Goose Island Batch 2000 Wheatmiser

Formerly brewed at Goose Island Beer Company
Style: Barley Wine
Chicago, Illinois USA

On tap @ Clybourn: Pours a clear copper color with a white head. Aroma, some fruits, wheat, caramel and alcohol. Flavor, caramel, wheat, boozy fruits, some heat to it. And a bit of oak. This stuff was pretty good.

RBSG 2007. I know I drank this right next to who brought it, but I can not for the life of me remember who you are. Thank you much! Growler. Copper color with no head. Strong aroma of wheat and alcohol. Very malty and wheaty flavor with lots of oak and yeast to finish. Very nice.

Poured into a snifter, this has a very dark copper body with a bubbly ecru head. It has a sharp aroma of stoned fruits, alcohol, toffee, and a light earthy/nutty bitterness. This is thick, smooth, peppery, and hot on the tongue. The flacor echoes the nose, the bitterness building up as the drinking goes on, balancing the malty, fruity sweetness. The finish is sticky sweet with a hoppy bitterness and a low alcohol burn. This would age well.

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Draft sampler at Clybourn. Deep barleywine red/brown color. Last of four beer samples, but it still has some foam on top. Thich Bigfoot type taste, with plums, brandy and sweetness, than as intense a hop note as this batch of malt will allow.

Chicago trip. Monday 14:17. On tap at Clybourn. Dark copper. Lite head. Strong rich spice and alcohol nose. Nice rich thick spice alcohol body and flavour.

crazy. didn’t see as much wheat in it as i was expecting, almost was gonna say it was translucent but there is a tiny bit of opacity. it’s pretty much on the dark and reddish side of light brown with minimal head. and served way too cold, but luckily it was way too big to not drink slowly. aroma had nuts and honey and lots of apples and raisins. one of the more complex beers i’ve had since probably the de dolles some months ago. flavor matched in suit with an interesting honeyed sweet flavor in the first half of the malt, reminding me somewhat of a mead i had recently. once my friend reminded me this is classified as a barleywine i was able to gain a more beer-like perspective and agreed it was a barleywine. what i said, though, stands. this is honeyed and an extreme example of beer. in what direction i have a hard time saying. i picked out inexplicable "belgianness" in it but i couldn’t produce an exact label. certainly wasn’t candi sugar. wasn’t yeasty or hayish. obviously no bret. but it was complex. made me wonder what the 2 brothers wheat wine tastes like. GOOD.

At GI Clybourn. I’m a big fan of wheatwines, and I’m glad to see GI explore the terrain. This improved significantly as it warmed up, revealing notes of hay, butterscotch, peach and sweet cherry. The flavors are toward the milder end of the spectrum, as opposed to its evil twin Old Abberation, which I had beside it. There’s certainly more sweetness here than hops, but that’s what I’m looking for in a wheatwine. Nice work.

On tap at GI Clybourn. Pours a dark amber red with a off white head and ice cold. The nose is pretty nice on here carmelized malts red fruits, biscuity. I really enjoy the flavor on this at first carmelized, candied, brown sugar, toffee, bourbon, and as I list all of that ... you see the sweetness isn’t balanced out with the hints of biscuit and wheat. The bitterness is barely noticable some hop harshness on the back of the throat accompanied by a little alcohol heat. Especially as this goes on whew the sweeteness is too much. I throw this back to get on to the smoked maibock.