Bodgers Barley Wine
Chiltern Brewery

 

330ml bottle.
L: Cloudy, pale brown with a green tinge. Large and long-lasting head for a high ABV beer.
S: Spiced orchard fruits with alcohol notes.
T: Follows the nose with the addition of toffee apple, wood, cinnamon, tobacco, orange oil.
F: Light body. Soft bitterness. Alcohol builds over time.
O: Incredibly smooth, almost delicate, barley wine. Delicious and very, very dangerous.

 

Bottle conditioned. Chestnut. Slight haze. Disappearing head.
Smell of oranges, mixed peel and light caramel.
Rather rustic flavour. Dried fruit coated in honey. Some toffee and cointreau.
Somewhat sticky in the mouth.
Fairly typical and good English Barleywine.

Purchased at the Bottled Beer Stall of GBBF 2008, coming in a slim brown 330ml bottle, Bottle No. 52240; served cool in Hapkin's bulb-shaped sniffer and tasted alongside Hogs Back's "Wobble in a Bottle", another traditional English Barley Wine. NOTE: the ingredients include Maris Otter malt, full cone Challenger, Fuggles and Goldings hops.

A: dark orangey golden with brightness and good clarity, coming with semi-lively streams of fine carbonation and a well-lasting off-white creamy froth to last throughout the drink.
S: clean malts with a touch of honey, surrounded by breezy fruitiness as of very light citric Goldings hops with a touch of flowery-grassy aroma, fresh "green pear(?)" flesh and vaguely white-wine vinous aroma. A swirl gives rise to rich pale dates, barley candy and an edge of maltiness not unlike a high quality pale bockbier of the German tradition. Well-tuned and pleasantly balanced.
T: the soothingly-carbonated swallow of fine fruity, honey-ish and caramely malts leads fast towards a dry and semi-yeasty aftertaste, showing bits and pieces of green pears, pale dates, followed by a 3D performance as regards the increasingly dry hops. The finish is not so... bitter as a seriously well-hopped ale, but it's remarkably lingering and lends a decent depth to the overall flavour all the same. A marvellous harmony is here to stay, for sure. Also, the semi-dry and "tobacco-leaves" like palate in the end comes as a valuable gift from the yeastiness, which is so important to prolong the pleasant drinking experience along with considerable hop bitterness.
M: very soft on the carbonation, but still showing loads of microscopic fizziness to caress the palate along with the dry-ish hops; full-bodied, with random appearance of alc. but only just. Beautifully balanced.
D: this is a first-class bottle-conditioned English barley wine, with the kind of potentials to develop into a top-class tipple. Effortlessly enjoyable!

brought this back to the states with me from the UK and it's been in my cellar for about a year. Best by date is feb 08 so I'm guessing this is about 3-5 years old. pretty nice head for being so old, and a thin layer maintained itself around the surface the whole time. When i first smelled this, I was scared. Even now after drinking for like 45 minutes I'm still baffled. It's like green apple cider, or cherry soda. Some caramel sweetness, a smidgen of sourness in the smell. It really just doesn't resemble beer, let alone a barleywine. Pretty insane how drastically the taste differed. I haven't had many english barleywines, but this is how I imagined it to be. Malt sweetness dominates. Strong notes of honey, caramel, and dates. Slightly cloying, but much less than a JW Lees if that's a useful comparison. Hop bitterness still makes a show. When I had this beer in the UK in winter 07 there was still a lot of hop flavor and burning alcohol, but that's almost all gone now. I still get a hint of alcohol at the end, but probably only 20% of what I experienced last time. Medium bodied (for the style), decent amount of carbonation. I don't think I'd want more than one of these pint sized bottles, but thats not to say it it's not delicious. It is. Really pleased with how this one aged. Dunno wtf is going on in the aroma but the taste totally makes up for it. If you're lucky enough to come across one definitely pick it up and let it sit for a year.

The colour is a pale orange-amber, it shows very clear until the bottom of the bottle which has residual yeast (to be discarded). Aroma has a nice warm yeasty, caramel, butterscotch, cooked fruit quality. High alcohol level is definitely apparent in the mouth - a bit of alcohol burn - and a slightly syrupy quality. It reminded me of Lagunitas Brown Sugga surprisingly. It is quite sweet, molasses taste, lingering after taste.