Emelisse White Label Barley Wine 2011

Brewed by Brouwerij Emelisse
Style: Barley Wine
Kamperland, Netherlands

Serve in Snifter

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330ml bottle picked up at Vinmonopolet Vika in Oslo a few months ago. Fawn-coloured head leaving fragile lacing down the glass. Deep, dark ruby coloured body. Mid-sweet aroma of plums and earthy malts. Well blended jam-like taste with dried fruits and malt fruity bitterness towards a long-lived ending. Integrated alcohol. Full bodied. Perfect as a late night sipper (Tromsø, 20.10.2012).

Looks like amber ale with no head. Aroma is rape plums, cherries, dark fruits. Taste is very pleasant you can feel the cherries the sweetness and the sourness of them and the nutty bitterness, also warming alcohol. Aftertaste is bitter. Complex and excellent beer.

From a 33 cl bottle at home. Pours a clear reddish amber with a short lived off white head. Caramel aroma. A bit of spruce and nuts in the taste. Lingering alcohol infused bitter finish.

A clear light brown colored beer, with a thick foamy beige head. The aroma of fruits with notes of caramel and a little alcohol. The taste is fruity, peache/apricot, a little caramel and alcohol. The aftertaste is sweet, notes of bitter and alcohol.

Bottle from Vika. Amber body, tiny beige head. Aroma of caramel, alcohol and wood. Sweet taste of sugar, hops, more alcohol. Warm finish.

33cl bottle from ABCBeers. Ok white head. Clear amber pour. Sweet and bitter at the same time. Much better than the normal barley wine. A great brew!

0.33l bottle that pours a blurry deep ruby red body that has a small quickly sidesticking off-white head. On the aroma this is sweet with dried red fruits like strawberries and red currants. There is also tones of both alcohol and sweet malts. The flavor is light alcoholic, a bit stingy, lot’s of malts, bitter with lots of caramel. It has a soft to average carbonation level with a light sticky full-bodied texture. It somehow feels a bit raw and young perhaps. Sweet and bitter - almost on the border of being soapy- and mouthdrying bitter. Yeah, it might could have some some potential if it’s stored away for a decade, but I highly doubt I will be doing that. Not bad in any way, but had hoped for a little more. 07.07.2012

Well, you know when you pay too much for a beer and expect it worths it? It didn’t happen to me. Too expectation... Aroma: is lovely sweet, caramel, toffee and roasted malts. Later I realised that this was the best this brew offered me. It was poured down into a good wine glass. I have not got a sniffer. Dark amber-brown color. It hardly kept the head. Lots of white yeast points in there. The taste is caramel, some complexity I did not get it. Medium body. Yes, it tastes sweet at the outset and then finishes with a very strange super-astringent-bitter-hoppy explosion that keeps stucked on the back of your mouth (for too long). Well, it just seems incoherent for me. It is not pleasant, or soft, or smoothy. It’s agressive and rough. Probably the problem was my own expectation.

33 cl bottle at home. Saved this for International Beer Day, and this one certainly did not dissapoint. Very heavy biscuity and dried fruit aroma also a bit of citrus. Nice caramel and biscuit flavour, very complex and does a good job concealing it’s very rough 10% ABV. A very surprising and distinct chinooky finish makes this one of the better barley wines i have had so far. My girlfriends comment was "it taste like good rum", and i can not fault that, it actually does.

Ugliest barley wine I’ve ever seen. Can’t remember seeing one this red. But! It is of course an Emelisse. Amazing nose. Some fruit, some tar and other nice things I find hard to describe. Sweet taste with a great tart finish. Palate is nice, very whiskey like almost. It is a deceptive little beer though, you never really feel like you’re drinking a 10 percenter. Bottle from De Bierkoning.