Barleywine Appreciation Thread (2023)

This latest Deep Wood series seems like a big miss for me. Not bothering to get any of them. Hopefully the November lot is more impressive

 

Get any 7k? Mine will be a holiday treat

 

One of the worst beer series's's's's's' i ever had.

 

@DIM look a barleywine
with coffee and coconut AKA sunblock
A Strong Ale is a Barleywine...change my mind

 

sometimes you gotta takexone for the team and drink some Hawaiian Tropic Tanning Oil
Need some more melanin and doctor said this would help . Maybe after drinking this I'll be the best bodyboarder at El Porto!

* i got a shitload of BL beers from a generous BA and said i would drink them all no matter what. Gave away 16 bottles and kept the rest to be guinea pig.

 

I love barleywine, but due to availability and price point I don't have as many as I would like. This Winter Jetlag from Triple Crossing was gifted to me recently. I have no idea what year it's from. It's a BBA English barleywine with vanilla. It's surprisingly subdued at 12%. Thin at first with brown sugar, dark fruit, toffee, vanilla, and caramel all coming out. There's just a slight alcohol burn in the finish. Not nearly as sweet as I would have expected. If it had a fuller mouthfeel this would be extraordinary. As is it's just solid.

Cheers!

 

Well, a "Munich wine" is still a wine made from barley, right? Um, never mind.

Let me search on the 'net instead. Hmmm, turns out that there's a long of history of wine in Munich...

Oh wait, wrong turn. This is the stuff:

So a "Munichwine" is a barley wine according to the brewer. Whew! I was starting to get nervous that I was going to have to trade to complete my style ticks!

Coincidentally, I also "quietly created" a bunch of new styles in my garage by focusing on specific malts. I've called these new styles: Viennawine, Biscuitwine, Caramelwine, and Chocolatewine. My wife thinks I'm pushing my luck with the last one. She thinks it's a confusing name, but I'm trying to explain to her that the name "chocolatewine" states exactly what it is. I smushed the words together to avoid confusion. She doesn't get it. I'm just trying to be transparent as a producer!! (Well, to be honest, I really just want to claim that I've made a lot of "first evers.")

The one thing I can't relate to though, is the brewer's choice of bourbon and grape brandy barrels. That's like baking different breads with different types of flour, and then saying, "In order for you to appreciate the differences that the flour choices had in the finished breads, I've prepared peanut butter and grape jelly sandwiches with the different breads."

 

Brad’s intent with Private Press (PP) is to continuously develop/improve the cellar via growing the threads & improving the blends = Each iteration is a new interpretation: “batch 2 blends are not the same as batch 1”


This might give some a better understanding, of what Brad is trying to achieve -

 

As I was posting, I asked myself, "Should I add a winky face? Tone can be so easily misinterpreted. Nah, no need. I'm laying the humor on so thick... there's no way anybody will think my post is totally serious." As usual, I was wrong.

You misinterpreted my meaning. I wasn't making a joke because of the two barrels (although that just added to it). I was saying this because adding that stuff is a bad way to present the differences in the breads. The baker should just let the person taste the bread instead of making a sandwich.

That's perfectly fine. In my opinion, when it comes to the experience they are marketing/selling to the consumer, the tremendous marketing emphasis they place on their choice of malt percentages is somewhat at odds with their choices in execution with the beer as whole. I can easily see how someone would disagree with me or see my take as nonsense. I’m also not silly enough to think that there would be enough demand for a “Munichwine” without gilding the lily with grape brandy.

If we change the beer style in the example to emphasize how this plays into style expectations and consumer acceptance. Imagine a brewer developing a new hop variety called Solar (just play along ), then marketing a single hop beer called Solar IPA, calling special attention to it being a first of its kind, and then also putting mango puree in the beer. I think a good part of the IPA crowd would say, “I wanted to try that beer until I read about the puree.” There would be a perceived disconnect between the drinking experience being marketed and the recipe follow through.

 

The quote was to highlight the process, but to address Munich Wine specifically, and to address Brad’s approach: Grape Brandy Barrel(s) ≠ a chemical addition. Granted, a non-barrel aged interpretation would be a better platform, for a distinctive grain bill…irrespective of the outcome; however, this is not the envisioned plan