Devil's Puzzle
Original Pattern Brewing Company

10 oz. pour into a snifter. Make no mistake: this is a fantastic English (British) Barleywine. Full texture, malty sweetness, dark fruit. Lengthy finish. No hop presence. The pieces are all there. Just about the only improvement that I can think of would be barrel aging. English barleywines are in fairly short supply on menus, so I jumped at the chance to try this. The menu didn't describe it as an English or a British barleywine, but the description of flavor and texture fit the description of an English barleywine and, fortunately, that was what it was.

The problem is that English barleywines are so heavily outnumbered by American barleywines that, I suspect, people see "barleywine" on the label and expect the American version by default: a medium body, high alcohol, full throttle hop monster. I am a big American barleywine fan as well, but the American and the English are very different. What American is to hops, English is to malt. There are effectively no hops to be found anywhere in an English barleywine.

Highly recommended.