Traquair 900

Brewed by Traquair
Style: Barley Wine
Innerleithen, Borders, Scotland

Serve in Snifter

11.2 oz bottle. Just clear chestnut brown with some beige suds. Nose is fig, cider vinegar, chocolate and oak. Medium body with a tang. Slightly sticky. Taste is toffee, scotch, vanilla, almond and raisin. Dry finish with charred wood and sour apricot. Nicely balanced rustic brew.

11.2 ounce bottle, 2007 vintage, best before March 2017. Served in a snifter, the beer pours a cola brown color with a half inch tan head that went away quickly. There’s also a decent amount of lacing. Aroma is very malty, it smells like caramel, raisins, molasses, and brown sugar. The taste is pretty much the same as the aroma, but with some booze noticable. Also, the taste isn’t as strong as the aroma would indicate. Mouthfeel/body is medium with low carbonation, however it seems a bit thin. It’s not as rich as I expected it to be. I think the drinkability is good, it’s a good sipping brew. Overall I think it’s a good beer, although I think this could use some more age on it.

Bottle. Pours a brune body with a tan head. Sweet malty body with rich etoh latent fruits, dark fruits. Some toasted malt, hints of salt, caramel, and raisins. Sweet and chewy with some light licorice and some toasted malt. A very nice ale.

Very dark brown with a small greyish head. Aroma is a bit sirupy with brown malts, dark fruit and wet wood. Flavour is full, sweet and a bit hot with notes of nuts, caramell, light chocolate and a overall brown sweetish vibe. Ends on a sweet malty note. Medium bodied with light but sharp carbonation. Quite good but a bit too heavy for its own good.

Filtered cola, nice head. Sweet. Not complex. Full body, little fizz. Nice, not special. Purchased in Ølkonsortiet

Bottle from Olbutikken. Dark clear cola, frothy beige head. Old, bit musky nose with little butter, faint salmiak and madeira. Flavor is earthy licorice, leather, same madeira-like dried fruits. Finisher with long, slighty tannic old fruitiness, earthy herb bitterness and butter. A bit too hot for me, but still nicely powerful and warming. Lush mouthfilling carbonation, nearly full bodied palate. I guess it’s the same with all the Traquair brews, old world flavors with modern filtration and mouthfeel, why not just let the beer live?

33cl bottle from Bacchanalia, Cambridge - rating #1700. Opaque reddish brown with a film of tan head; rich spicy aroma with vinous malts; luscious fruity flavour with raisins, figs and dates all well soaked in alcohol to start, but also rather salty, peaty and smoky - reminding me of an Islay malt whisky. The finish is long and mellow, as befits a "sipping" beer like this.

A nose of roasted malts, julmust and clove. Taste is of spices, clove, raisins, anis, walnuts and chocolate. It’s salty, yeasty, vinous and malty. Finish is alcoholic and dry. There is a slight sensation of metallic bitterness in the taste as a whole. OK, so this is clearly not your typical BW. The strategy is obviously not to brew a subtle, balanced type of beer here, but rather to pack as much taste as you can into the tiny 33 cl bottle. The result is a fairly complex and interesting creation, but the over-the-top mindset is not my cup of tea when it comes to these types of brews. As with North Coasts Brother Thelonious, a heavy taste of fermented raisins paired with a robust sweetness makes this beer less enjoyable than it might have been if the brewers held back a little.