New Holland Existential Hopwine

Brewed by New Holland Brewing Company
Style: Barley Wine
Holland, Michigan USA

pours deep golden with moderate off-white head. aroma is somewhat orangey, pine, sweet crystal malt, and tons of booze. taste is sweet and fruity with good amounts of orange and caramel. finish is piney bitter and alcoholic. decent stuff but cant get over t

A copper colored beer with a white head. An orange, pine, vanilla, and alcohol filled aroma. The malt and hops balance out nicely in this one. Its sweet up front with some bitterness in the end. The flavor consists of pine, oranges, vanilla, and alcohol notes. Overall this was a very good one.

Appearance: Pours a clear, bright amber body with a lush, bubbly off-white head. Smell: Light, delicate aroma of caramel, green tea, and tangerines. Taste: Sweet and somewhat grainy with the taste of caramel flanked by hop flavors of juicy tangerines and a sprinkling of pine needles. Finishes bittersweet and also resinous and soapy. Mouthfeel: Medium-full body. Mild carbonation. Drinkability: Not really as hoppy as the front of the bottle led me to believe.

Deep haze creates an earthy glow within the deep orange body. Great retention of a white, bulbous-bubbled head and thick sticky lacing. Aroma has loads of fruity hops, grassiness and a hefty malt presence. A large version of balance, perhaps. Some tart grapefruit and pine creep out from the glass with a little warmth. Alcohol is concealed masterfully. Flavor is quite malty, toasted grains rising from the shadows suddenly. The hop profile recedes upon first sip, leaving bitterness to do most of its damage late in the finish. Acidity is mild to moderate. this is a strange taste profile. The finish is citrusy then moderately bitter, slowly drying and considerable in length. Mouthfeel is softly carbonated, a touch sticky and pleasant. Decent, but not very drinkable and rather mismanaged in the flavor department. I wonder, yet again, if New Holland will ever develop an experimental( I use the word loosely ) recipe that will be worth a second purchase.

I’ll be honest. I saw a picture of a hop with a clever title. I knew that New holland had a great IPA, so I bit. I shared a 22-ouncer with my girl. I didn’t even realize it was 10.5% until after I was done drinking it. I fell over. It was a great hoppy ale with a smoothness that hid it’s high alcohol content.

22oz bomber. Hazy orange copper hued. Beige ring of head. Sweet caramel nose. Grassy grapefruit hops. Citrus with a touch port. Full bodied with smooth malts into big burn and finishes thick with a bitter hop flavor surrounded by medium alcohol. This is a big beer. Each part of the palate it hits, it brings a big new dimension to the brew. Sweet sticky malts, toffee and baked sugar. This rolls over the tongue into a bright citrusy grapefruit bitterness. Touches of arange and red fruit. Then into a drying, acidic astringent alcohol bitterness. Each aspect is meldied but each also reaches it own personal crescendo. Intermittent notes of nutty syrupy malts. Finish leaves the mouth cloying and dry. The burns gotta mellow. Warming. Pure sippin once it starts to warm in the glass. This lasted about 45 minutes. Pleasant bold drinking!

Pours a very cloudy dark caramel brown, with a one finger head that settles slowly to a soapy cap. The lacing is thick and very sticky, leaving large chunks of foam. Smell; lots of caramel and toffee malts, with some cherries. As expected there’s definitely a big hop presence with citrus and floral hops. Taste; very much hop dominated by the hops, with citrus a little pine and a touch of floral hops, but this also has a very big malt presence. There’s caramel, toffee, molasses a little brown sugar and some cherries and dates as well. In the finish there’s a spicy alcohol, but that wasn’t at all surprising considering the very high ABV. Mouthfeel is full bodied, almost syrupy, and despite the big alcohol content this goes down surprisingly easy. This tastes more like a hoppy barleywine than a double IPA to me, but who really cares how you classify it. This is a pretty darn good beer regardless. I’m happy to see New Holland try something like this.

22 ounce bottle shared with BBB63
Pours copper orange with a large sticky tan head. The aroma is big and sweet. Malty and sugary. Butter and hop resign. The flavor is mostly toffee or caramelish. Pretty bitter, but I didn’t get the hoppy flavor I was looking for. Very rich palate.
The really isn’t what I was expecting from a bottle with a big hop cone.