Tonight's beer: Sierra Nevada Bigfoot (2014)
Citrus (mainly grapefruit) and pine, backed by flowers and grass. Toasty-bready caramel sweetness crowded right behind. Hints of vanilla and whiskey, maybe some brandy or rum. Background impressions of dried fruit (mainly figs and dates), nuts, toffee, spice. Complexly bittersweet throughout.
Thick, chewy, resinous, syrupy-sticky; decently carbonated. Not particularly clean, but drying and cleansing and scrubbing to the point of scouring. Maybe a little on the pillowy-soft side. Some moderate boozy warmth.
Not necessarily the first American Barleywine (for example, Anchor's Old Foghorn may predate this) but probably the beer that defined the American approach to the style—especially as relatively fresh as this. Intense as hell, and impressively complex; very well-integrated but needing more time in the bottle to get to balanced. Plenty drinkable, in a sipping-beer way. A nice beer to keep around to see how it ages (though we don't have room to keep it more than two years back).
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| Sierra Nevada Bigfoot (2014) |
Citrus (mainly grapefruit) and pine, backed by flowers and grass. Toasty-bready caramel sweetness crowded right behind. Hints of vanilla and whiskey, maybe some brandy or rum. Background impressions of dried fruit (mainly figs and dates), nuts, toffee, spice. Complexly bittersweet throughout.
Thick, chewy, resinous, syrupy-sticky; decently carbonated. Not particularly clean, but drying and cleansing and scrubbing to the point of scouring. Maybe a little on the pillowy-soft side. Some moderate boozy warmth.
Not necessarily the first American Barleywine (for example, Anchor's Old Foghorn may predate this) but probably the beer that defined the American approach to the style—especially as relatively fresh as this. Intense as hell, and impressively complex; very well-integrated but needing more time in the bottle to get to balanced. Plenty drinkable, in a sipping-beer way. A nice beer to keep around to see how it ages (though we don't have room to keep it more than two years back).
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