Flying Dog Horn Dog Barley Wine

Brewed by Flying Dog Brewery
Style: Barley Wine
Frederick, Maryland USA

Strong malty aroma. Deep brown/red appearance. Malty flavor is citrus undertones. Very smooth with poor bitter finish. High quality.

Bottle at Jerry’s. Dark brown with decent, fleeting tan head / Sweet, syrupy, malty nose of dried fruit and leather / Full body, malty & syrupy, with mellow carbonation and a touch of hops on the good finish / Flavors of raisins, caramel, nuts, leather, coffee, apricots, and oak / Very nice.

12 oz. bottle, 2007 vintage. Bonus in a trade with the awesome Acknud. Pours a hazy deep muddy brown color with ruby undertones. Thin tan head with no lace. Nose is mild pine tree with sweet maltyness. Nice thick oily mouthfeel. Alcohol soaked candy flavor. Cherries, plums, with hops. Hoppy, slightly bitter finish.

Red brown colour. Large bubbled nose. Some alcohol in the taste. Nice hoppiness in the taste. Suitable aftertaste of hops. Some piney taste. Maybe too sweat.

Bottle. Pourd redish in color with a small tan head. Sweet malty aroma. Full bodied. Strong flavors of dark fruit, finishing with light hops.

(Bottled, 2007 vintage) Slightly hazy, deep ruby red with a smallish, tanned head, and lots of floating yeast. Lots of vinous, slightly sweet malt with dried fruit. Strongly toffee-malty, mildly roasty, very grainy flavor with some vinous berries. Quite full-bodied and thick palate with lowish carbonation. A full and thick barley wine with not too much sweetness, and less hops than expected.

Opening with a faint hiss, the bottle dispenses its murky, blood red contents, devoid of any carboantion or foam. Aromas progress from toasty, molasses-y malt to intense fruit… concentrated pear, watermelon, and fig… then incense, and an alcohol assault like a swarm of bees. The beer tastes overly sweet, syrupy and plummy, and finishes with an unpleasant tension between black coffee and bubblegum flavors. It is perhaps the sweetest barley-based libation I’ve tasted. An equally ambiguous aftertaste flaunts intense anise, roasty/woody, and yeasty/cantaloupe characters… plus a blossoming ethanol nova. Sticky, lead-heavy heft ensures maximum flavor hangtime. Horn Dog takes high gravity beer to unpleasant excess… any carbonation at all would have resulted in a palatable quadrupel; otherwise, I would consider it an ice cream topping.

Bottle, 2007 vintage. It pours a nice ruby body, clear but hard to see through, with a minimal biege head. More just a broad ring of bubbles actually. When pouring, it’s not hard to detect it’s a barley wine, one can sense that it’s going to be a warming, sweet and hoppy beer. When sticking my nose into the glass, it sends out aromas of sweetish maltyness, dried fruits and dark berries, a cute little licorice scent, some hops, but not very much, and there’s a touch of bread too. In the mouth, the alcohol is very present, but in a pleasant way, due to the sticky sweetness? It has some syrupy qualities in the mouth. There’s also dried fruits and some berries, and a little bitterness from the hops, but it’s far from dominating. Some notes of pine and citrus though. A bready, roasted flavor and some licorice is also found, but that’s just in the background. It finishes rather sweet and malty, with the alcohol warming for a long time, suiting this cold May evening very well. Even though I like my barley wines low on hops, a little bit more wouldn’t hurt. But no problem, the beer works just fine, and gave me a nice half an hour of joy. Be sure not to serve it too cold, it needs some temperature to open up(080520)