Beer Valley Highway To Ale Barley Wine

Brewed by Beer Valley Brewing Company
Style: Barley Wine
Ontario, Oregon USA

Hazy orange with a trace of white head. Aroma is like a spiced orange soda, with piney IPA qualities. The taste again is very much like the aroma, and strikes me more as an IIPA than a bw, with its bittersweet pithy finish. $8/22oz

(22 oz. bottle) Pours a clear amber body with a medium off-white head and descent lacing. Aroma of caramel, nuts, pine, and herbs. Flavor of nuts, hops (citrus, pine), caramel, fruitiness, and toasted malt with a bitter finish.

22oz. Bottle: Aroma of hops, toasted malts, resin, alcohol, light grapefruit, light malt, pine, citrus, biscuit, and some miscellaneous fruit. Poured amber/orange with a hint of copper in color and a tiny, creamy, rocky tan head that lasted throughout as a film on top of the beer. Hazy. Sparkling. Very good lacing. Flavor is light to medium sweet and lightly bitter. Tastes of hops, toasted malts, resin, light citrus, caramel, light pine, and slight grapefruit. Medium body. Thin, slightly dry, slightly sticky texture. Average carbonation. Bitter, sweet, hop and caramel finish. 10.5%ABV is well hidden.

Bottle from South Bay Drugs and Liquor. Poured a dark amber with a dense, off white head. Some lacing. Aroma was fruity, sweet and caramelly with some earthy and musty tones. Flavor was very English in style with toffee and caramel predominating over a fairly mellow hopping. Some earthiness and nothing more than a solid flavor. Not overly great. Palate was pretty solid.

22oz Bottle from last year. Pours out a nice amber topped with a cream head. Aroma of hops and caramel on this one. The hops have dropped a little but plenty still around. The sweet caramel and good malts fight on.

Bottle and served in snifter: Clean coppery hue with a lasting frothy off-white head and produced very good lacing upon the glass. The nose detects plenty of grassy, resiny and catty hop esters along with caramel and toasted malts, grapefruit and star fruit esters, and a hint of metal shavings. The taste is hoppy and citric at first before a nice dose of sweeter malt come about. Hop spice and a hint of medicinal tones round out the finish. The mouth feel is aggressive and lively, actually the ABV is well hidden all things considered. Very much in keeping with the more hop forward barleywines of the west coast. Solid and quite drinkable beer.

A tasty beer overall but this is not at all like the barleywines that I’m used to. More like a boozed-up IPA due to its strong hoppiness, both in flavor and in finish. I expected something a little more sugary, gooey. Nevertheless a very good brew and watch out for the booze creeping up on you, as the 10 1/2% is not at all apparent.

bottle thanks to bu11zeye, amber in color with a caramel, fruity nose, flavor is sour with a buttery caramel flavor, finishes a bit thin