweetness, robust malt, and nicely hidden alcohol content. Often, barley wines are too sweet for my liking. This, however, is a truly lovely effort. Bravo, boys!