Thomas Hooker Old Marley Barleywine

Brewed by Thomas Hooker Brewing Company
Style: Barley Wine
Bloomfield, Connecticut USA

Complex nose of leather, brown sugar, ripe fruit and bready malts. The pour presents a murky copper body with a modest head. The flavor starts sweet with notes of plum and passion fruit. Sweet, bready dough comes through midway before an bitterness overtakes the sweetness. The palate is chewy and sticky. Long, bitter aftertaste. Good balance, enjoyable throughout.

Julios Spring Beer Festival. Pour of clouded medium dark brown, fringed with orange. Nice rich aroma of freshly scraped Cantelope rinds and dried Apricots, stewed in a few drops of Brandy. Flavor develops a nifty turn of bark and oak, for the most part. Flagrantly caramelized sugars and malts, developed an acute sweetness of brown sugar and the scrapings of molasses cookie batter. Palate is mostly cloying, but finishes out with a note of mid-summer grassiness.

Robe brune foncée sans mousse. Arômes de café et de malt torréfié. Saveurs de café, de malt torréfié et de houblon.

Sample at Julio’s beer festival: Looks exactly like the picture. Aroma is caramel with a lighter than usual hop presence. Piney hops with the caramel sweetness made this syrupy but I really wanted more hops.

2006 Bottle - Dark turbid brown, thin light tan creamy head. Rich textured nose of vanilla bean rum, brown sugar, oak, and caramel, with lighter tones of citrus and dark fruits. Flavor was malty rich up front with more vanilla, rum soaked dark fruits, oak, and a very light citric hop note rounding this out. Hints of chocolate show up and mingle at room temp. Medium bodied, cask-like carbonation, dry, oaky, light boozey finish. Very nice after dinner sipper...

2004 Bottle - Murky cider pour with a thin, soapy head. Lots of plumy malt in the nose, with notes of ripened banana, oak and bourbon. Softly carbonated, the body is rich with vanilla, dark chocolate, roasted beans and is as smooth as ice cream. The finish is a bit bitter and dry, which detracts from the creamy flow of the beer. Otherwise, a damn fine ale.

[2006 bottle] Hardly carbonated at all, looks thick in my glass. Pours a wonderful murky, dark color- almost zero head. Aroma is strong- hops and alcohol, mostly. Flavors are huge and very complex. Immediately sweet caramel come through, then chocolate, toffee... and a little touch of coffee. Finishes long and bitter- hops all the way. This is pretty awesome- certainly a unique barley wine.

Thanks to jjpm74 for sending 2 vintages of this, which should be split out because they are different recipes. I will rate them both and describe the differences here, and worry about the semantics later, since they both fell within the 4.3-4.5 range. The 2004 and 2005 were both ruddy dark brown with little off-white head. The aroma of the 2004 was heavily dark fruity, figgy, with a heavy scotch aley malt bill and some chocoff. The 2005 aroma was much more oaky bourbony and less fruity. The tastes matched the smells, and the palates were both impressively dense and complex, with a lot of dark fruit, chocoff, some oaky bourbon, and molasses. I love TH beers, and these 2 are exceptional. Someone please send me a 2006!