One of the recent variations on this wonderful theme, many thanks to Craftmember for sharing the bottle. Medium thick but slowly opening, pale greyish beige, lightly lacing head over a hazy, deep and warm coppery bronze beer. Stunningly rich and seductive bouquet of single malt whisky, cocoa dust, aged sherry, lots of vanilla-scented wet oak wood, ripe nectarines, wet peat, plum jam, pear brandy, cigar tobacco, candied cherries, fig compote, caramel sauce, port. Sweet onset, candied figs and dried plums with a ripe blue grape-like sourish touch, softish carbonation in a very full, creamy, oily, bit resinous mouthfeel. Thick layer of generous caramelly maltiness forms the core of this beer, developing chocolatey edges in the end, where its refined and condensed sweetness is dried by a strong but elegantly rustic wooden effect, lovely old barrel tannins combined with a deep, warming afterglow of soothing but nowhere harshly burning whisky, very expressive and ‘real’ but blending well with the basic beer, intense and refined at the same time with gentle retronasal peaty notes and late, dim, earthy hop bitterishness. I have not been able to keep track of all of Kees’ barrel aged beers in this vast project but I had a number of them and this one so far is perhaps the greatest of them all to me, even if the competition is stiff. Sheer genius, absolute beauty and one I’d love to meet again at an older age (the beer, that is). Very motivating to get my hands on more of these Kees barrel aged beers.

Bottle. Color: Copper, very thin beige head. Aroma: Boozy, notes of caramel. Taste: Starting boozy, whiskey, nice notes of vanilla. Medium sweet notes of sugar and caramel. Hints of herbs, oak and light hints of smoke. Lightly, not disturbing, hints of (green) apples. Get a bit less boozy after a while. Nice balance between the different tastes of the Barley Wine and the Craigellachi. Overall a nice BA Barley WIne.