Barley Days Wind & Sail Dark Ale

Not great, but not as bad as some feel. Reddish, too sweet malty aroma. A hint of dark chocolate in the taste. Finishes fairly dry and clean. Would I buy it again - in a pinch. But I’ve had much worse.

Dark copper, quickly fading head. Caramel nose. Nutty caramel flavours, smooth, but a little thin. Not bad.

Seb brought this bottle to the Jan, 2006 MontreAlers meeting. It’s really not good. Smells like a new car interior mixed with some raisins. Tastes like radiator water mixed with boiled leather. Moderate bitterness, light to medium body. Orangish amber.

Uninviting aroma features leatherette and shoe polish. Clear amber coloured body with a low, off white head that recedes to ring. Taste follows the flavour along with graininess and some wierd oxidized cardboard character. Medium body with low carbonation. Bottle sampled at the MontreAlers Jan. 2006 meeting.

Rerate: Draught at ’C’est What? Festival of Small Breweries’. Pours a clear amber with a small diminishing white head. Mild aroma of honey, a little fruit, grain and light hops. Flavour’s pretty much the same: grain, fruit, caramel and light hops. Average bodied. A simple yet average beer. Better the bottled version I originally had though.
Original rating: 5.3.4.2.8: 2.2
Bottle shared with HogTownHarry, GregClow & tupalev -- courtesy of GregClow. Pours a cloudy auburn with a spare white head. Aroma is a little sour with some sweet malt lingering in the background. The flavour’s nowhere as good as the aroma (and it wasn’t very good to begin with!) and doesn’t seem to be as infected as their Lager (or this kind of beer masks it better) -- either way, it’s still crap so just avoid their beers all together. What’s with this brewer?

Draught sample at C’est What Spring/06 Festival of Small Breweries. These guys seems to have finally licked their infection problems, so they deserve to be re-rated. Pours a clear copper-amber with a thin tan head. Very nice aroma, nutty with some caramel and mocha. Body is on the thin side, but OK. Flavour starts with caramel malt, turns a bit soapy in the middle, and finishes with some coffee and roast. Quite well done - let’s hope they can keep it up!

Original rating: Bottle shared with blankboy, HogTownHarry & tupalev - courtesy me, from DerWeg. Ruddy amber colour, actually looks pretty nice. Aroma - not as overwhelmingly awful as the lager, but there’s definately some uninentional sourness behind the chocolate malt notes. The infection really comes through in the flavour, although the malt made it possible to get a couple of decent sized sips down before it joined its lighter brother down the drain... [3/4/3/2/5]

Re-rate off a fresh bottle from the lcbo and a new brewer in charge of this previously infected micro. Let’s see how it goes. It looks nice, deep dark orange, with lots of golden brown notes and a frothy tannish head - looks great! Light caramel malt aroma, but there is some weird fruitiness hiding behind there - I’m a little leery now to taste it based on that. Watery body. Very watery. Taste - ok, now I’m pissed. I thought these problems were taken care of? There is a decent but not noteworthy fruity brown / irish ale in here but there is a weird infected like sourness that totally detracts. I can’t drink this whole thing. Damn it, if you can’t fix your problems, don’t bother trying - you’re giving Ontario brewers a bad rap. That’s a pretty funny description - exotic? And stop using the name and theme Irish for your shit beers everyone! Like the lager, infected aroma, but with a little more malt sweetness that covers most of it up. Sweet malt taste that again covers up a little better an obvious infection. See my rant in the last rating; this brewery is not worth any more of my time.

Bottle (750ml). Shared with blankboy, GregClow and tupalev - courtesy of GregClow via derweg. Poured cloudy mahogany with a small white head. Aroma vegetal, dungy - funky stale roast malt - unpleasant. Taste is sour, sharply smokey ... we strongly suspected yet another infected Glenora bottle. Overall still borderline drinkable, particularly compared to their premium lager heine-juice.