Mad River John Barleycorn

Brewed by Mad River Brewery
Style: Barley Wine
Blue Lake, California USA

Really solid strong alcohol floats above the glass. Malty and sweet. Put a barley wine check list next to this beer, and it will get good rankings across the board.

(11/3/08) Bottle sample at a tasting in Pizza Port in Carlsbad (thanks whoever). Muddy brown color. Aroma of malt, some fruits, caramel and alcohol. Sweet malty flavor with some wood, vanilla, caramel and a bit of pralines notes. Full-bodied.

2002 Vintage (Drunk in 2006):
Deep dark brown coloured body with a super-thin tan head. Aroma of malt, spices and caramel. Medium to Full-bodied; Sweet malt and caramel along with raisins, pit fruit and nice nuttiness. Aftertaste bitter, but very mellow after 4 years! Overall, a nice beer after all this time - great to finally try! I sampled this 12 ounce bottle purchased 3 years ago at Whole Foods in Vienna, Virginia on 23 November 2006 (Thanksgiving).

Big strong heavy alky aroma and a thick brownish hazy iced tea appearance. Taste is strong in the alky range and in a wierd way sweet. Umma gumma. Yes, thick syrupy mouth coating beer, if you want to cal it that. Don’t know what to think of these high alky barleywine in yer faceness. Not refined like the belgian high alky beers. The character of John Barleycorn in the song is a personification of the important cereal crop barley, and of the alcoholic beverages made from it, beer and whisky. In the song, John Barleycorn is represented as suffering attacks, death, and indignities that correspond to the various stages of barley cultivation, such as reaping and malting. Wew, too much for this session beer lover.

[1773-20081014] 355mL bottle. Alcoholic grainy corn aroma. Slightly hazy, medium brown orange body with a medium-lasting creamy light tan head. Sugary malt and grains flavour has sweet toasted caramel and becomes boozier as it warms. Medium-full body. Nice grainy alcohol.
<i>(Vintage 2007; w/ jerc, manuchampions)</i>

Pours a hazy orange-brown with almost no head. BIg, alcoholic nose, maybe some cinnamon, but really overpowered by booze. Very warming, big mothfeel. Quite malty, very bitter finish, lingering in the mouth... meh.

Beautiful super dark amber with garnet highlights. Aroma has a blend of fruitcake and gingerbread spices with candied citrus fruit peels. Flavor is rather treacly and cloying with a one dimensional hop bitterness on the finish. It’s like it can’t decide whether it wants to be a sweet, malty BW or a nice hoppy BW and it doesn’t do a good job at either. Aftertaste is rather unpleasant as well.

Pours small fine head, about a couple of milimeters tall, but it fades over a few minutes. Dark brown body. Seems fairly cloudy. No hops in aroma. Slight scent of malt, on the milk chocolate side. Flavor is quickly warming. Again with the slight milk chocolate side, laced with an alcohol chaser. Hop bitterness, while not present in the flavor, comes out on the pallate in the aftertaste. Honestly, I’m a bit on the disappointed side. I’d seen this on the shelf for years, but never bought it because there was something else that peeked my interests. I wish it had more sweetness to it.