ingoogni
nl
314 Posts

Once a month we have our home brewers guild evening. The programme is simple, tasting home brews discussing them, a presentation on a subject, more tasting. Last time the bar crew got hold of a few US beers and at my table we decided to go for the Barley Wine.

Opening the bottle, the first sniff, the first frowns from the experienced tasters. The approximate average brewing experience at the table, I think, was close to 20 years.

The poor, beautiful colour, oily, good head, sniff. Again frowns, almost everywhere at the table. My comment at that moment "did they forget the malt"? It smelled like candy syrup/caramel, extremely sweet, almost no hop aroma, almost no malt. Could have been a Quad gone wrong minus the yeast profile.

The first sip. Thick, oily, slick, very sweet, candy & caramel, some bitterness and hope aroma, very faint maltiness. The caramel overpowered everything. It was plain awful, 8 of 10 didn't finish their glass, no one finished their bottle. Everybody was quite shocked.

One remark I recall was "brewed according to a style guide without knowing what an (English) Barley Wine tastes like". I looked up the BJCP guide and if the brewer used that he completely missed the point by putting all emphasis on toffee caramel.

Further investigating I looked what the tickers at ratebeeradvocate and similar sites had to say. The beer gets high scores for quality taste and true to style. Now I'm completely confused, how can that be? Ok, there always is a strong bias to big beers and this is certainly one of them, but still ...?

Is it brewed only once a year? Are there changes in grist per brew? Is it a one off error?

I'd be interested in your comments.

Oh, the beer was Horn Dog Barley Wine Style Ale - Flying Dog Brewery





Posted 34 days ago.

rayfound
Charter Member
Riverside, CA
313 Posts

Beer advocate and rate beer reviews are somewhere between counterproductive and totally fucking worthless in my opinion. 



Posted 34 days ago.

chino_brews
Charter Member
Eden Prairie, MN
301 Posts

I'm not surprised.

First of all, Flying Dog has a name in beer circles that exceeds the reach of their distribution because they are pretty good at promoting themselves and being "shocking". For example, their flagship beer is a Belgian-style IPA called "Raging Bitch" (not that great), and their second-leading beer is a oyster stout called "Pearl Necklace" (shocking, right?)  Flying Dog get mid-90 scores on one of the beer rating sites. The one that has "the Bros" rating beers is the one I like -- I don't know if it is ratebeer.com or beeradvocate,com -- because it seems like those brothers have a good palate, and I seem to recall they panned every one of Flying Dog's beers. Personally I haven't been too impressed with any of their beers except a special release weizenbock or wheat wine (I forget what it was called), which was amazing.

Generally, in the U.S., craft breweries are putting out way too many special release beers, and most of them are mediocre at best. The economics of selling 750 ml or 22 oz. bottles are amazing compared to any other packaged product.

Some great breweries have one special release per year (Surly Darkness, Thre Floyd's Dark Lord, Cigar City Hunapuha, etc.), maybe two. Other great breweries can churn out multiple special-release product like excellent sour beers because they are brewing years in advance and blending, or because they have no regular beers. But generally, speaking, there are too many middling craft brewers in the U.S. who are putting out special releases once every month or two, and they are special only in the sense of how much they are a waste of money.




Posted 34 days ago.

ingoogni
nl
314 Posts

Thanks.



Posted 34 days ago.