strong beer session #1: barleywine
Monday, December 14th, 2009work and the holidays has been cramping my blogging style as of late, so my apologies for the less-than-daily postings. hopefully this week we’ll get back on track!
last friday the overcarbed.com team (me and AP) hosted our first strong beer session, inspired by the holiday season.
- we focused on barleywine, one of my personal favorite styles and a great way to warm up during these cold months.
- after procuring barleywine-centric foods such as stilton cheese, savory sausages, and some sweet desserts, bottles began to get cracked and the taps started pouring.
- the lineup was pretty varied, with many states (and a few countries) being represented. the brews included:
- 2009 flying dog double dog
- 2008 hair of the dog doggie claws
- 2008 avery old jubilation
- 2008 rogue double dead guy
- 2008 mikkeller big worse
- 2008 flying dog horn dog
- 2008 full sail old boardhead
- 2008 dogfish head 120 minute IPA
- 2008 beer valley highway to ale
- 2008 moylan’s old blarney
- the session peaked with a three year flight (2007-2009) of lagunitas’ brown shugga, and was followed by a bomber of my own 2006 homebrew barleywine and CB’s 2008 homebrew barleywine.
- I also had my 8-month belgian date barleywine on draft for people to sip between tastings.
- crowd favorites included the doggie claws, the ’07 brown shugga, and my ’06 homebrew (yes!). an honorable mention went out to the 120 minute, which drank like a liqueur and had everybody talking (at 20% abv it was easy to see why). I wish I had another one to put down for about 5 years…
- overall, there was great company, beers, and food. look for individual reviews of standout brews from the above list in the future.