Green Flash Barleywine

Brewed by Green Flash Brewing Co.
Style: Barley Wine
Vista, California USA

Pours a nice clear reddish amber. Aroma is very hoppy. Flavor is full of rich, chewy malts and lots of hops. Alcohol is moderate. This is more like a DIPA with dark food coloring. Nonetheless, very tasty.

Bottle, bought @ Høkeren, Cph.
Pours clear coppery red with a big frothy yellowish head. Super duration and nice lacing. Aroma is deeply fruity hoppy with some fat toffee thickness behind it. Pine and grapefruit dominates. Lowish carbonation with a great, oily mouthfeel. Flavour is well vinious, lots of chewy caramel malts. Fine, but rather powerful bitterness. Grassy, pine and lightly fruity.

With apologies to whomever gave me the generous pour - It poured a hazy brown body nearly bereft of head. It smelled of PNW hops with a caramelly sweetness and a touch of earthiness. In the flavor, it begins with a solid caramel sweetness coupled with some alcohol, only to be overwhelmed by bitter tastes of grapefruit, zest of lemon, a pine sprig or two, and some soil. Bitter finish with a low alcohol burn. Not bad at all.

<font size=-4><a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/events-detail.asp?eve Lord Day 2008 at Three Floyds, Munster, IN, 4/26/2008.<font size=-1>

On tap at Blind Tiger in NYC. Pours very murky dark bronze with an off-white head. The aroma is very hopped up with dark citrus, but there is a very hefty thick malt background right behind it. The body is fairly thick and chewy with soft gentle carbonation. The flavor starts with thick woody / grapefruit hoppiness, and thick toasty caramel malt. The finish is cloying without the sweetness and a huge amount of hop resin coating the mouth. Very nice barleywine.

22 oz bottle, shared. Pours a cloudy light brown with a head that started out thick and fluffy but quickly dissipated to next-to-nothing. Aroma is caramel, toffee, slight chocolate, and citrus notes. Taste is the same, with a hoppiness that’s usually characteristic of a West Coast IPA. Remains sweet and smooth throughout, and is a very solid beer. It’s not in the same league as some of my favorite barleywines, but I enjoyed it.

22 oz. bottle, 2008 release, short blurb in the center of the label, sampled in a snifter glass. L: Cloudy appearance, light chocolate color with some orangey golden hues towards the bottom of the snifter glass. Inch high pale tan head of fluffy foam that quickly sank into a thin sudsy skim, not enough sticky lace to really comment on, mainly just a few splotchy mini-dots. S: The first smells I noticed was caramel toffee malts, candied oranges and white grapefruit pulp. Further whiffs bring out aromas of oily pine, leafy herbs with a touch of green wood, and sour citric estery alcohol. As it warms, a nice malt chocolaty scent wafts up to the nose. F&T: Light feeling moderate body with a mild citric acidity, softly crisp and creamy in the finish. In this young barleywine the hops are on top with a supple underlining maltiness. Plenty of hops tastes without much bitterness, the hops are oily slick and sap sticky as oppose to being overly bitter. Oranges, apricots, sappy pine, leafy herbs and dry stems, grapefruit pulp along with the oily peels of the fore mentioned grapefruit, this does have a pronounced San Diego hop taste. The malts are in a supporting role, providing a little sweetness to the sour citric hops. Malt flavors of toffee, caramelized sugar, weak coffee and cocoa, they try to contain the citric sourness, failing in the end. The alcohol is quite tamed, just a low grade citric fruity warmth in the back of the palate. This falls along the lines of your tradition southern California barleywine, tasty without being outstanding. To me, the most redeeming thing about this is that it has a lower price than the barleywines from AleSmith and Stone.

Nutty orange aroma with walnuts and hazelnuts. Opaque brown with a medium peach colored head. Fairly thick mouthfeel with walnut, licorice, wood, and candy notes. Very piney finish. There are nice flavors, but they aren’t good together.

Holy crap this is a hoppy barleywine! Amber colored with a thin white head. Tons of citrus flavor and aroma and the alcohol is extremely well hidden. West Coasters call this barleywine while East Coasters would call it Double IPA. Fanfuckingtastic either way.