Anchor Old Foghorn Ale

Brewed by Anchor Brewing Company
Style: Barley Wine
San Francisco, California USA

Pours a pretty burgundy-brown with a creamy beige head that reduces to a thin cap. Quite pretty. The nose is all about big malty goodness with supporting notes of plum, raisin and brown sugar. Medium to full-bodied and oily with a touch of lightly prickly carbonation and a hint of alcohol at the finish. The flavor is a blend of brown sugar, raisin and light alcohol. A well-made and tasty barley wine; another solid brew from the folks at Anchor Brewing.

12 oz (6AM date stamp?). Clear, dark copper-brown with ruby highlights. Small head tries to last. Aroma is sweet toffee-caramel with slight sherry. Flavor is strong sherry, with some hints of dark fruit, caramel, and grassy herbs. Finish has some nice bittering herb and woody notes. Palate is medium bodied and kind of fizzy-airy. Nice balance between malt and hops, but the alcohol was a bit overpowering for 9%. A bit disappointing.

280ml? bottle (Pikkulintu, Helsinki) Rich ruby, no head. Malt loaf, dark fruits, treacly figs and dates. And that’s just the aroma. Taste follows, but with a strong burnt malty underrent. Heavenly.

In short: Basic clean and very caramelized barley-wine. Good beer, weak relative to the style.
How: Bottle, 6 months old
The look: Clear amber body with a small beige head
In long: Lots and lots of caramel. Also quite a bit of toffee. And then some more caramel. A bit too sweet (candy sweet). I can feel the hops and with more of them this could be quite good. A bit of pine-tree and tree barks. I also got a pleasant earthy feeling from the beer. As the beer warmed up it started to develop some red fruits (cranberries?) flavours. Mouthfeel is overall pleasantly creamy and carbonation is appropriately medium. Not bad at all really although a bit too unbalanced-sweet for me. Cheap and easily available, this is an entry-level barley wine that can be found just about everywhere. This is a poor man’s Barley Wine, figuratively speaking and literally speaking.

Cloudy red-amber with fair, creamy tan head / Alcohol and raisin nose / Syrupy, malty body with decent but hot finish / Sweet, simple toffee and raisin flavors / Mediocre.

Bottle from 2004. Easy drinking, but nothing special. I think I’m over the barley wine craze of a few years back. PS: Anchor, please step into the 21st Century and brew a new beer.

Great BW here. Perfect balance of sweet and hops. Nice bit of alcohol bite too, this one goes down very easy.

Bottled. Sweetshop sweepings aroma, decapitated head, candied scratchings that threaten to cloy before an old malt struggles through. Raisin edges left on the tounge. More than barely a barley wine but not as alcofrolicly warming as I’d like.