{"id":2203,"date":"2010-12-07T09:30:03","date_gmt":"2010-12-07T15:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.guysdrinkingbeer.com\/?p=2203"},"modified":"2021-08-26T12:17:20","modified_gmt":"2021-08-26T17:17:20","slug":"from-the-cellar-schlafly-reserve-barleywine-3-year-vertical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guysdrinkingbeer.com\/from-the-cellar-schlafly-reserve-barleywine-3-year-vertical\/","title":{"rendered":"From The Cellar: Schlafly Reserve Barleywine 3 Year Vertical"},"content":{"rendered":"
Schlafly says:<\/p>\n
“Schlafly Barleywine is aged on new Missouri oak. The wood has a medium toast, which helps to caramelize the sugars in the oak and adds a nutty character to the beer as it soaks into the wood.”<\/em><\/p>\n <\/a><\/em>Schlafly Reserve Barleywine Style Ale Karl:<\/strong> Ryan had been teasing and tempting us with the Schlafly Reserve Barleywine for a while. Seriously, you should see the emails he sends us where he just lists what he\u2019s got in the cellar and then tells us when he thinks he\u2019s going to break them out and we can be there for it if we want. And then I set Outlook Reminders and iCal updates and still I don\u2019t drink as much cellared beer as I should be. Which is all my fault. So it was imperative that I sat down at Twisted Spoke with the Guys and our friend Cliff, who is also the owner, which is pretty handy.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also handy that we had a 4th drinker on hand for this vertical; if we didn\u2019t we\u2019d have to yank someone out of the crowd and pour beer down their throat. Seriously, this was a lot of well-aged and cellared barleywine, as you can see from the photos, and were we to drink all of them one-per-person the rest of this post would just read \u201cI DONT KNOW THEY’RE ALL GOOD I HAVE HAD TOO MUCH OF THEM THO.\u201d<\/p>\n Thankfully, we remained moderately able to process our thoughts. These are mine.<\/p>\n I had visions of Old Guardian dancing through my head in the runup to this vertical. You\u2019ll recall* that when we sat down with the Stone OG<\/a> it was crazy hops, grapefruits, citrus, syrup and a lot of booze? And there were plenty of differences between these beers as well? Yeah, that didn\u2019t happen here. At all.<\/p>\n All three years were seriously sweet. You can tell the differences between the beers by their shading, with the \u201807<\/strong> backing off to the lightest tan, and the \u201809<\/strong> being darker and having a little more ruby to the color. I got zero aroma off of any of these beers in the glasses, and just a hint of something in the bottle just letting me know that there was beer in there. Without a fresh example on hand, it\u2019s hard to tell just how much it falls off in the first year.<\/p>\n These three years were also amazingly sweet, with progressively increasing amounts of caramel, vanilla and cream soda complexity with nuttiness in the background, and a nice long burn of booze or bourbon (which melded with the oakiness) on the end in the \u201907<\/strong> and no tail in the \u201809<\/strong>. The only hints of bitterness were found in the \u201809<\/strong> but was still very sweet. I barely recognized these as what I thought of as a barleywine.<\/p>\n I was further surprised to find that as these aged they actually seemed to brighten up in flavor and sparkle a little more than the year previous, with the \u201807<\/strong> being almost pristine, light and having the longest lingering alcohol flavor on the palate. The \u201809<\/strong> was murky by comparison but not to an extreme – in fact, the change between all three years was very, very subtle.<\/p>\n Overall, this was totally not what I expected. I suppose I\u2019ve gotten used to comparing cellared stouts<\/a>, where they mellow out and settle down. This went from thick and dark to brighter and lighter. Surprise! I\u2019d love to get my hands on a fresh bottle, as I imagine the most changes happen in the first year.<\/p>\n *Hey, remember when we were writing these posts like we were all in the same room and it was a conversation? I\u2019m gonna pick that up again for this review. Ryan, why don\u2019t you take the next stab at these.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nAmerican Barleywine, 10.2% ABV
\n<\/em><\/p>\n