Hair of the Dog Fred

On tap at The Alembic in San Francisco. Hazy orange with a massive yellowish head displaying eternal retention and generating thick ropey lace. Silky soft, full bodied, a little yeasty, with peach, pear, orange, and Christmas candy spice all showing up through the palate. A beautiful dessert sipper!

12oz. Bottle: Aroma is very sweet. Smells of malts, dark fruits, candy sugar, and Cabernet. Poured a dark copper color with a huge, foamy, creamy, tan head that lasted throughout. Good lacing. Cloudy. Opaque. Lots of particles of varying sizes. Flavor is heavily sweet and lightly bitter. Tastes of malts, dark fruits, piney hops, toasting, alcohol, and caramel. Medium to full body. Creamy texture. Average carbonation. Short malty finish. Overall, good, but I prefer a hoppier Barley Wine.

Bottle at Cafe Volo. pours a DEEP mahogany/caramel color. Nose is big on malt, and caramel. flavour is much of the same. The alcohol warms my throat as it goes down, just a superb sipping barley wine.

Amber colored beer pours with no head. From a distance, you would say I’m drinking a large glass of whiskey. Aroma has a bit of alchohol and some malty tones. It says special golden ale on the bottle, but clearly it’s an nice barleywine. Could do with some aging, but an excellent beer nonetheless.

Pours a dark amber color with a small white head. Very sweet smelling, very malty, some caramel, just a small dose of some hops. Very sharp bitter malt flavor, with hops mixed in as well. A little more bitter in the finish and especially the aftertaste. The malts seem to overpower most of the flavor in the front, almost a little bit too much. Maybe a little more balance is needed here. Still good, but maybe a tone down on the malts and sweetness would be more to my liking.

Fred kicks butt. Poured golden brown, with a thick frothy head. Lots of malt and sweets in the nose, lots of malt and hops in the flavor, good blend. Mouthfeel is smooth.

Poured amber with creamy off whtie head that lingered til the last drop. Aroma of spice, sweet malt, and spice. Pretty hoppy taste with a good malt background. Well balanced. Hints of fruit and spice throughout. Pretty smoothe for being 10%.

Cloudy brownish-copper body topped by a large beige head leaving good lacings. Like a good catchy song by talented musicians, appears relatively simple until you start dissecting it. The malt profile is like a yummy sweet spicy waffle topped by a thick layer of delicious smooth butterscotch. Quite a few spices but no particular one stands out. Buried in that rich body also hide some fruity flavours (apricots? Plums?). And let’s not forget the large amount of unidentifiable hops. Very creamy, very hoppy, rather spicy and overall somewhat “dirty”. The alcohol is fairly apparent but it fits this over-the-top extravaganza. The beer is sweet, maybe a bit too sweet for me but I suspect this could be fixed with a little aging. Brewed to honour a beer writer. Safest way to make sure a beer writer writes good things about your beer.