Bluegrass Batch 1300

Brewed by Bluegrass Brewing Company
Style: Barley Wine
Louisville, Kentucky USA

@Indiana Beerfest-on tap-pours a rich tan head and amber/orange color. Aroma is citrus/pine hops (northwest), secondary medium malt medium fruit. Taste is plastic, citrus/pine hops (northwest)-bitter/copper, secondary medium malt medium fruit. Not quite right for me.

Draught at the brewpub. Pours orange rust color with thin white head. The aroma is biscuits, leaves, and malt. The flavor has assertive but tolerable hops up front, raisin, wood, dark fruit, grain, pepper, zest, and a somewhat vinous finish that fades fairly quickly. The aftertaste is increasingly spicy. As I get down the glass, sweetness begins to overtake the bitterness.

draught. We’ve got an amber brew here and the head sticks around for a couple minutes before disappearing. The aroma is thick of yeast, grapefruit, a bit of alcohol. The mouth is thick, sappy, and dry. Dough, caramel, fresh barley, mild alcohol burn, some lemons-like Halls cough drops, a bit of bark all make up the flavor. This really feels complete, but a little weird, certainly not an extraordinary barley wine.

Draft at brewpub. Poured a deep amber with an average white head that diminished slowly. Moderate hoppy citrus aroma. Medium body with a sticky texture. Medium sweet malty spice flavor with an average finish.

Pours amber with a fully receding off-white head. Aroma of hoppy grapefruit, caramel, raisins, and some estery notes of caramelized alefruit. Taste is sticky sweet and malty, but less hoppy than expected. Notes of caramelizd wort, plums, toffee, and a slight alcohol burn. Mouthfeel is heavy bodied and resinous with medium carbonation. This beer is like so many other barleywines to me, and it’s not bad. Needs a little work, but hides the 11.3% in a nice package.

Draft - amber bodied with a beige head ... I think. It was a dark room. Sweet aroma with some bubble gum coming through. I don’t get a lot of the advertised 130 IBUs. I had a very hard time distinguishing individual flavors. Some malt/wheat. A little soapy. The hops are definitely there, but maybe there are so many varieties that none really stand out. While it could probably use more time, this one is not even close to their own Bearded Pat’s Barleywine.

Draft: Golden orange. Whipped white foam slowly dwindles into nothing. Sappy nose with hints of figs and alcohol. Heavy in body. Poorly conditioned and fuzzy. Initially slick and yeasty with a disjointed mess of overripe peach skins and leafy hop bitterness. Background bubblegum yeast note lends a bit of softness, but the hop character remains peppery and dirty. Obtrusive yeast notes are out of control at this point, and rather than complementing the fruity esters, they clash with the rindy hop astringency. Possesses absolutely no malt support late in the swallow and, instead, it retains its pervasively clingy nature, as the woody hops and dirty yeast bludgeon the palate, absorbing every drop of saliva before leaving unpleasant traces of stale orange rind. Only thing positive about this is that there is very little alcohol presence in the aroma. Everything else needs serious help.