Off the Trail
Pint Size Brewing

Look - dark reddish brown with a nice rimming
Smell and taste - nice toffee caramel barrel
Feel - full body with a lighter carbonation
Ovearll - pretty solid

Poured into a Fremont small snifter. Pours a dark reddish orange with a half finger light khaki head with good retention and lacing. Aroma of dry caramel malt, whiskey, filberts, dark bread and light wood. Flavor is dark caramel malt, rye whiskey, light nuts, dates, raisins and light oaky wood. Medium bodied with light to moderate creaminess. A rich, traditional English barleywine with pleasant rye whiskey barrel character. Flavor is fairly complex with dark fruit, bready rye notes from the rye barrel. Nicely done and flavorful.

 

2022 vintage, Batch #5. This year's release is a blend of three barrels. This is our traditional English barleywine, brewed with UK Maris, Otter, and a bit of Carastan. Aged for 14 months in small format #4 char Kelvin Cooperage barrels that previously held Wigle Pennsylvania Rye whiskey.

This one pours a dark-ish brown color, with a small head, and lots of lacing.

This smells like toffee, molasses, pumpernickel bread, caramel, oak, chocolate, and rye spice.

This is really barrel forward in an excellent way. There’s a nutty, bready, and spicy character from the rye whiskey that goes really well with the hearty molasses/caramel/toffee malt backbone. The sweetness is overall restrained, as the barrel takes the lead on this one for sure.

This is medium bodied, slightly warming with some booze, but I wouldn’t outright call it boozy.

I always want to try new barrel-aged barleywines, and this ticked a lot of boxes for me. It was quite good.