Nonniversaire - Barrel 350 - The Boozy Touch 2020
HopSaSam in Oudenaarde, East Flanders, Belgium 🇧🇪
Barley Wine - Barley Special|
Score
7.47
|
|
Sign up to add a tick or review
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 9 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 9
12 September 2024. At 1ste Kwatrechts Bierfestival. Cheers to Anke, Tim and the GBV crew!
Side by side with Barrel 351. No head. Tawny port, candied date, prune, dark honey. Very sweet date, fig, dark honey, treacle. Warming port- & calvados-like alcohol. Full body, syrupy. Just a tad more complex, perhaps, and actually less boozy than expected (but still a decent amount of alcohol, carried by the malt profile). Excellent!
Appearance - 8 | Aroma - 8.5 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 8
Special and limited Nonniversaire edition from 2020, differing from the earlier calvados barrel aged version in a much longer maturation on the barrels (no less than three years!) and released after an additional year of maturation in the bottle. Pale greyish beige, irregular, large-bubbled and loosely knit head quickly dissolving into little more than a ring of bubbles around the edge (and eventually nothing at all); misty dark chocolate brown robe with wine red glow and some dark protein bits at the bottom. Dense bouquet of Belgian chocolates, toffee, lots of wood (old furniture), sirop de Liège, madera, fig compote, tawny port and indeed a whiff of calvados (unsurprisingly - but much more subtle than expected based on the premise of this beer), hazelnut paste, Nutella, walnut liqueur from the Périgord, ripe pear, blackberry coulis, dates, solventy notes (varnish, fresh paint) but not so strong that they annoy me. Equally dense onset, a concentrate of candied figs, dates, raisins, blackberry jam and pear syrup, all but flat carbonation with very thick, viscous, syrupy mouthfeel (even for a barleywine of this strength); after all this dark, candied fruitiness, covered under a layer of muscovado sugar sweetness, a deep, multi-layered maltiness unfolds, very hazelnutty in its core but also pecan-nutty and very toffeeish, as if drinking a liquid Belgian 'praline', especially when the calvados comes in and warms everything up, adding an evidently (cooked) apple-like fruitiness and solventy aspects ('higher' alcohols), all tied together by a profound, vanilla-scenting, tannic woodiness which matches well with both the praline-like sweetness, the syrupy toffee core and the nutty aspects of the malts. Hops provide no substantial role but act 'behind the scenes' as structurally important elements - remove them and the whole would definitely become unbearably sweet. Sweet it is, but the wood, as said, counters this syrupy sweetness - and even more than previous versions in this astounding series, comes to the foreground in an almost oak furniture-like way, which I can highly appreciate in this kind of beers. A liquid 'bonbon', intense, concentrated and noble, walnut liqueur and port sauce come to mind more easily than 'beer' in this case. What a gem - but obviously one to be sipped from a small liqueur glass, as a beery 'digestif'. I bet every seasoned Anglo-Saxon barleywine lover would be impressed by this 'tour de force'.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 8 | Flavor - 8 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 8
10/IX/22 - 50cl bottle @ Belgian Beer Geek Gathering (Gent), BB: +15Y, bottled: XI/2020 (2022-1150) Thanks to Bierridder for sharing the bottle!
Clear to a little cloudy brown beer, no head. Aroma: nice, a bit oxidized, lots of calvados, some soy sauce, boozy, vanilla notes, aged and oxidized beer. MF: soft to no carbon, medium to full body. Taste: very sugary, boozy, alcohol, calvados, more alcohol that burns the throat, sugary, dried fruits, caramel. Aftertaste: sugary, lots of alcohol, pretty boozy, calvados, more alcohol, sugary, oxidized, dried fruits, raisins.
Appearance - 7 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 7.5 | Texture - 7 | Overall - 7.5
50cl bottle at Belgian Beergeeks/Brewver summer tasting at Tim's house. Thanks Siegfried.
Bottled 11/2020, BB 11/2035.
Cuivre, pas de col.
Arôme au nez boozy, belles notes de Calvados avec un léger rétro-nasal de sucre résiduel - garde une bonne base de malts.
Palais est assez plat en bouche, peu d'effervescence qui vient accentuer le caractère boozy. Calvados apporte une belle pointe de fraicheur, retrait sur le côté barley wine, caramel, léger grillé et qcq notes de fruits secs.
