Smuttynose Barleywine Style Ale

Brewed by Smuttynose Brewing Company
Style: Barley Wine
Portsmouth, New Hampshire USA

Pours with a deep brownish-red body topped by a medium thick off-white head with good lace. Sweet and fruity malt aroma with hopy notes and a slight alcohol presence. Sweet and fruity malt flavor with good hoppy notes and a touch of alcohol. Full bodied and suprisingly smooth with a slight warmth.

Good head for style and it has a great aroma. It's all butter and alcoholic caramel. The alcohol provides a nice warmth and the a nice citrus rind hoppiness. The malt, which there is plenty of, is pleasantly sweet, but the bitter finish almost doesn't fit. It could probably benefit from aging a bit longer. It's got the potential.

22oz, 2006 vintage. pours dense glowing orange with white head. nose is odd like it’s slightly oxidized already, some toffee, brown sugar, very sweet smelling. flavor is very sweet and hot, cotton candy, very nutty, oranges, alcohol. carbonation is low. mouthfeel is a tad thin. they need to rework this recipe becuase their other big beers are quite nice. this not so much.

Pour deep mahogany amber with thin dense khaki head...smell is quite hoppy with some sweet caramel notes...taste was richly hoppy and very piney...bittersweet alcoholic finish...

Bottle Conditioned in 2006

3/14/2008: Smuttynose Barleywine Style Ale pours a hazy copper-amber color with a thin beige head. The aroma is layered with thick, sweet toffee maltiness and a pronounced, aged citrus hoppiness (candied). The flavor is much like the aroma - chewy toffee and caramelized maltiness with just a hint of something roasty in the back, aged fruit (apricots), and then a hefty sweet citrus hoppiness with a moild to moderate level of bitterness. There are also traces of vanilla in the flavor and a dry oakiness in the finish. The bitterness creeps out more and more with each sip and as the beer warms. This beer is extremely balanced and the alcohol is really controlled nicely in the flavor. This beer is full-bodied and feels thick and creamy on the palate. I think a couple years of age has really helped to make this a really good barleywine.

22 fl. oz. bottle (1311) from jimbowood. Thanks Jimbo! Rating #279 for this beer...

Appearance: beautiful, rosey, garnet color, with a solid, 1/2" algae-green head o’ foam. Aroma: big, fat, and sugary, fruity, sweet, while still soft, and well-rounded. A lovely fruit-punch in the nose (but not a fruit punch-in-the-nose), with notes of strawberry, cherry, melon, & more. Discernible alcohol, but not rough at all. Taste: great hops, tasty malt, but potent booze stands tall every inch of the way, traveling through every corner of the mouth, treading every path of the senses. Long presence on the palate, with a resilient boozy finish. Great taste, full fruit, thick malt, and in the final analysis, the strength proved to be managable, but the alcohol remained long into the finish. One delicious barleywine!

I picked this bottle up back in 2004 I believe, sometime after sampling the oak aged version. I didn’t care for the oak, so couldn’t get motivated to open this up. Finally seeing that the oak version had been split off, I decided to pop open this thing. Unbelievably good beer. Medium orange amber, slight haze from the sediment, good head. Aroma was winey, woody, alcoholic, loaded with caramel, and bitter, anise laden hops. Flavor matched, wildly complex with additional notes of dark fruit, chocolate, pine, grapefruit, and toffee. Perfectly balanced, this was absolutely fantastic. A fantastic surprise. This thing should never touch oak.

Floral, hoppy fruity aroma. POurs copper/amber with a nice big off-white head. Start is sweet and malty. Middle is weird-tasting. Can't really pin it down. Malty and boozish finish. This is only 7% for a BW and it tastes much stronger. I dont know, this one just didnt do it for me. Tastes like soap or something--and no, it's not dish soap.