Sweetwater Donkey Punch!

Bottle shared by yobdoog (thanks!). Pours amber with little head. Very hoppy aroma, mostly grapefruit with a caramel background. Taste is pretty well-balanced between the hops and malt, some more of the grapefruit in there as well. Slightly sticky palate and a light hoppy finish. Decent stuff, though certainly not mind-blowing.

Thanks to yobdoog for sharing. Deep amber coloured brew. Very bright hoppy/minty flavour over rich pale malts. Loads of fresh spicy hops. Light fruitiness in the back. Finishes with some grapefruity flavour that isn’t really there in the aroma. Pretty by the numbers, but I quite like it nonetheless.

Bottle shared by Trevor. Pine hop aroma covers caramelly malts and not much else. Flavor has a pale hoppiness with a thin body, and light old malts. Close to style but boring. I’m getting sick of beers like this.

Bottle: Light orange pour with a white film. Piney hop aroma, fresh and resinous. Medium body with lots of minty character in the flavor from the hops. Sweet and candyish hints as well. Has a smooth piney finish. A nice hoppy/minty Barley Wine.

Seems to be more of a DIPA than a barleywine.Heavy hops, big resin, grapefruit and orange. Nice big frothy, off-white head. Color was amber/orange and rather murky. Can’t taste the alcohol ro much in th eway of maltiness. This is really easy drinking. I’ll put some in the cellar and see how they are in a year or two.

Packaged in a massive one liter bottle shaped like a SaturnV rocket with narcissistic label hype, and filled to within a half inch of the swing-top cap. Pours hazy cinnabar with slo-mo bubbles and puffy beige foam; sticky lace forms a rugged Antarctic panorama. Hoppy nose, citric and “green”, that smells strongly of sourdough and fresh-felled pinetree. Decidedly unbeerlike flavor… powdered iced-tea-with-artificial-lemon-flavor, Kool-Aid, peach, and peppermint. Alcohol taste is well hidden and clean. Cliched Pinesol finish. Mouthfeel: barely medium-full, sugary, and creamy with ethanol. The aftertaste swells to a cherry-chocolate bitterness, then fades to lime jello and high octane heat. Not very complex or unique; there is a superficial, single-track focus on fruity hops without any supporting malt or yeast character, and the beer quickly becomes trite, even boring.

1 L. bottle. Thanks to Dan! Very attractive nose, complex and intriguing, with notes of grapefruit, orange, brown sugar, malt toast, pine, fresh herbs, peppery spices and a faint waft of alcohol. Hazy light-medium amber color with a fine, slight head. Flavor profile is unfortunately a bit of a letdown after that aroma, with a wash of harsh bitterness and watery, thin, toasty, grainy, dry maltiness. Some citrus and pine comes through, along with a strong dosage of alcohol and an accompanying fiery finish. So close.

Bottle shared by Dansting at theisti’s Holiday Tasting on 12/28/07. Pours a deep orange-red with a thin wispy skin that reduces to a small ring of beige bubbles clinging to the edge of the glass. The nose is a huge, sweet, malty front with notes of dark fruit and nice, big, citrus hops. Medium-bodied and oily (almost flat) on the tongue, with a bitter hopped finish. Sweet, slick and malty up front with piny, citrus hops bringing some balance to the finish. This is a nice and hoppy, yet fairly mellow, barley wine. Thanks for sharing this one with us, Dan!