Lagunitas Gnarleywine

      Lagunitas seems to be one of the only Breweries that make massively hopped beers that are also perfectly balanced.  It's amazing how few others can pull this off.  They are turning in to one of my favorite breweries.  Gnarleywine pours out a red orange thicker than oil.  The nose has strong herb, raisin, caramel, citrus and spice. Wow, that's some strong stuff.  It has gigantic hop flavors,  really huge herbal citrus.  But wait,  there's also tons of other yummy flavors.  That classic mix of dried fruit flavors, big caramels, spice, and your herb and citrus.  Very tasty and the body on this is titanic.  Add in the nice 10.6%ABV,  and you've managed to balance out that cascade of hop,  a whopping 75 IBU's.  Full Sail managed to completely ruin Bump in the Night which much less hop.  Once again Lagunitas has made another really good beer, well worth trying and cellaring.  Well played.

Brooklyn Monster Ale

      This will be the fiftieth Winter Beer and I'll finally be done.  This year.  Next year I'll try and divide the Winter Beers into some sub sets so it will all make more sense.  This is one off the other seasonals from Brooklyn, Monster.  It pours out copper with an herb, caramel and fruit.  There's quite a bit of herbal hop here, but also a lot of alcohol, body and dried fruit that more than balances this out.  This is a classic Barleywine, nice flavors good pop, yummy alcohol.  It's good.

Victory Old Horizontal

      Victory has provided us with a Barleywine Ale for our Winter enjoyment.  Well, we'll see if it's enjoyable.  It pours out a red amber and has a very dead nose with hints of grape and herb.  As I thought from the nose it's a bit hop heavy for a barleywine.  There is strong caramels, some mocha and grape,raisin flavors.  I like a nice barleywine and it's delicious 11% ABV, but the strong herb of the hop clashes with the fruit making a flavor I do not favor. ( pathetic hack writing accomplished. )  It's quite drinkable, but it is a fail to screw up a potentially awesome beer with their stupidity.  It goes on the nice list, no screw you jerks it goes on the naughty list.

Sam Adam's Longshot Mile High Barleywine Ale

Sam Adam's has their Longshot homebrew competition every year. And this year they have packaged a six pack with three of the winning recipes. The first one I tried was mile High Barelywine ale. Now I like barleywine's because of their sweetness, complexity and ridiculous amount of alcohol, so I look forward to it. Mile High pours out a nice copper and has a dried tropical fruit nose with a hint of yeast. It tastes pretty sweet with a figgy flavor and quite a bit of hop. I don't really like this very much. It's fine and I can put it down and enjoy, but there's an off flavor here. I don't think it's over hopped, but rather the hops conflict with the fruit here leaving an unpleasant aftertaste. So far I'm not impressed.