On tap @Brasserie 4:20 (Rome). Ramato intenso, lievemente torbido, schiuma bianco sporco medio-leggera. Al naso note di caramello, frutta secca, canditi, leggero vinoso, leggera ossidazione. In bocca è dolce, con finale amaro a bilanciare, anche una lieve nota di amaretti. Corpo pieno, carbonazione medio-leggera. Niente male davvero.

Tap at 4:20, Rome-Italy. Dark and cloudy amber with chestnut skin highlights, regular and tick off-white foam. Nose: dates, under spirit cherries, red fruit. Mouth: caramel, ripoedvred fruit, alcohol is quite there. Clean and rich on the cherry side.

Poured from bottle 1/5/15 amber brown with a thin off white head and nice lacing. Aromas of dark fruit candy sugar fig and caramel. Taste is sweet caramel warm booze. Don’t know if I can drink alot of this.

Pour is a muddy river water brown with a small tan head. Aroma is a big dark fruit with some molasses sweetness and brown sugar. Flavor is a lot of sugar followed by some caramel, treacle and dark fruit with some tootsie roll sweetness. Alcohol is present but not overpowering considering this is a 11%. This is a nice, rich malty barely wine with plenty of tasty dark fruit and sugar without being overly sweet.

Bottle at home, brown amber beer, small head. Aroma is malt, caramel, dark fruit. Taste is malt, caramel, some dark fruit. Alcohol is noticeable. quite nice.

Refrigerated 12 oz brown bottle poured into a snifter. Hazy Amber with no head. Aroma is caramel malt, medium body, low carbonation, and no lacing. Taste is caramel malt.

Bottle from Fontana in Sint-Niklaas (to my utmost surprise). Light gushing but slow enough to remain manageable. Thin to medium, moussy, egg-white head with good retention on the edges and leaving thin patches of foam in the middle, colour is a deep ruby copper with a haze of yeast bits divided throughout. Strong aroma of raisins soaked in brown rum, lots of caramel, chestnut, candied cherry, raw red cabbage, orange liqueur, cognac, hints of pipe tobacco, dried banana, raw brown sugar, marzipan, roasted peanuts, tea leaves, marmelade, dry tree leaves, honeyed pork chops, some oxidized sherry, ’haemoglobin’ iron. Candied sweet onset, sugared cherries, raisins, fig and dry banana paired with a deep blackberry sourishness, softish carbo, meaty accents, smooth, thick and oily body based on layers of caramelly, nutty and toasted malts with a kind of subtle chocolatey touch, warming alcohol effect already noticeable in the middle but growing in the end to the point of becoming a bit wry and tiring, liqueurish and whisky-like, with a dash of spicy hops all the way at the back. Alcohol and bittersweet, caramelly malts dominate after swallowing, with an addition of almost cloying, burnt sugar. I guess that style-wise, this holds the middle between American barley wine and English barley wine: it has the rich, resinous, smooth malt sweetness of the latter but still the hop bitterness of the first, albeit in a restrained kind of way, so that it tilts more towards the English substyle, as claimed by the brewery. Oxidation is often a good thing in barley wines but in this case it did not do this beer much good, becoming a bit obnoxious in the end. A barley wine of rather thin and straightforward structure, with the alcohol not being nearly as masked as cleverly as it could have been and lacking a bit in complexity - this clearly underachieves for the demanding style it claims itself to be. In all, an enjoyable malt sweet beer still, slow sipper for sure, but nevertheless too bad for the alcohol, which I have seen better hidden in barley wines of 3-4% stronger than this one.