Dominion Millennium

Brewed by Coastal Brewing Company
Style: Barley Wine
Annapolis, Maryland USA

12oz bottle from Rodman’s. Pours a transparent orange with a thin, fast fading white head. Low carbonation level. Aroma is sticky hops, sticky fruits, sticky caramel sugars. Flavor has more sticky fruits, apples, oranges, pears, grass, booze, rum. Medium mouthfeel, 11.4% hides well. Doubt this needs much aging, it’s ready to drink now.

For a barley-wine, this struck me as being no better than average. There are barley-wines that are potent in their similarity to wine or spirits, with an alcohol astringency and slight sourness...and then there are barley-wines that are tremendously hoppy. And then there’s this barley-wine. It’s just kind of there. Appearance and mouthfeel are pleasant, but this has to be the least flavorful beer of this style, for good or bad, that I’ve ever had. It pours an orange ambrosia color, with so little head that I thought it would be very flat. However, mouthfeel was fairly complex and pleasant. But aroma and flavor were a bit of a let-down, or perhaps just a non-issue. Both were very faint. I detected some malt backbone and a whiff of hops, but this struck me as a beer that had lost its bite since packaging. If you’re hanging onto a bottle of this for cellaring, I’d advise you to drink it now. This ber is so mellow, so mild-mannered, so (if I dare say) boring, that I can’t imagine letting it mellow some more. I picked this up during a recent visit to the DC area from Norm’s Beer & Wine in Vienna, VA. The bottle informed me that it was packaged on 4 April 007, and the label told me it would lay down for "several years."

Bottled 16 Feb 2006. Clear golden color with a small off white head. Aroma of orange and malt with a citrus bitter finish.

Bottle. Pours cloudy amberish red with a dusting of a head. Looks thick and a bit cloudy. Aromas of deep fruitiness and lots and lots of malts. Highly fruited malt flavor with a zip and a tangy aftertaste, but not metallic (which is nice). Alcohol isn’t well masked, but it defitely doesn’t taste like 10+%. A bit too sweet for me to want to drink on a regular basis, but once in awhile is ok.

good solid barleywine. amber color with a tan head. sweet caramel aroma that hinted at alcohol. clean malty taste with a bready flavor. lot of caramel and butterscotch inb this. hides the alcohol well. biug hops in the finish balance out the malts.

Very good, just prepared to be silently hammered! Didn’t even know the alcohol until after I finished. Some dark fruit and a touch of honey helps you to sip away and not worry about the %. Well balanced and delightful.

Lots of malt and alcohol dominate the aroma.Pours a deep copper/brown with a medium off white head.Big malt flavor along with hints of alcohol and some hops in the flavor.Full mouthfeel with a lot of alcohol in the finish.

1.16.07 Split bottle with AdamSkillin. Jan 03 vintage. At 4 years old this barleywine is everything a bw should be: rich in taste with a enough alcohol for relaxation. Get this, it’s fantastic.