High Desert Barleywine

Brewed by High Desert Brewing Company
Style: Barley Wine
Las Cruces, New Mexico USA

Serve in Snifter

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Deep, deep amber with a little head and a fair amount of lacing. They should really serve this in a snifter, not this little flute POS. Caramel nose with a sharp piney hoppiness and some spiciness from the yeast. Definitely a chinook bittereing like old crusty. Some nice cascadey aromas. A little thin for a BW. Lots of caramel in the flavor, almost tothy and candy-like. Nice dry bitterness, not overpowering, finishing slightly warm.

Amber and hazy. Herbal, hoppy, lightly spicy on the nose - some nice dry hops. Lots of rich malt, with a good dose of hop, and slight heat late. Pretty well-balanced.

Draft @ brewpub. Is served in a strange 6 oz glass with false bottom that looks like one of those vases you put a single rose in. Muddled mahogany-red beer, and see-through. Smells chewy and hoppy, with some nice well developed dark bread malt. Character is fruity, with lingering dark sourdough and wheatberries in end. A little papery but drinkable enough.

On tap at the High Desert Brewpub. Pours dark amber with a thin head. The aroma is caramel malts, and floral and earthy hops. The flavor is sweet and fairly bitter. The palate is medium to heavy, flat and syrupy. Overall, this was a lackluster barleywine, but not bad.

On tap at the brewery. Pours a beautiful mahogany colored deep brown. Little head, but there is a white rim around the top of the brew sticking to the glass. Aroma brings up notes of sour malts, sweet malts, light hop notes, and tons and tons of apples and plums. Thick plums at that. Like they’ve been mashed for a week or something. The flavor starts in a sour malt realm that moves into a hop drenched apple and plum gold mine. Sour malts are damn good in this beer! Also somewhat of a sour hop note as well that leads into a thick liquorice and somewhat buttery finish. Good lingering on basically all of the prominent flavors. DAMN good brew, especially for in the middle of NM, but I don’t seem to be as blown away as some of these earlier batch rating...which makes me curious...!

UPDATED: MAR 6, 2005 Sampled both batch #7 (about 2 years old) and batch #3 (about 6 years old) side by side. Caramel-brown body with some mild haze and a minimal, mature head. Has elements of spicy dark fruits (especially batch 7), light fruits (especially batch 3), brown sugar, vanilla, and molasses. Long, fantastiic finish with fig and prune flavors. Nicely bitter, but well-balanced. Aging has seemingly taken some edge off of what, when fresh, must have been a lacerative, hoppy beer in the mode of Rogue Old Crustacean. A nicely aged, phenomenal beer, very open but not overly oxidized. Thinking about this beer makes me drool. Huge thanks to Bob Gosselin for sharing two wonderful vintage barley wines. This beer is the current holder of the fictitious Whaleman Gold Medal for best beer brewed in New Mexico.

UPDATED: FEB 23, 2005 tap at the brewery: WOW, what can i say about this one. Well this is a barleywine that rivals that of old horizontal. Very complex profile of hops and malts with a color and aroma that are just this side of perfect. This is awesome stuff and i hope the brewery has this for a while. ReRate-sampled a batch #3 (6 years old) and batch 7(2 years old). These beers were very similar, other than the fact that the sweetness was much higher on batch 3 from longer aging. still a decent amount of hops in the #7 which led to a vanilla and black licorice finish. truely great beers! Thanks Bob for bringing out these awesome aged specimins! Rerate 2-batch 7 (3 years old) This beer just fucking rocks! The hops have mellowed to a mild bitterness and the carmel/toffee notes have risen in all their might! wonderful palate-smooth and sticky with lingering caramel notes that go on for infinity. I was so happy to see that bob put this beer on tap since they "didnt have many other dark beers on tap" this week. I had to have a second serving before i was satisfied.