Great Divide Old Ruffian

Small light beige head. Deep brownish red body with yeast floaties. Deep, intense sweet firm malty, sugary aroma with strong notes of straw and caramel. Intense deep sweet malty caramel and straw taste with oily, dry, hoppy aftertaste. Fantastic! (0.75l bottle. Thanks to gr0ve.)

Aroma of raisins, alcohol, malts, pepper and caramel. I am by no means a beer expert, but this is the finest barley wine I’ve had. Taste is extremely well-balanced. Piney, malty sweetness. Slight taste of alcohol in the mid-palate. Mild carbonation and mouthfeel. Somewhat creamy. Goes down easy and smooth. Nice hop finish continues the blanance well.

At the 2nd Annual Hell With The Lid Off Barley Wine Festival at Kelly’s Bar in East Liberty, Pittsburgh. Hazy orange caramel, off white head. Aroma is malt, pine, grass, caramel. Flavor is grass, malt, fruit (plum, apple, pear).

Poured from a 25 ounce bottle into a snifter, cloudy orangish brown. Smell if of fruit and malts. Very sweet, with nots of caramel, malt orange peel and dark fruits. Very hopyy with a touch of bitterness on the finish. Interesting, but not necessarily on my A list.

Bottle. Deep red copper with a great yellowish creamy head. Deep raisins aroma with good toffee. Flavours are raisins and toffee, countered by good bitterness, leaving a dry mouth-feel. Full body. Old Ruffian divides few- it is simply great.

Explosive sweetness, lots and lots of malty taste. some bitterness, some sourness, but most of all you feel thay have drawn out all the flavour from the malt that they possibly could. So the barley dominates over the hops, but it works just fine.

22oz Bomber @ Coles Barleywine Fest, Huge hop aroma. Not very barleywine-ish to me, probably why I like it. Deep amber in color & huge hop flavor. Almost like a malty DIPA

Bottle from the Coles Barleywine Festival. Deep and rich amber color, complex flavors, I quite enjoyed this one. Nicely done barley wine.