Barleywine Tasting (Jan 29-31) Planning & Discussion Thread

Hey everybody,

As some of you already know, our next BeerAdvocate tasting will be from the 29th through the 31st of this month, and the theme is barleywine!

Originally, my plan was to push this tasting back a week, however, after hearing from a few people, it seems that the Extreme Beer Fest event will pose too much conflict, so we're going to have this a week earlier to allow as many people to participate as possible.

The purpose of this thread is to provide an open space for anyone and everyone to plan for the tasting, ask questions, discuss details, talk beer styles, and just get a feel for everything before the party starts.

What Beer To Bring: While barleywine is the style highlight for this tasting, I want this to also extend to that same family of styles. In addition to barleywine, this means wheatwine, ryewine, and ricewine.

Other than that, there are very little guidelines for what to open. Be it an old late 90's vintage, or that new hyped pastry barleywine from Four Captains or whatever. Be it Double Barrel Anabasis or your local canned barleywine. Be spontaneous, don't be afraid to open a special bottle, don't be afraid to go with the only option you could find. There are no awards at the end of this, so just have fun!

Here are some quick links to BA's examples and descriptions of these various styles.

American Barleywine

English Barleywine

Wheatwine

Ryewine (not added to BA yet)
Ricewine (not added to BA yet)

Overview: Final details will be included in the official tasting thread, but for anyone who may be new to this or unsure how it works, it's very simple - on Friday, the 29th, a thread will go up hosting the tasting. Your job is simply to open yourself a barleywine/wheatwine/ryewine/ricewine, and share your thoughts in the thread. Include a photo of your ale of choice, along with a review of it. Reviews are highly encouraged - they needn't be a full wall of text, but some notes describing the appearance, aroma, flavour, body/mouthfeel, and overall thoughts on the beer are more than sufficient. Just enough to give everyone else an idea of what it's like. This isn't WBAYDN, but a tasting event, so anything you can say about the beer and it's characteristics is greatly appreciated.

How to upload photos to forums

With all of that out of the way, let's get to planning! I hope to see many of you there, and I encourage anyone who has any kind of barleywine laying around to pop in and pour it with us! These are difficult times, and social activities have been severely stunted, so hopefully this will serve to inspire just a little more meaning to opening a beer and enjoying it with others in some capacity.

I hereby invite you to join the Online Barleywine Tasting: January 29th - 31st, 12pm EST. 11am CST, 10am MT, 9am PST. Hope to see you there!

 

I have a small vintage set of J.W. Lee's bottles. I will hire you to be my bottle popper and pourer. Be aware, this is a temp gig.

Good luck on the job hunt! I've been out of work since March, just eating away at my savings. I fully understand the struggle.

 

Should I open my Anabasis and attempt to solo dome it, or save it to share with someone?

 

Feel free to help me pick. Maybe 3-4 bottles..my potential choices are narrowed down to this:

Pelican - Mother of all Storms (2014)
Side Project - Anabasis b4
Side Project - Maple In The Wood b1 (wheatwine)
Perennial - Devil's Heart of Gold (wheatwine)
Fremont - Brew 3000
Bottle Logic - Intrepid Orchid (2020)
F-W - Sucaba (2013)
F-W - Helldorado (2015)
Barreled Souls - Reap What You Sow (ryewine)
Revolution - Ryeway to Heaven (ryewine)
Revolution - Straightjacket
Kane - Stacking Casks b2
J.W. Lee's - '02 Harvest, '09 Harvest, '12 Harvest Calvados, '13 Harvest Sherry, '16 Harvest Port, '17 Harvest Lagavulin

Those are my options. Help me out!

 

As much as I love old ales (and have a few late '90s vintages I'm dying to open, myself), I'm thinking that they deserve their own tasting, and should probably not be included among barleywine. However, this is the planning thread, and that's certainly open to discussion. If the overwhelming consensus is to include them, than I haven't an issue with it.

It's worth noting, that if the bottle opener just happens to slip, and the old ale spills into your glass, and the photo is accidentally uploaded, along with an accidental review, it's not like I'm going to report you for breach of contract or anything.