22 oz. bottle at Brouwer's Cafe, split with Matts_Property, pours dark red with a small tan head. Wonderful aromatics of intense oak, vanilla, complex dark fruits and heaps of caramel - balanced sweetness. Flavour is amazingly well-rounded - caramel, dark fruits - with the sweetness counteracted by oak and vanilla notes. All flavours compliment one another without taking each other out at all. ABV is hardly noticeable at 13.4%, but leaves a wonderful warming effect. Absolutely superb barley wine.

Bottle purchased from Kingdom Liquors, Brandon, FLSampled on February 26, 2011Hazy to cloudy dark brown color, orange head. Sweet, malty, toffee, fruit cake, alcohol scent, also banana. Smooth, sweet, salty, alcohol taste. Smooth mouthfeel, medium high bitterness.

Bottle. 2010 version. Among the very best barleywines that I’ve tried. This is sit-down-and-take-a-moment good, and I can imagine it getting better with age. The pour is clear ruby with a tiny head. It’s fairly viscous, though not quite as much as you might expect from a 14% abv beer. All sorts of flavors come out in the aroma and taste. There’s an enormous English caramel/toffee malt flavor marbled with a ton of fruitiness. Lots of raisins, plums, peaches, dates and cherries. On top of that, there are great flavors of vanilla, mint, oak, leather and subtle barrel notes. There’s just a touch of hop bitterness in the finish to pull it back from cloying territory. This is a deeply flavored beer that oozes luxury and craftsmanship. Mouthfeel is full and smooth. It coats the mouth pleasantly, but I’ve had lots of stickier, boozier beers that aren’t nearly the size of this one. Midnight Sun knows their stuff and really hit one out of the park with this beer. I might be scoring this a bit low in anticipation of trying an aged bottle in a few years.

Deep dark brown coloured body with a cola coloured glow and a nice sized dense, tan head that fades relatively quickly. Great aroma of pit fruits, malt, nuts, earth and a touch of oak and pine. Full-bodied; Deep pungent alcohol and fruit flavours blend well with the rich maltiness and a bit of hop bitterness at the end. Aftertaste shows a lot of potent alcohol flavours, a ton of pit fruits, some oak and leather notes and a touch of deep spices. Overall, this one is pretty good, a nice bit of ageing, and a great barleywine. My only complaint is that it’s too big of a bottle - but all of my Midnight Sun beers are 65 cL! I sampled this 65 cL bottle purchased from Brown Jug in Anchorage, Alaska on 23-June-2010, sampled at home in Washington on 27-November-2010.