Beer Valley Highway To Ale Barleywine

Aroma: 6 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 7 | Flavor: 7 | Overall: 7

this beer look and played the part of a prototypical barleywine. but while it had all the elements, it was not as great as the sum of it's part. caramel malt, hops, slight alcohol presence...check, check, check. decent, but nothing stood out, and the body was average. for the price, i'll pass.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 8 | Mouthfeel: 8 | Flavor: 8 | Overall: 8

The beer packs quite a punch in the 22oz bottle. The body is amber in color, cloudy with a 1" beige head. Aroma has some different angles going on...sweet caramel malts one time, then piney/floral hops, then some vanilla and spice comes out. Sweet malts hit the palate dead center, but the follow-up suprise of floral hops was quite suprising. Tasted like I was chewing on a sugar coated rose petal. Alcohol seemed nicely restrained, perhaps due to the sweetness. I can see this being stocked during the Winter months.

Aroma: 8 | Appearance: 7 | Mouthfeel: 6 | Flavor: 6 | Overall: 5

A reasonable pour into my 25cl tulip glass still manages to produce a dense, four-finger thick, tan colored head. The beer is a rich red / amber color and shows a pretty hazy, light-red tinged, amber color when held up to the light. The aroma is quite hoppy, with herbal hop notes as well as lots of sweet citrus notes, but it also has a sticky malt character to it. Aromas of grapefruit, herbal pine, huge biscuit-like malt, crushed-lightly browned crackers, touches of hot alcohol that mixes in with the sharper hop notes, a bit of a vegetal hop character and a touch of caramelized malt sugars that accentuates the citrus and some fruity notes.

Sweet, yet it has an ample bitterness that tries to hold this in check. Up front the sticky, caramelized malt sweetness is the more dominant, but the finish sees an almost harsh, astringent green hop note and bitterness to it that tries to wipe the palate clean, but doesn't quite totally dominate the malt. Flavors of pine tar, touches of turpentine even and some hot alcohol notes are quite noticeable, especially more towards the finish. Up front there are some sharp grapefruit zest notes and some bitter orange zest and pith flavors. The body of this brew is not overly heavy, but there is a rich malt body hiding underneath all of the hops; if it wasn't for the harsh notes this would probably be pretty drinkable.

This is a hugely hoppy and harsh beer; one could argue that it is exceedingly young and it might actually be pretty drinkable in a couple years. Right now though it is just too unbalanced and harsh to be really all that enjoyable.

Purchased: Plaza Liquors, Tucson AZ