Harpoon 100 Barrel Series #10 - Triticus

Brewed by Harpoon Brewery
Style: Barley Wine
Boston, Massachusetts USA

Serve in Snifter

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Harpoon Brewery ... very smart to start this 100 barrel thing. Never had a wheat wine before. Dark and heady. Lots of spicy hop, chocolate and alcohol in the smell. Tastes like chocolate cover malted milk balls. Bitter hop and chocolate. Tasty but more than one bottle will do you in.

black, minimal head, very bitter, medium sweetness, long finish, full body,

Bottle from February 2011. Beautiful blend of dark wheat with plum and raisin. Warming alcohol meshes with a smooth maple flavor. Personal opinion this like many higher alcohol beers present best at 55-60 degrees. A hint of banana esters and cocoa. This beer is at a fantastic drinking point given its age.

2010 Leviathan Edition. Pours a deep opague brown with a hint of red around the edges. Head was a 1/4" of khaki foam which quickly disappeared. Sweet, malty aroma with a ton of secondary scents including brown sugar, all the dark fruits and molasses. Full palate with a thick warming feel. Wonderfully soft carbonation. Flavor is to the sweet side. Getting a brown sugar, molasses and caramel taste as well as a muted hop background that is a nice counterpoint to all those sweet flavors. Nicely done.

I enter this review, and uncap the bottle with absolutely no knowledge of what a Triticus might happen to be... Dark brown color, nearly opaque, with a healthy, fizzy cocoa tan head...nice... Aroma: chocolate bubblegum, rich and sweet, but stable, well-balanced, very nice...tangy and tasty... Taste: very full, and flavorful, big cocoa, thick molasses, rich and delicious. Very smooth. Is that the wheat talking, or the wine? A most unique beverage, as I’ve never tasted an ale exactly like this, in any way...wow, that’s sweet, and not in the pejoritave sense. Very nice. and pretty nearly addictive....why can’t this bottle hold a few more ounces? or gallons? Very interesting, smooth, yet dark and delicious...11.5%? It’s time for bed, methinks... but there’s more delicious brew to delight the tongue...quite good...quite, indeed...nutty, chocolatey, a bit cola-ish... Asked to peg the style, I’d be at sea...but as it is, a wonderfully tasty ale. Screw styles. Yum.

Bomber, Hennepin glass, Noogfest. Murky brown-mahogany hue with basically no head. Okay, a few tiny foamy light tan bubbles. But that’s it. The aroma is...succulent. Deep caramel and treacle, brown sugar and light molasses. Hop presence comes in shifts of flowers and dried herbs (cilantro, even). The flavor is a very sweet combination of the above with an almost tangy (like...Tang) acidity throughout. Very light bitterness. Creamy and supple mouthfeel...so very thick...soft carbonation. Who said pro-wrestlers don’t know beer?!

Big sweet aroma of molasses, caramel, candy sugar and brown sugar. No real carbonation to speak of. Light tan head. Short but solid. Color is a dark brown. Swet flavor. Nicely hopped. Loads of caramel, fruit and molasses. Thich palate. Chewy with a nice hops bitterness. Good alcohol warming. Finish is creamy and smooth. Good stuff although pretty sweet.

THOUGHTS: Nice. Very warming. Not as good as a true barley wine. A bit boozy and will probably be very smooth after some aging. A little too sweet. TECHNICAL: Bottle. Poured a very, dark reddish brwon that was pretty much opaque except ot the very edges. It also had a small to average, tan head that mostly diminished. The aroma had heavy, molasses and caramel; hints of chocolate; spicy hops; raisin, prune, brown sugar, alcohol and wheat. The initial flavor was rather sweet and lightly bitter; while the finish was heavily sweet and moderate to rather bitter with a long duration. There was alcohol, raisin, brown sugar, caramel, chocolate, wheat, some piney sort of earthy hops and a little cherry and apple. The medium to full body was a bit syrupy, but also oily with fizzy carbonation and a light to moderately alcoholic finish.

Bottle, bought in Ipswich, Mass. This is seriously good, especially given that barleywine is a style i don’t really like. Rich caramel, chocolate, raisin and some smoke in the nose. palate is rich, sweet, but well balanced. Quite chocolatey initially, but it slowly develops a sweet, lightly soy saucy, caramel flavours, kind of like a doppelbock. American hoppyness, quite intense and bitter towards the end. Nice long flavour aswell, the alcohol is well hidden aswell. Seriously good effort by the Bros it has to be said.

UPDATED: MAR 9, 2007 2005 bottle generously shared by the bros, pre-release, at their house, on 6/11/2005.
The beer pours a beautiful mahogany-auburn-chestnut, with beige-golden overtones and a small amount of creamy, beige head that is moderately well-retained, but more importanly, actually provides lacing. I almost can’t believe my eyes! An unfiltered beer from Harpoon! Awesome, I’m glad the bros were able to talk the Harpoon people in to not filtering this, which has, in my mind, ruined most of Harpoon’s other beers. Anyways, the beer has a transluscent shine to it, layered colors swirl about. It’s nice to see a dark wheat wine, who says they all have to be golden-yellow? Aroma has notes of peanut brittle, dry English toffee, milk chocolate and light, dry roast. The wheat may add a light vanilla-cream hint to the aroma as well. Flavor begins with a playful caramel malt sweetness that is lightly chewy in texture. Delicious chocolate notes are not bitter, nor are they overdone. Wheat provides smoothness to the mouthfeel, giving it an almost creamy texture. The finish really shines with chocolate, light roast and just an ever so slight wheat sourness/acidity. The acidity in most wheat wines turns me off to the style, but this is only faint and very tolerable. Add to that the fact that you can’t find even a hint of the 11.5 abv and you’ve got a very well-done, classy wheat wine. Not an over-the-top hops and syrupy malt monster. Body, you might say, is a little bit light, making it that much more drinkable, but I would like a touch more malt thickness. Hops add little bits of spiciness, no high alpha acids, some floral bitterness, but mainly just a light spicy flavor in the background. Mouthfeel is smooth and almost silky/creamy, with a touch of thinning on the end as it warms. Carbonation is very low. Great stuff and I am eager to try it again and rerate it, though I’m quite confident in this rating. The brewers at Harpoon could learn a thing or too from these guys!

Rerate
On draught at Redbones, 12/5/06
I’ve been following this beer pretty closely since its release (actually, even before its release), as kegs have been released here and there ever since its initial release. This glass that I had at Redbones recently was just shockingly good. Showing absolutely no signs of aging, (negative signs that is) but just wonderfully cohesive now and much more mellow. The chocolate, wheat nuttiness, light vanilla and chew toffee work together so well now and there is still a light sour/tart wheat twang on the finish, slightly acidic/bready, and very interesting. Texture is incredibly soft and the low carbonation feels great on the palate. No harsh alcohol notes. Really impressive that it’s aging this well. I’m upping the score. (previously at 3.9)