Gold Label (formerly Whitbread)

Can @ pre-GBBF shindig, August 2009. There was a time when you could find nip bottles of this sort of "Barley Wine" in most British pubs but those days are gone and there are very few specimens left. Not really much like anything anyone would call a barley wine these days. More in common with a malt liquor really. Gold, sweet and a little hot, but not as horrible as I expected. I’m not sure what the market for this beer is these days but I’m kind of glad that they are still making it, even if it is not in the top rank of beer experiences.

Can 33cl.
Clear medium yellow orange color with a average to large, frothy, good lacing, mostly lasting, off-white head. Aroma is moderate malty, sweet malt, alcohol. Flavor is moderate to light heavy sweet with a average to long duration. Body is medium, texture is oily to watery, carbonation is soft. [20090731]

Golden with a small white head. Sweet aroma with alcohol, maize and apple peel. Sweet caramel flavour with alcohol

Canned. Amber colour, not much head. Aroma is alcohol, grains, malts and some horror. Falvou is fruity, sweet malts, some grains and very caramelly strange.

Can. Medium head with medium duration. Color is amber. Aroma and taste are sweet fruits, caramel and alcohol. Not the best of barleywines.

A ghetto ass gold can. Drank it outta a huge wine glass- but a paper bag on skid row wouldda been ok too.I got a fat head spin just sniffin ’ the peach esters and booze flying around the aroma.Talk about fat maltiness.Woah its heavy and sweet .Buttery and a little salty. Lettme say this beer is a "homeless juice-head" drink. But its pretty nice.

Bottle, small at Royal Exhange, London. The pub was very good, but the barleywine was a little boring and tasteless. Cloying. Try any other barleywine.

8% can, sampled sober. Big mistake. Huge blossoming head over red amber fizz. Something nauseating about the aroma; harsh high alcohol solvent, bilious industrial cider and almond notes mingled with strawberry and cream Campino sweets, Wethers, Battenberg, cherry palinka and pastry. Just doesn’t sniff like beer, or right. Dab of redeeming cakemix as it warms, but I can barely summon the interest to rummage further in the sickbowl...doing so reveals caramel, grass, flying saucers and nectarine chunks. Astringent papery chemical finish for dessert. Sticks around like a licked envelope. Butter sucked out of cardboard dunked in Gouden Carolus. I just can’t do it to myself.