Barleywine by Bryan Gros

The third annual barleywine festival was held last week at the Toronado pub on Haight Street in San Francisco. Thirty-two of the mightiest of beers went head-to-head, including the stalwarts of the style, Bigfoot and Old Foghorn, which took the top two places at last year’s Great American Beer Festival. The distinguished panel of judges included John Pyles, Bob Jones, Paul Marshall, Bob Hight, Martin Lodahl, Pete Slossburg, and Dave Keene, who runs Toronado. It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it! I managed to try at least a sip of each beer, and it was quite an experience.

Barleywine is a broad style, and the range of beers served proved that. The main characteristic in common, of course, was the high alcohol content; after that, they varied quite a bit. The homebrewing guidelines from the American Homebrewers Association (AHA) require that barleywines be, among other requirements, light copper and dark brown in color, have low to assertive bitterness, and minimal to very high hop aroma and flavor. Well, that narrows it down!

The judges were quite partial to "assertive bitterness". The 1995 batch of Bigfoot took first place, and no one will ever accuse the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company of skimping on hops. It was copper colored and had a lot of body and malt to balance the high bitterness. Bigfoot has quite an alcohol kick in both the nose and the finish.

Second place, perhaps a surprise, was Code Blue from Pacific Coast Brewing Company in downtown Oakland. This beer was a bit smoother, maltier and more balanced than Bigfoot, but still with a definite hop bitterness. I would have voted for this beer for first place.

In third place was the 1994 version of Jolly Roger from Lind Brewing Company in San Leandro, and the '95 Jolly Roger took fourth. Jolly Roger, our annual Christmas gift from brewer Roger Lind, is another bitter and alcoholic barleywine.

There were, of course, other very good barleywines to try. The ones that stood out, however, were the ones I didn't like. A couple of the beers were very malty and sweet; one could only be described as syrup. I found that my personal bias was toward the beers that were fairly bitter, and I had no complaint with the judges' decisions.

Last year's winner was Old Dipsea from Marin Brewing Company, and Marin had three batches of Old Dipsea entered in this year's competition. I liked the oldest of the batches, but the most recent batch had a distinct raspberry-like fruity flavor which seemed off.

The barleywine from St. Stan’s Brewing Company in Modesto was quite sweet and very dark. The roasted barley flavor made it more of a thin imperial stout than a barleywine.

Pike Place brewery, in Seattle, had two versions of Old Bawdy, both of which contained peat-smoked malt. The peat flavor was definitely evident and only detracted from the flavor.

John Barleycorn, from Mad River Brewing Company, had a medicinal flavor which I didn't care for.

Just to complicate the tasting, the complexity of barleywines means that the flavor changes quite a bit with temperature. Some of the maltier beers became more balanced as they warmed up.

I think that Old Foghorn is probably my favorite barleywine, but it will probably never win in this competition. At 7.9% abv, Old Foghorn had the lowest amount of alcohol in the competition. In addition, it is quite balanced, with neither the maltiness nor the bitterness standing out. With so many other beers to be judged, Foghorn doesn't have anything which causes it to stand out in the minds of the judges. In addition, when this beer warmed up, it was still balanced and smooth. Best of all, if you haven't seen it yet, Mr. Maytag is now offering Old Foghorn in bottles again (for a limited time, due to the special setup of the bottling line) so rush out and get some!