Southern Tier Back Burner

Brewed by Southern Tier Brewing Company
Style: Barley Wine
Lakewood, New York USA

#28 Bottle. [Papsoe grand American tasting] Small light bubbly beige head. Spare display of lacework. Light cloudy amber color. Aroma of rye bread, fruit, toasted malt, caramel, light vinous, raisins, mild wood. Feels like a Barley Wine. (This is a blind tasting). Full bodied, soft carbonation. Heavy sweet flavor with mild counter bitterness. Lingering toasted malty and light nutty finish. 8 / 3 / 8 / 4 / 16 = 3.9

22 oz’er for dessert. Nice roasty brown with a bit of a bubbly top. The aroma is just mildly sugar and doesn’t hint at the nice robust flavors underneath. This drinks with a thick, woodsy character, like a forest in a glass -- brown sugar, pine, caramel. Quite nice. (#3547, 5/20/2009)

Bottle at Oliver Twist. Deep reddish - offwhite head. High raisins+plums. High dried dark fruits, barley, light alcho-burn. Medium hoppy, pine grass, light honey, nice sweetness. This is good !!.... Again: #28 - Amerikaner Blind-Smagning 01-Maj-2009 hos Papsoe. Bottle. (8/4/8/4/16)

(Bottled) Dark reddish amber with a small head. Mild aroma with dark fruit, warming alcohol, some strawberry (gets a bit stronger when warmed up). Flavor has lots of dried, dark fruit, some warming alcohol, lots of malt. Almost full in body, with very soft carbonation. Not much aroma in this one, but the flavor is pretty nice.

Draft at Ginger Man. Pours a mahogany brown body with a lighter head. Aroma is sweet malty with lots of hops and booziness. Some caramel and chocolate sweetness but the hop character with the poorly hidden etoh i am not a fan.

Poured a clear red amber color with a medium sized, light tan head that left nice lacing on the glass. Aroma of pine, caramel, citrus, light floral, and dried fruits. Taste of caramel malts, some toffee, pine, resin, citrus fruits, grapefruit, and a moderate alcohol kick in the end.

Copper color with a thin head. Lots of citrus and pine aroma. Big, sweet malt taste with a lot of floral and pine hops. It’s not quite an American style Barleywine, but more of an over-hopped English style. Give the hops a year to fade and this would probably be killer.

Bomber drunk on 10/3/07, 4 or 5 months of age.
Fantastic appearance. Huge amount of dark beige-yellow, frothy head that takes its time receding and leaves plentiful lacing. Fades to cover. Deep auburn-amber colored body is clear and full of carbonation, with no sediment on the bottom.
Appearances aside, this just about epitomizes what I don’t like about beer. First whiff garners some enjoyable and interesting fruity hop notes, but they quickly burn off and are not found again. In their place comes a more harsh, piney-citric hoppiness, tons of scratchy, dry caramel malts and oxidized, overly bready caramel malts. Very strong esters of strawberry and raspberry emerge on the end, but seem out of place. The alcohol is noticeable, burning through the finish. Syrupy residual sugars are found on the end, caramel-like and with little/no depth.
Flavor is a blast of palate-numbing pine-citric bitterness, with low amounts of actual hop flavor. Malts are crusty, scratchy and bare up front, gaining some help from the creamy-like consistency provided by the carbonation and ending on a syrupy-sweet, cloying caramel flavor. With breathing, I either get oxidation or a popcorn-like scratchy dryness (or both). Not my cup of tea, to say the very least. Went down the drain very quickly.