Cosmic Syzygy
Temporal Artisan Ales in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 🇨🇦
Brewed at/by: Container BrewingBarley Wine - Barley Regular
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Score
7.02
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Barleywine aged in Caribbean rum barrel, brewed with a double mash and boiled for 8 hours to achieve intense caramelization.
The base for this beer is a big English-style barleywine. It was brewed with a double mash, mainly imported floor-malted Maris Otter, but bolstered with some incredible specialty malts from @meccagrade. Their "Opal" malts provide notes of toasted graham, almond roca, and mild cocoa. The lengthy 8 hour boil helped to concentrate and intensify this amazing malt character, leading to a powerful carmel-forward wort. A hefty kettle dose of Pahto™ hops imparts a balancing bitterness to the beer, and age has mellowed this bitterness to just the right spot.
The 14% abv provides a warmth to each sip without being overpowering. It's really smooth, no fusel or harsh alcohols.
For this release I chose to bottle up a single Caribbean rum barrel: an old, weathered cask from Appleton's. It held rum in Jamaica for at least 12 years! Before filling, this barrel had beautiful aromas of aged rum - dark brown sugar, orange zest, baking spice, and toffee.
I wanted to introduce these beers in their purest form, so along with Event Horizon, this is a single-cask offering. No added adjuncts, no blending... yet. Just beautiful caramel, intense complexity, and captivating barrel character. This is what barleywine should be.
I'm trying to take you, the reader and likely drinker, on a journey with these beers. This is just the beginning of the first chapter. Barleywine is life. You'll understand the moment it hits your tongue.
The base for this beer is a big English-style barleywine. It was brewed with a double mash, mainly imported floor-malted Maris Otter, but bolstered with some incredible specialty malts from @meccagrade. Their "Opal" malts provide notes of toasted graham, almond roca, and mild cocoa. The lengthy 8 hour boil helped to concentrate and intensify this amazing malt character, leading to a powerful carmel-forward wort. A hefty kettle dose of Pahto™ hops imparts a balancing bitterness to the beer, and age has mellowed this bitterness to just the right spot.
The 14% abv provides a warmth to each sip without being overpowering. It's really smooth, no fusel or harsh alcohols.
For this release I chose to bottle up a single Caribbean rum barrel: an old, weathered cask from Appleton's. It held rum in Jamaica for at least 12 years! Before filling, this barrel had beautiful aromas of aged rum - dark brown sugar, orange zest, baking spice, and toffee.
I wanted to introduce these beers in their purest form, so along with Event Horizon, this is a single-cask offering. No added adjuncts, no blending... yet. Just beautiful caramel, intense complexity, and captivating barrel character. This is what barleywine should be.
I'm trying to take you, the reader and likely drinker, on a journey with these beers. This is just the beginning of the first chapter. Barleywine is life. You'll understand the moment it hits your tongue.
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6/10
Boozy, plums, woody sticky, toffee, garlic
Tried
from Bottle
on 09 May 2023
at 19:53
7/10
Hapukas mõru linnaseline leivane magus vaadine vanilje alks. Ok vaat jookseb üle.
Tried
from Bottle
on 09 May 2023
at 19:50
6.4/10
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Appearance 6
Aroma 6
Flavor 7
Texture 6
Overall 6.5
Bottle. Dark brown. Not much head. In fact, it pours pretty flat. Sort of a buttery, caramelly type of aroma...wishing for richer sugars or a more pronounced rum character. On the palate, it's definitely richer. Still a fair bit of fruity acidity, but that can work in a barley wine. My first instinct is to think this clashes in a rum-aged BW, but of course my bias is that my go-to rum is El Dorado, which gets a molasses boost for extra richness and as such isn't the most realistic baseline for what a rum-ish beverage should taste like. Anyway, this doesn't feel super cohesive. Alcohol comes on fairly strong in the finish, and yeah I can't get past the idea that the rum character and the rich fruitiness of the bw don't go together at all.
Tried
from Bottle
on 06 Aug 2022
at 05:26
7/10
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Appearance 8
Aroma 7
Flavor 7
Texture 6
Overall 7
330mL bottle, pours a dark mahogany with a tiny beige head. Aroma is dominated by the rum barrels upfront, followed by vanilla and a touch of toffee. Flavour is loaded with rum barrels, almost a tart dark fruit character, and alcohol. Lots of rum, booze and a bit of perfume. Not the most elegant or refined BA barleywine but decent enough.
Tried
from Bottle
on 25 Jun 2022
at 23:19
8.1/10
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Appearance 8
Aroma 8
Flavor 8
Texture 8
Overall 8.5
Bottle, courtesy of Sergey
Dark mahogany colour. Mild aroma of malt, and alcohol, and light vanilla. Full bodied, moderately sweet; good malt base, with biscuity notes; if I think of it as an English Barley Wine, it has some more caramel, burnt sugars, and less malt, toffee; strong, warming alcohol, but it's well integrated, not boozy; notes of coconut and vanilla; it gets a bit less sticky in the finish.
Excellent.
Dark mahogany colour. Mild aroma of malt, and alcohol, and light vanilla. Full bodied, moderately sweet; good malt base, with biscuity notes; if I think of it as an English Barley Wine, it has some more caramel, burnt sugars, and less malt, toffee; strong, warming alcohol, but it's well integrated, not boozy; notes of coconut and vanilla; it gets a bit less sticky in the finish.
Excellent.
Tried
from Bottle
on 01 May 2022
at 06:40
7/10
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Appearance 6
Aroma 8
Flavor 7
Texture 6
Overall 7
330ml on Alex's porch. Appearance: brown with a weak beige head. Aroma: malty, dark fruits, moderately sweet, barrel. Taste: quite sweet, dark fruits, weird to me barrel(?) notes, finishes with some hoppy(?) bitterness and a bit of booze. Overall: not very impressed, unfortunately.
Tried
on 24 Apr 2022
at 20:35
7.9/10
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Appearance 7
Aroma 7.5
Flavor 8.5
Texture 8
Overall 8
330 ml bottle.
Latest May 1/26
Pours a dark brown with little head. Aromas of oaky um, caramel, dried dark fruit and toasted malts. Flavors of fruity rum, soft oak, rich sweet caramel, dried fruit and toasty malts. Aging nicely.
7/7.5/8.5/8/8
Original Apr 10/22.
Pours a dark brown with light head. Aromas of caramel, woody rum, raisins, biscuity malts and a bit of phenols. Flavors of sweet rum, toffee, candi sugar, raisin bread and bittering hops. Dry finish with some alcohol flavors, but not giving away too much of the 14% ABV. Solid Barley Wine. Will be neat to see how this ages.
8/8/8/8/8
Latest May 1/26
Pours a dark brown with little head. Aromas of oaky um, caramel, dried dark fruit and toasted malts. Flavors of fruity rum, soft oak, rich sweet caramel, dried fruit and toasty malts. Aging nicely.
7/7.5/8.5/8/8
Original Apr 10/22.
Pours a dark brown with light head. Aromas of caramel, woody rum, raisins, biscuity malts and a bit of phenols. Flavors of sweet rum, toffee, candi sugar, raisin bread and bittering hops. Dry finish with some alcohol flavors, but not giving away too much of the 14% ABV. Solid Barley Wine. Will be neat to see how this ages.
8/8/8/8/8
Tried
from Bottle
on 11 Apr 2022
at 00:52
7.8/10
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Appearance 6
Aroma 8
Flavor 8
Texture 8
Overall 8
Re-rate: poured from 330mL bottle shared with Marduk, FatPhill (+Anna), and Martjoobolut. Same as before, but just past its peak, back down to 3.9. July 30, 2022 (8/3/8/4/17=4.0): Poured from 330mL bottle (tasting with Jean-Francois & Derek). Huge dark dried fruits, toffee, hint of rum and coconut. Booze has settled nicely compared to when I had it fresh on tap. April 10, 2022 (8/3/8/4/16=3.9): Poured from the tap. Dark brown with minimal beige head. Lots of dark dried fruits, touch of coconut from the rum, and a hint of ethanol heat. Booze doesn’t linger though which is nice. Pretty good, but maybe needs some time to settle. Will re-rate from the bottle down the road.
Tried
from Bottle
on 10 Apr 2022
at 21:01