BA Barleywines without a non-BA version

I love barleywines that have lots of caramel and toffee flavor and hate the ones that are real heavy on the prune and raisin flavor. It seems like from what ive had the BA ones hit the flavor profile I enjoy more often than the non BA ones.

 

Does Side Project have a non-BA version of Anabis?

I guess I could look, but it seems like they only have a BA barleywine. Or perhaps they just don't have a hyped non-BA barleywine.

 

Shared made Safe Terminal but that was way after Anabasis.

 

They did do a one-off BA Old Foghorn a couple years back... I think it was a SF/brewery only release though.

 

Not sure if you can get Arcadia in Illinois (Michigan brewery) but they produce Cereal Killer and a BA version. The BA version is top notch and way better, IMO. The reg version runs about $14-16 / 4pack.

I have some sitting in my cellar to see how it ages. Its hoppy, so I'm guessing it will be a fail. I did e-mail Arcadia and their director of brewing ops said it was one of their best aging candidates. We shall see.

 

I have tried to keep various iterations of JW Lee's around to share like port after dinner. I never drink barleywines alone.

 

Me too. At least there's always Old Rasputin and Yeti. I just wish Founders would bring back their Imperial Stout, and I wish Oskar Blues would make Ten Fidy year-round.

 

See now, that pisses me off. That's intentionally misleading people to pander to consumers' ignorance. That's almost as bad as all the new breweries calling their flavorings "adjuncts." Yes, let's continue to perpetuate misinformation! Arggghh!!!

 

Don't let my comment drag you down to my level. You're position is far more balanced than mine.

Interesting. I'm not in your head and tasting what you're tasting of course, but to me, that sounds like it's purely circumstantial. Personally, I've had raisiny barley wines and caramel-ish barley wines that never touched bourbon barrels. For me, the barrel character only masks those flavors in BA barley wines. I'm actually getting less caramel in a barrel aged beer since that aspect is getting pummeled (not complimented) by the barrel aging.

 

Hair of the Dog Doggie Claws and Troegs The Flying Mouflan are great barleywines.

 

Last time into Gso I noticed that Backwoods Bastard has turned into a kinda shelf turd. I don't really care for BW, but a few years ago this beer went pretty quickly.

 

Ah, that makes sense then.

 

Because customers don’t want it in quantities worth producing. We released a non-BA barleywine in Tombstone and retailers ordered a total of 80 cases. A month before that, we released an imperial coffee stout with orders for 500 cases. IPA’s easily get up to double that order volume.

When we released that beer, it started off with great reviews because the people that seek out that style got it first. The reviews kept getting worse as people complained that it wasn’t barrel aged with a group of people getting upset and emailing me directly asking for their money back because they couldn’t taste bourbon... no where on the can or in any of our posts promoting the beer did we say anything about bourbon. Next thing I knew, I started seeing people adding bourbon and oak chips to growlers of it to try to emulate barrel aging.

 

Which beers did they do this with?

Regarding their Mash beers, one would think that a $25 750ml 12% ABV beer is plenty "intimidating to a lot of casual buyers" no matter what the small font on the label states the style is (and the words "imperial brown" really just add to that intimidation anyway). And then there are the beers that they call their "old ales" that are $35 750ml 16% ABV beers. Who's the audience for that?

 

Unfortunately, this says it all.

 

From then posts here this trend seems consumer driven.

This makes me wonder, rather than diversity, won't we see a (also consumer driven) trend towards a reduction in the number of styles in the future?

When the number of breweries (and number of styles) was at the low point at the end of the 70s. How much was that also consumer driven?