Looking for the next Thomas Hardy's

I came here to recommend this as well.

Sam Smith Stingo is also a real treat, if not that similar.

 

Good luck with that. I was lucky enough to get a couple of 1994s a few months ago. 1 went down my gullet, the other I gave to a friend. Soo much better than the O'Hanlon brewed ones I've had but honestly, if you come across 1 post 1999, I'd grab it.

 

have you tried Harvey's Elizabethan? It had a certain, orangey, cognac quality to it. Like it more than TH. Haven't seen it in a while though…..

 

It is close to a TH but I think it wasn't quite there.

 

I was a huge fan of Thomas Hardy's. I strongly recommend kuhnhenns 4d. It's much more intense but has that similar port like nose.

 

The closest beer I've ever had to Thomas Hardy's was a properly aged keg of Dogfish Head "Olde School" 2011.

It is very difficult to find a well balanced barleywine - most often they end up too hoppy or boozy.

Even the 2012 vs. 2011 Dogfish Head barleywine's were completely different beers.

I am consistently trying to get back to that Thomas Hardy's experience

 

To me DFH 120 crossed that line from IPA into bwine long ago.

 

This is legit. I had a 1998 back in 2010 and it was sublime!

 

It also has that vinous quality that sets the best barleywines/old ales apart from the rest.

 

Currently have a bottle of 1988 just waiting for the right time to crack it...If I ever find the right time hahaha

 

don't mean to nitpick & beg argument but i'm curious how you decide Sucaba isn't an English Barleywine? do you mean it doesn't taste like you, personally, expected & have established (to yourself) "is" English Barleywine?

& how do you quantify a missing percentage of a beer's original essence?? again, i'm guessing you made the calculation based on your own assumption of what you think a final result would/should taste like (based on your own personal expectation/experience)? the way it was written, it sounds like you know exactly what the beer that went into the barrels tasted like vs. what it tasted like when it came out.

 

I tried a batch 1 Adam in 2011, so that would be 17 years, and it was fantastic.

 

It falls in line with how 'flavored' beers have long been categorized; a smoked barleywine would be a smoked beer first and foremost, with a base substyle of barleywine; not a barleywine with the substyle of smoked. Same with herb and spiced beers, fruit and vegetable beers, etc. The percentage part was perhaps a bit of 'poetic license' on my part, but the differences between a BBA beer and a 'straight' one are plain enough, don't you think?

This may seem like semantics or hair-splitting, but it falls in line with a growing concern of mine with how people are looking at beer these days (and I'm still not sure I can fully express it, but here goes). It's looking like those who see something like, let's say, BCBS under the 'stout' banner will tend to view the other (non-BBA) stouts and porters as, well, missing something (their first choice is always to suggest the BBA beer, no matter the context, it seems); whereas if you mentally keep it with the BBA beers, then that comparison isn't so apparent, and good old stouts and porters can remain good old stouts and porters. In a sense, how one chooses to categorize these things can open that door to not getting all that you can out of enjoying a good chunk of beer styles.

 

like you, i'll take one or two of the many different paths this can go - a full circle approach would probably be a bandwidth issue for BA.

based on what you outlined, a smoked porter isn't a porter at all. it's a smoked beer - <everything else after that designation is a subcategory>?

secondly, the differences between a BBA beer & straight one obviously can vary, widely from: "yes, extremely noticeable" to: "no, where the hell is the barrel in this". you hear both extremities all the time. a barrel that's been reused 5 times or a beer that's spent a very short period of time in a barrel (whether reused multiple times/worn or NOT) would have limited effects on/vs. the "straight one" as well. yes or no?

hope this doesn't sound accusatory but i get the impression you could be a little bit fed up with BBA, the hype & demand surrounding it & how often it's interjected?

in order to keep everything equally yolked, are you going to referee folks when say someone asks for a recommendation of other beers that taste like/compare to (fill in the blank); which pretend (blank name) is single, ordinary hopped & others respond suggesting comparisons of known beers utilizing multiple, weird hops??

bottom line. doubt you'll ever achieve any uniformity on this. when someone asks for suggestions, the respondents will offer what honestly comes to mind, at the time.

 

Because of who's involved in brewing it.

 

I read that THA is supposedly going to be brewed again but I'll be damned if i can remember who by.
Anyone?

 

I don't think that's been revealed yet, despite my efforts.

 

The THA website hasn't been updated since February so no info there.

 

It seems they are testing the quality of the first batch.

Kevin says:
July 14, 2014 at 7:59 pm
How are the test batches coming along?
Are you ready to predict a release date yet?
The shelves of my beer cellar are getting bare. I’m looking forward to stocking up.

Reply
admin says:
July 15, 2014 at 6:41 am
Dear Kevin, we can’t say exactly when our Ale will be ready for market. Our test is improving very well during maturation in bottle, and now we are working on the last details with the English brewery that will produce our Thomas Hardy’s Ale.


http://www.thomashardysale.com/wordpress/and-the-first-attempts/