Barley Wine Bourbon Barrel
Drake’s Brewing Company in San Leandro, California, United States 🇺🇸
Barley Wine - Barley Regular|
Score
7.35
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Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 4 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 6
6 oz nip bottle courtesy of alohaC. Pour is cloudy brown ruby. No head whatsoever, in fact no noise at all when the cap was opened. Aroma of wood barrel and a whole bunch of the bourbon. Initially that’s pretty much it. As it opened, got some nice plum and raisins. Taste is sweet, boozy, bourbon, wood and some wet cardboard. Taste is really hot, overpowering really. This is pretty rough stuff for me, tasted somewhere in between a port and a bourbon. Aftertaste burns. The palate was nice and full, chewy really. I guess beers that push this far into the booze spectrum just aren’t for me.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 9 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 10 | Overall - 9.5
6oz bottle picked up at Ledger’s in Berkeley. Pours a brackish brown navy bean soup and almost no head. The aroma is simply huge to start. It smells like a chocolate rum cake. Wow, amazing aroma. I get creamy toffee, caramel and chocolate. Next I picked up a big ole whiff of alcohol. There’s also the standard barleywine dark fruitiness coming from prunes and dates. I even smell that a loud truck drove by while they were bottling this bottle. It smells like an uneven unspoken moment of tension. It’s faint but it’s there. The flavor does not disappoint after the aroma has set the plate. Smooth and rich with an initial burst of caramel candy. This is gooood. The dark fruitness enters just after with prunes and dates. Then by midway the malt richness returns with toffee, creamy caramel candy and chocolate. There is also an understated woodiness running through the backyard of the flavor experience toting along a splash of booze. It is toasty too. This one really comes together for me.
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 10 | Overall - 7.5
6 oz. bottle at 10.37% on the front, but 11.1% in the fine print on the back. Arresting aroma. Alcohol and dark fruit. Wood. Molasses. Something that bites. No head. No fizz. A dark woody brown color. Vanilla as the snifter approaches the lips. Thin to medium bodied. Prune. Toffee. Heat. Sour at the back of the mouth. A bit harsh in the mouth. Overall it’s sweet, with not a great deal of hop presence. Just enough to tingle the mouth. A few swallows allow some bitter oak to surface. Also coffee. Maple (like Boston Beer’s Triple Bock in a mild way). Apparently more flavors arrive as it warms (or as the mouth adjusts). Very interesting stuff.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
Bottled. A very hazy dark amber beer with a thin tan head. The aroma is very sweet with strong notes of alcohol, over ripe fruits, and wood. The flavor is also very sweet with strong notes of over ripe fruits and prunes, with a light burn from the alcohol to accompany it.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 9 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
(Bottle 18 cl) Courtesy of aspidites. Pours a hazy, dark, orangey brown with an almost absent, off-white head. Aroma of caramel, nuts and....surprise, surprise....bourbon! This really pours thick and almost syrupy, almost flat. In the fore this appears a bit sticky and caramelish also with these saline accents that I also detected in the Brandy barrel version. But in the finish the great, oaky Bourbon notes shine through saving the whole deal. 280507
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
Pours viscous dark-brown, cloudy, with no sign of a head. Again old brandy casks, but nice ones, or even, the storage room in the distillery, smelling la part des anges . Black chocolate, but no bitterness in the aroma. Superb rich brandy taste, cake, Christmas pudding, raisins, rum-soaked sultana’s, oranges pricked with cloves on brandy. Sweet, syrupy but NOT cloying. Rich, velvety, syrupy MF, alcohol (and fusel-)burn. Ah - this one is as I like them to be. Great, luxurious, decadent. My type - like the kind of woman I cannot afford.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
Courtesy of Davecooks, another nip for my collection, thank you very much. Pours very dead with no head an no lacing just a few bubbles gather in a crescent around the glass. Color is very dark brown, very muddy looking. Aroma is strong with cigarette like or dirty smelling chocolate and boozy raisons. Some stingy ethanol burning my nostrils. Some decent malty biscuit hidden in all that. A good amount of ammonia. The hugeness of it is cool but it all just seems like this aroma is old and has emphysema, and while its still cool you’re like damn that’s nasty. Taste is thin with malty cardboard, alcohol which seems to come from bourbon. Basically, it taste like it’s about 5 years old. The carbonation is too low, the palate is thin and watery. Basically, seems like a dead and dying fish, nothing like the Brandy Barrel. My question is why dry hop with a whole lot of hops and then age it for 8 months in a barrel? I get no hops, its also not all that sweet, very low bitterness. Everything seems off balanced and mismatched. There is a lot to say but my momma told me if you got nothing nice to say...
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7.5
Bottle. Chestnut beer with no head. Bourbon aroma - smoky, vanilla, oak, and malt. Sweet malt flavor with lots of bourbon depth - smoky, vanilla, oak. Slightly oxidized and missing something. Not as rich as expected. Medium body. LIngering bourbon.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8.5
Draft at the Bistro’s 1st Barrel-aged beerFest 11/11/06; Nose of Bourbon, oak with caramel and dark friut; Brown with a small beige head; flavor of woody bourbon, caramel, with a small, barely detectable hop finish.4/29/16, almost 10 years later my last nip from my cellar. Nose is prunes, tobacco, and light hints of vanilla and bourbon. The old brew is aging gracefully but it is almost totally flat. No really apparent oxidation. Flat, clear, dark brown with only a couple bigger bubbles appearing in the center as I poured. Flavor is moderately sweet and darkly fruity.