Victory Old Horizontal

Brewed by Victory Brewing Company
Style: Barley Wine
Downingtown, Pennsylvania USA

I really can’t add too much that has yet to be said. I just think the overall balance of this barley wine is outstanding. Great texture and mouth feel from the start to the finish!

Damn happy I finally got to sample this fantastic Barley Wine during a recent visit to NJ. What a treat!! Pours a deep mahogany/burgundy color with a slight haziness. Produces a thin, wispy off-white head. Deeply rich aromas of dark dried fruits (fig, raisin, prune) along with some dark rum, molasses, spice, dark caramel and orange peel with just the faintest hint of hops. Palate is medium bodied, but has a smooth sryupy texture with minimal carbonation. Flavor is predominantly fruity sweet but short of cloying. Reminiscent of rum or brandy soaked fruit cake topped with toffee candies, buckwheat honey, vanilla and a sprinkle of dried orange peel and hops. 11% alcohol amps up the flavors nicely, but not hot or obtrusive in anyway. For a big English style BW this one goes down fairly easy and smoothly. Simply said, just a classic.

12 oz bottle...Drink by Dec. 29, 2011 Probably would have been better with age...Auburn to maroon hue with tan creamy diminishing head, sweet plum and honey smell with hints of hops, taste a little hoppier than other other barleywines,initiial sweetness, dried candied fruit, sugary palate, slight leathery, smooth with a bit bitter aftertaste. Nice balance. The kind of quick drunk that gets you from the sugar. A diabetics nightmare. Several would probably lead to flush warm face and ultimately a headache, Strong and powerful...Victorious!!!

Had this on tap at the Victory brewhouse...poured a beautiful reddish brown with a thin head. It had a nice complex taste...some of the malts tasted similar to those in the Victory Lager. This was my first foray into barleywines, so take this as such, but the alcohol taste in this was overwhelming...even more so that many wines I’ve had. Look, if I want a wine, I’ll have a wine...I’d like my beer to taste more like beer than wine. If this is one of the better barleywines (with subdued alcohol taste according to other reviews), I think I’ll pass. Maybe it gets better as it ages?" Rerate 5/2007 - This was my first barleywine back in the day, reratign for today to bump up rating. This is pretty good, full bodied, lots of caramel sweetness and a lot of piney bitterness. Much better, like all of Victory’s "big beers" in the bottle with a little age on it (brewpub beers are universally "hot"). Good barleywine!

This brew pours amber w/ raspberry tones. The froth produced is minimal and the lacing is almost non existant. Aroma is weak beholding meaty malts and aged hops. Full nectar w/ creamy residual effers. But ofcoarse, it’s a barley wine, it’s supposed to be sweet. Theres a killer hop component that digs in early and sticks like a Detroit white out on 75 North bound near Pine Knob. This would stop most people cold in their tracks but I am a warrior of Viking descent. We sacked Rome and I’ll sack this brew. A full Nelson and two knuckle sandwiches later this brew goes down screaming. The bittering component is on the peachpit side and it cuts deep. It’s very English in style with it’s refined nature but those hops. The finish is bittered like a scorned grandma that only allows a controled amount of sweetness to residulate itself.

Bottle. Thanks to kramer17801 for this one. Pours a clear amber color with an off-white head. Sweet malty hoppy aroma with some hints of caramel. Sweet malty hoppy warming caramel flavor. Sweet malty finish with some nice hoppy hints in the aftertaste.

Very sweet mouthfeel; sticky. Nice dark orange color. Taste is malts, caramel. Very sweet and warm. You can taste roasted malts in there, but still some heavy sweetness. Can i call it ’dense’? Would get again.

This beer looks great. It is a deep brown, with a beige head forming over it. The head grows too large if you don’t pour it just right. It actually looks so nice that when I poured mine in a glass one of my friends demanded that I bring him a glass because it looked that good. The aroma is intense and fruity (citrusy). The taste slams you in the mouth. Not only is the beer thick as all hell, but the multifarious array of flavours knocks you back. It is sweet, bitter, fruity, hoppy all at the same time. The alcohol gives it a warming quality and the alcohol is nearly undetectable if it were not for the aforementioned quality. Now, typically I don’t mention this in beer reviews, but this beer is great to get drunk off of. After having two you feel like you just spent two hours at the bar. The drunk it produces is a heavy, lazy drunk, slipping you into a mild euphoria that only a beer of this quality could. It is more of a wine drunk than a beer drunk and one case of these babies will make a good 5-6 people happy.