Lakefront Beer Line Barley Wine

Formerly brewed at Lakefront Brewery
Style: Barley Wine
Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA

This beer has a sweet smelling aroma consisting of yeast, dates, clove, and molasses. It is a sediment caramel colored solution with only a glaze of a white head. This beer enters the mouth with the sweet taste of dates. As it flows through the mouth it becomes bitterer and produces a woody taste.

Very light in texture, despite a rather potent ABV, so I was rather disappointed in this effort from an otherwise fine brewery. Lightly hopped and light caramel notes fail to impress. But the alcohol kick does finish in a peppery warming. I was hoping for better.

Kind of a disappointment, because I like most of what I’ve had from Lakefront to date. You know a brew’s in trouble when all they can come up with for a description is, "Copper in color, Beer line is the first organic barley wine brewed in the United States." Well, to quote Jorma Kaukonen, "I don’t care if there’s preservatives in it, as long as my lettuce is crisp." It poured a headless, hazy amber with scary looking, large particles floating about. The aroma is a sharp malt, whiskey-like in nature, with heavy alcohol fumes. The flavor is alcohol with some sweet malt tossed in. The finish is a low alcohol burn. Not very interesting. I did like the cute little 6.3 oz bottle.

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The aroma is yeasty and alcholic and very little else. The color is murky brown and no head. There are large particles of yeast suspended throughout the beer. The alcohol dominates the flavor and is very cloying and winelike. However no other flavor comes through to compliment the product.

2000 Vintage: Not only is the bottle small but the fill barely comes up to the base of the neck. Poured a murky orange/brown with plenty of floaters and bare minimum of a head. Aroma is slightly tart. Oranges and sweet malt. Flavor starts sweet and malty but thins out to some bitterness and alcohol. Flavor is short and while it feel thick when it first hits the tongue it is kind of thin. Finish is very dry. Warming.

Initial aroma of dried figs and caramel with some pine notes but then the aroma blends to smell a little like soured bread. I wanted to say vomit, but soured bread is a much nicer descriptor. Amber-orange in color with no head and tons of yeast sediment. I managed to decant it pretty well, but some ended up in my glass. Piney hop flavor with lots of sweet dried fruit malt flavors and a hint of stale chocolate cookies. Odd, chalky mouthfeel that makes my mouth pucker a little. Just a little cloying. This is an odd little beer.

(6.3oz bottle, Millennium 2000 vintage, thanks Barry) Yeast-filled murky bown body with off-white head. Aroma is moderately sweet, caramel, plum, molasses, port, light wood. Taste is sweet, caramel/butterscotch, molasses/syrup, plum/raisin, honey, alcohol/brandy. Full body with low carbonation. This gets all the basics down pat, but it needs something else to bring it up to excellence. Perhaps tone down the sweetness and alcohol presence, and bring up the hops. Of course, the hops probably have mellowed substantially since 2000.

Great malty aroma, sweet, caramel, alcohol. Pours a dark golden brown. Good caramel, sweetness, with some hop spiciness.