A Barley Wine for Every Day

I'd say I've had wheatwines I've liked better, and ones I've liked less.

 

Hair of the Dog Fred

While this beer has been called a barley wine elsewhere, I can easily see why it's labeled an "American strong ale" here. This is a wonderful beer. It's hoppy, hot, and tastes like caramel. Lots of sediment. A decadent treat. I always have good luck with Hair of the Dog bottles (not everyone does), but I've had some bad luck with some of their draught beer.

EDIT - I forgot to mention that I'm going to feature a few beers beyond the Alesmith gang.

 

Harpoon Bronze King

This one was three years old. It's a bit oxidized, thin and grainy. It tastes of raisins. It's not bad, not great. I can imagine this one being better fresh.

 

Cambridge Brewing Company Arquebus

This one was very unusual. It was inspired by Sauternes - a French sweet white wine. I have never heard of this wine, but I have had dessert wines and this beer certainly reflects that inspiration. To achieve their goal, the brewers aged this beer in French oak white wine barrels with Semillon grape must.

The first sip of this beer made me go "wow!" It has a strong grape juice sweetness. The "wow" ended up turning into "I don't know if I actually want to drink this." It's intense. Fortunately, that fear then completely transformed into "this is delicious." My feelings definitely shifted very quickly a few times over one glass. I trust my last sip over the first or middle, but none were less honest than the others. This dessert wine-ish beer was an interesting experience.

Arquebus is a great name for a barley wine but it feels like a funny match for this one. I think I like it as a name even more because of that.

 

Harvey's Christmas Ale

I'm very happy to be drinking this on Christmas day.

It's classified as a winter warmer here, but the brewer calls it a barley wine... not that there's a contradiction there.

This beer is fantastic. It's a beautiful deep dark brown... approaching black with quantity and with red highlights. Carbonation is really minimal bordering on missing. The dark fruit flavors are intense and lovely. The thing that really elevates it is that the rich fruitiness is combined with a light body and a lack of alcohol presence. This beer just begs to disappear from your glass but you want to savor it. I could drink so much more than what's in my glass - what a tease. If I ever see more of this beer I'd love to make it a Christmas tradition.

The bottle says that it is the "recipient of Finland’s Olutseura Olviretki award for excellently fulfilling The Christmas Beer Regulation described in Aleksis Kivi’s novel Seven Brothers."

I found this book quote from the web:
”The beer they had brewed themselves, carefully recollecting their mother’s methods of preparing the beverage. They had brewed it stronger, however, than ordinary peasant ale. Dark red it foamed in the pail; and if you were to swallow a mug of it, you would not fail to feel a slight dizziness in your brain.”

Happy Holidays

 

Central Waters Y2K revisited

Special thanks to @scream for pointing out that this beer came back. I grabbed a bottle.

The brewery claims that this was aged two years. I've quoted my earlier post so people can reference it. I don't know the age of the beer in the previous post, but I felt like it was a pretty old bottle. When I had that bottle, I had no reference point of what it would have tasted like when it was released. This new beer changes things, but I'll never know what's different due to age vs different due to brewing changes.

Check out that change in appearance. This new beer is brown and murky. It's not a pretty beer.

When I had the first beer, I was suspicious that I was very lucky in that I was having it at some miracle sweet spot of deep age. This second beer doesn't challenge that notion. It's a nice barley wine, but much more within conventional expectations. It is firmly in the category of American barley wine.

This beer is quite hoppy. The finish is bitter. It's sweet. It's grainy. It tastes like vanilla (faintly) and dates. It's a sipper.

 

That certainly looks like a special one. I am glad that you thought of having such a beer as a celebration beer. For me, a barley wine is the ultimate special occasion drink.

 

Is it coming to the US? There's been talk but I haven't seen anything.

 

Thanks for that. I've been waiting. I've had the O'Hanlon version and thought it was too over the top for my tastes. I'll still buy the new stuff in a heartbeat. To think that the beer that will get here was almost a Miller company beer. Now it's Asahi.