Barley wine is undoubtedly a style given to excess. In terms of the raw ingredients used, the limits to which equipment is taxed during the brewing process, and the resulting gravities and levels of alcohol evident in the finished product, there is no other style as full of itself. It therefore isn’t surprising to find a certain amount of disagreement as to what constitutes a proper example. There are, in fact, a number of proper versions of the style, each with historical and geographical precedent, and each matching the original qualities. It should also be taken into account that, given the pride with which brewers regard these crowning beers of their achievement, a certain amount of hyperbole—and even falsehood—must be sorted through in the digestion and assimilation of all that information (and all that alcohol). It is certainly possible to overdo a style that beckons to the courageous. Many among us, in fact, are well aware that some finish impossibly sweet; that some are overblown with hop bitterness and the aromatic, often vegetal character of finishing hops; and that some bear an alcoholic content way past mellow. No disrespect is meant to brewers giving it their all in the crafting of an ale calculated to administer the knockout punch. However, an even hand is a necessary conceptual tool to apply in both the formulation of a successful recipe and the proper and patient rendering of the brew.
Just as the nineteenth- and twentieth-century Burton and London versions of strong ale and barley wine varied in taste, British and American types of barley wine need to be distinctly defined and credited for their various flavor interpretations. The British are placed at something of a disadvantage owing to a tax system which fiscally punishes producers of stronger beers. The Free Mash Tun Act of 1880 began the taxation of beer based on starting gravity and the resulting alcohol content. The situation was worsened by the rationing and increased taxes during and following the world wars. The result is that in many cases today beers not sufficiently big and strong, historically, are being called barley wines. We remember a conversation with an accomplished British brewer, given to the crafting of iconoclastic and excellent beers from a small facility in Yorkshire, who boasted that yes, indeed, he made a barley wine—of 1.057 starting gravity. Well, a fine beer it may have been, but at such a gravity it simply cannot be considered a barley wine. Other English examples bear names like Old Headcracker, implying a heedless strength sufficient to X the eyes, but all too often the appellation is wishful and relative, calculated mainly to rise above the best bitters of pedestrian—even driving—potency.
Simply put, barley wine is the biggest beer you can brew. To say that something less demanding deserves to be in the company of ales for which the appropriate trouble was taken is to diminish the style entirely. There are, to be sure, a number of beers brewed in the British Isles that do rise to the heights required of barley wines deserving of the name, and we pay them homage. We feel strongly that for a beer to be termed a barley wine, a starting gravity of at least 1.080 should be achieved, with no less than 8.5% ABV. Even setting the levels this low is fairly liberal. Consider Bass No. 1, to many ways of thinking the barley wine of record, which bore (until its demise in 1995) a starting gravity in excess of 1.100.
Other examples include Lee’s Harvest Ale from Manchester, Gale’s Prize Old Ale from Horndean, and, though its flavor complexity seems to have suffered over the years, Tennant’s Gold Label. Some would maintain that beer styles, like language, change with the times, and for some styles this may reasonably hold true. But barley wine is the biggest, most excessive of the ales and should not be diminished by marketers or brewers admitting anemic beers to such a rarefied category.
Parameters of strength and alcoholic content having been expressed, there are only a few other requirements for barley wines. To differentiate barley wines from darker old ales and heady imperial stouts in the same range of alcohol, the style suggests that while a barley wine does not necessarily need to be pale, it should not be opaque. Held to the light, it may be dim or russet, even burnt in color, but it must be seen through. It should consist of all barley malt, or barley malt with sugars and malt syrups employed to augment gravity and perhaps impart, or diminish, color. Sugars and other syrups, of course, bring their own qualities to a brew and must be judged and used with a knowledge of their effect. But they have their purpose, especially for the small-scale brewer concerned with the limitations of equipment.
Cane, corn, or even uncomplicated malt sugar can, when used in excess, deprive the finished product of the complexity that separates a true barley wine from a mere exercise in octane. The use of other grains or adjuncts can only muddle presentation. A faintly persistent fashion among American West Coast brewers over the past several years has been to introduce wheat as a major fermentable material. These “wheat wines” have not necessarily claimed to be barley wines (and we have tasted excellent beers crafted under this rubric), but it should be clear that inclusion of wheat or oats or spice spins formulation and execution of barley wines off into a possibly delicious, but separate, world.
Given the age at which most barley wines are intended to be drunk, clarity is an issue that should mainly take care of itself. Over time, even unfiltered, unfined, or otherwise unclarified beer is likely to settle out nearly as bright as if these treatments were employed. In the case of stubbornly unflocculent yeast, however, measures may need to be taken (see chapter 4). Absolute clarity is not something to be insisted upon, but care should be taken in the serving and dispensing of long-aged beers so as not to disturb the sediment, or lees, so the beer can show itself best.
With hops, balance is the key, of course. A roaringly hoppy barley wine which teeters atop a spindle of malt character is no more appropriate to the style than a lubricious syrup of prodigious starting (and finishing) gravity. American, British, New Zealand, or Australian hop varieties seem most appropriate to the style, but we see no reason that an accent of German or Czech character would set a barley wine beyond subjective limits. Aroma hops can be heady and hearty, or they can be barely there.
Many barley wines are crafted with the idea that by the time they are consumed, a hop character perceived in the young beer as aggressive will have diminished to a fine balance. This is part of the trick, of course. Familiarity with the bittering hop used and its diminution over time is one of the marks of the accomplished brewer of barley wine, or any aged beer. Other metamorphic qualities, such as the continued degradation of slow-fermenting sugars and the breakdown of unstable material in the malt component, must be taken into account. But the gradual marrying of the mercurial hop and the stolid barleycorn is a key to the brewer’s art.
It isn’t an absolute rule, of course, but it does seem that a beer of this size can best be appreciated with at least ninety days of aging. Given the vagaries of packaging, especially where home- and small-scale craftbrewers are concerned, a longer aging period is not necessarily better, but with proper packaging control having been achieved (i.e., the minimization of oxygen, appropriate bottle and keg head space, and the reasonable stability of the product at packaging), most barley wines will show improvement over at least a couple of years.
It is no accident that pale barley wines of sufficient stability to withstand (and benefit from) the effects of age were increasingly produced in the early twentieth century. The modern perfection of procedures and increased understanding of the scientific processes involved have made it possible to produce pale beers able to stand up to the aging periods previously associated with the darker “big” beers. One reason for the stability of these darker beers is the forgiving nature of the melanoidin component in dark malts. As George Fix writes in Principles of Brewing Science, “Because dark malts are rich in melanoidins, some dark beers have extraordinary flavor stability” (Fix 1989). This explains historically why the darker big beers were able to stand up to time, and serves to set apart the specifically designated “old” ales of modern times from the paler barley wines.
One might think that the selection of a yeast for producing a barley wine would be a fairly obvious thing. Flavor characteristics, of course, should first be considered. Next, attenuation and alcohol tolerance must be taken into account as the most important mechanical factors. Various tricks are often employed, however, in order to achieve or circumvent the practical considerations (and limitations) inherent in the choice of a particular yeast. A yeast, in short, can be inspired to the task by such treatment as repeated rousing during fermentation and the agitation of the casks in which it has been packaged. An ale yeast able to perform well in all of these areas is the best choice, but often breweries, or homebrewers, make the easy choice and employ either lager or champagne yeasts. These are known to perpetuate the purposeful churn of attenuation, often at the expense of body or ester production essential to the appreciation of a big beer. The choice must therefore be carefully made. Your everyday ale yeast may do the job, and it may not. It is often simply a matter of experimentation to discover this, since in many cases the limits of a particular yeast cannot be known unless they are challenged.
While consistent house flavor can be considered a matter of honor in the production of a family of beers, if the ale yeast to which you are accustomed will not do the job alone, then certainly look elsewhere for something able to perform sufficiently to produce a creditable barley wine. A good place to start might be procuring the same yeast used to produce a high-gravity beer that you like, either through the advice of colleagues or the staff of either a homebrew shop or a yeast lab. Should you run into trouble with attenuation, lager or wine yeasts may be just the ticket to completing a moribund fermentation. However, because of other qualities they can impart—notes of sulfur or over-attenuated “thinness,” as well as over-carbonation through continued cold fermentation—they should not be the primary fermenting agent, and should largely be considered steps of desperation.
Some bacterial activity and/or wild yeast (particularly Brettanomyces and Lactobacillus) may be evident in some barley wines, especially if they have spent time in wood (this was particularly true of the big beers of yore), but this elusive note is not to be insisted upon and is only to be pursued by the intrepid brewer. Even the professional brewers best known for these flavors in their beer do not fully understand the workings of their bacterial cohabitants—they simply are. The world (as well as your regional yeast bank or neighborhood homebrewing supply) contains ale yeasts ready, willing, and able to produce barley wines of note. Find one and let it do what it will.
Condition, or the amount of carbonation evident in the finished beer, is something often ignored where barley wines are concerned, mainly because allowances are often granted beers “of a certain age.” A barley wine of character should not be dismissed simply because it has ceased to dance with a level of effervescence commonly associated with more sprightly and mass-produced beers. It should not, however, be completely dead. Yet this is quite often the case with old casked barley wine—effervescence has been sacrificed for the mellowness, the viscosity, the sugary display.
Allowances can be made, but for reasons associated with long-term conditioning, barley wine is a style that responds well to in-package secondary conditioning. Both cask and bottle conditioning provide the means for an awakening of condition, and the limited yeast activity associated with the process should consume any oxygen present, thereby guarding against stale off-flavors. Extra trouble is involved in the priming of ales which have long lain dormant. Often a measured quantity of active yeast cells must be introduced along with the priming sugar or gyle. But it certainly can be worth it; to render each individual bottle a self-contained atmospheric entity is a labor worthy of these largest of beers. The amount of priming used, of course, is critical in order that the bottles and casks in question may be poured, and not spew energetically out. Some of the best barley wines we have tasted have combined the fruit, the age, and the hop and malt balance, with a gentle yet lively degree of condition. It is not to be demanded, but it can be a particular pleasure.
Recognizing that barley wine exists in a number of interconnected streams, the characteristics of the more prominent of these should be chronicled.
It’s compelling to consider Bass No. 1 the strand that at its ultimate unraveling, in 1995, left the British barley wine scene generally somewhat unbound. Having stood for so long, through a combination of quality, longevity, and corporate soundness, as the example often emulated (and always mentioned), its presence—and absence—resonates throughout the British culture of barley wine brewing. Indeed, in a Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) tasting of barley wines and winter beers as recent as late 1996, Bass No. 1 (as brewed, as it is occasionally, on the small museum system at Bass) took top honors over many other more generally available examples. And having made, in our estimation, the clearest break from the tradition of darker big beers, it occupies a defining space where the development of modern barley wines is concerned.
Bass No. 1’s relative paleness, its single (or sometimes double but never parti-gyle) brewing procedure, and its aromatic and flavor staying power reminiscent of the enduring glow of cognac, maintains a group of standards to which other British brewers of the style must pay attention, if not outright homage. Which isn’t to say that other successful and wonderful barley wines must conform in every way. There are darker barley wines which burn and calm, which send a pleasing display of flavors and aromatic esters across the senses of the drinker. There are ones produced by the parti-gyle system which represent a venerable and serviceable part of tradition. Fuller’s Golden Pride is one of these, less potent runnings resulting in the smaller, but delicious London Pride and Chiswick Bitter.
Mellowness, or a certain softness of flavor, is a watchword for the British version of the style these days, with toasted sugar or caramel arising from either an extended boil or being actually employed as fermentables; the moderate presence of alcohol; and an array of fruity esters including but by no means limited to apricot, cherry, coconut, pineapple, and dried banana. Generally these are not terribly bitter beers, and especially not once typically aged. Hop aroma will similarly diminish with time.
The effects of age, in fact, are the benchmarks of British barley wines. It is not uncommon to detect the characteristics of slight oxidation, though given heightened alcohol and elevated hop levels, this is not necessarily a pejorative. A certain amount of air is essential for the enjoyment of barley wine, as the flavors and effects uncurl from long confinement. We have tasted leaky kegs of barley wine that have admitted air for months before discovery, and been amazed at the beer’s resilience. Barley wine is not invulnerable while aging, but it is more able than most to fend off the attack, and even to incorporate this adversary as an interesting flavor element.
To a point, the same is true of bacterial infiltration. Some of the world’s most notable beers are brewed in some of the world’s dirtiest breweries, but there exists a difference between a comfortable and traditional background of native microflora and simply not taking the trouble to keep things clean. The fact of this paradox should be a marvel, not an excuse for shoddy brew house cleanliness. Naturally, the introduction of oxygen and bacteria are to be guarded against, but with the realities attendant on age and imperfect packaging, the best should be made of an unanticipated situation that may have become interesting.
One doesn’t hear the term mid-Atlantic much anymore, and almost never on the American side of the water. It has been used to describe accents and tendencies calculated to appeal to both English and Americans as at once familiar and somehow, unthreateningly, foreign. Taking elements from each system of expression, the mid-Atlantic idiom and pronunciation is especially identified with news reporters and disc jockeys whose voices are heard around the world. Well, the northeastern American way of making barley wine could be considered a sort of mid-Atlantic version of the style whose poles exist in Britain and along the northwestern coast of the United States. It carries most elements of the British approach—age, mellowness, a usually less-than-robust rate of hop bittering—but, free of the punishing British tax restraints on the production of big beers, it is given to producing barley wines of a size commensurate with the biggest of the West Coast examples. Here and there about the region as well, hops are used with abandon—this is America, after all.
Kalamazoo Brewing Company’s Third Coast Old Ale rates up there in gravity, easily big enough to be a barley wine.
While barley wine in the United States started in California, this style in the Northeast claimed a more direct relation to old ale. This may have something to do with marketing and the labeling requirements that “barley wine” must be qualified with “-style ale,” a cumbersome appellation less romantic and evocative than “old.” A great many barley wines from all quarters, of course, bear the word “old” as part of their name whether they have been aged or not, a bit of brewer’s license as responsive to folksiness and tradition as to history. Just the same, it seems that somehow age began as a firmer prerequisite to northeastern big beer brewing than in other parts of the United States. We remember seeing casks of aged “Winter Warmer,” a barley wine of low effervescence and belly-warming alcohol, sitting atop bars in the Northeast ten and more years ago, when most often West Coast breweries were releasing their seasonal big beers with three months or less of aging. While many of these beers qualify as barley wines (and often are considered so by their brewers), they are frequently dubbed old ales. This is interestingly true at Gale’s of Horndean as well, where though the beer is named Prize Old Ale, the current brewmaster considers it a barley wine.
Three different labels used for George Gale’s Prize Old Ale, a beer deemed a barley wine by its brewer.
We have remarked a certain muddiness of interpretation where the line between barley wine and old ale is drawn, explained away by the notion that the term old ale is really only generic, referring to the maintenance of an old style, like the German term altbier. Old ale as a style may be elusive and misunderstood, but it is named so because of the aging of the beer, and not because of historical uncertainty. This confusion is by no means limited to the East Coast of the United States, but as its biggest and most excessive beers are often named and designated old ales, some discussion of the question is warranted.
Another fact about not just eastern barley wine brewing but craftbrewing in general is that the first brewpubs on the East Coast were started by Englishmen, and were therefore philosophically more responsive to familiar precedent than to the New World standards being set in the wilder and less stylistically respectful West. Readier availability of English cooperage, equipment, and expertise also came into play. This fact, combined with the relative youth of the craftbrewing revolution on the East Coast, would dictate a generally more conservative approach to classic brewing styles.
There are exceptions, however, and as brewers continue to migrate and the movement ages, distinctions blur. Already there are brewers out of regional character providing contrast to consumers eager to become involved in friendly controversy. National and regional beer festivals also provide arenas for comparison, and help keep alive the dialogue that leads both to disagreement and compromise. This is not to imply there is an eastward-creeping manifest destiny of bitterness and aroma, but history does dictate that things will balance.
As Bass No. 1 must be designated the definer of an emergent style in England, Anchor Brewing’s Old Foghorn, from San Francisco, must first be considered when discussing American barley wines. Initially brewed in 1975, it was the earliest barley wine of the craftbrewing movement in America, the one that started all the fuss about big beers here. In its flavor profile, however—pale, malty, but with enough hops to constitute sufficient excess of lupulin—it is to be deemed more a barley wine of the world than a specifically Northwest example of the style.
The Bigfoot of Sierra Nevada, first brewed some years after Old Foghorn first sounded, undoubtedly leaves a bigger imprint on the development of a style peculiar to this geographical quadrant. Every bit as big as Old Foghorn, Bigfoot is less sweet and more completely attenuated, resulting in an increased presence of alcohol and a cleaner palate-effect. This allows its prodigious hop display a reign loved by its adherents and decried by those demanding a more classical balance. It is generally the favorite of brewers in the Northwest, though as one ranges south into California a more marked appreciation for age and lesser attenuation fuels lively discussion around both the pub and the judging tables.
As the barley wine style has spread to other noteworthy breweries of the Northwest, it is most often a similarly fierce hop attack that heads up the list of priorities in the crafting of barley wine. Most of the barley wines produced here are aged; some of them are pronouncedly sweet (BridgePort’s Old Knucklehead comes to mind); they are all big in starting gravity, in the range of the mid-1.090s or more; and they are often on the pale side and aggressively hopped. They are, simply put, the most excessive of a style given to excess.
There are a couple of simple reasons why barley wines in the Pacific Northwest are so very hoppy. One is the proximity of one of the world’s great hop-growing regions. Another is that Seattle and Portland, two of the region’s most prominent brewing centers, both have extremely soft water, allowing the introduction of prodigious amounts of hops without the excessively vegetal astringency that would result in brewing waters of greater mineral content.
There exist a number of other styles of big beer which, though not necessarily claiming to be barley wines, should probably be considered from that perspective as an exercise in definition. The first of these is imperial stout. These ales were brewed in the British Isles, we have all been told, for importation to the Russian Imperial court, where they were enjoyed by czars and such other historic luminaries as Catherine the Great. Certainly big enough to be historically considered a dark barley wine (as does beer expert Michael Jackson), imperial stout has lately been forced to wander an inhospitable landscape of classification. It has over the years been shuttled from category to category in the judging at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF), finally coming to roost in its own separate category. Indeed, in Stout, Michael Lewis considers imperial stout such a break from traditional stout styles that he devotes to it only a brief discussion (Lewis 1995). As the GABF has recognized, it is in fact its own style. Any broader category into which it fits would have to be a fairly generic one devoted to all strong ales, including barley wine.
Like barley wine, imperial stout is a style all but vanished in England (Samuel Smith’s and Courage providing notable exception). Revived and reinterpreted in America, its best-known practitioners include Bert Grant of Yakima Brewing and Malting, Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewing, and John Maier of Rogue Brewing. Grant prescribes that along with complexity, depth of flavor, and an elevated alcoholic strength, an imperial stout must be opaque, the latter guideline suiting us fine in setting it apart from its barley wine cousin. Bass’s P2 Imperial Stout once headed up that brewery’s roster of dark beers, and we have tasted it recently at the Bass Museum Brewery’s pub.
There are a few Belgian beers which lie outside the designations afforded that beer-rich country’s many hefty zymurgic offerings, and that, if sneaked into a barley wine tasting, might stand proud, stylistically speaking. Bush beer in particular, from the Dubuisson Brewery in Leuze, bears a character quite in keeping with British barley wines. At a starting gravity of 1.096 and an alcoholic content of 12% ABV, as well as with its brightness and flavors of caramel and toasted sugar, it belongs more among the English big beers for sale a ferry ride away than in the company of the ponderous beers of its homeland.
Another good example is Stille Nacht, from De Dolle Brouwers in Esen. It is a beer which, despite the decidedly Belgian character of its yeast-related flavor profile, ages very much in keeping with barley wines. Holland as well (De Hemel Brewery in Nijmegen, for example) produces beers in this realm.
Probably a further stretch are the enormous lagers of Germany and Switzerland, most notably Hürlimann’s Samichlaus from Zürich and a couple of examples from Kulmbach, EKU 28 and Kulmbacher Reichelbräu’s Eisbock. Since they are lagers, and bear the typical, if enhanced, flavor and style characteristics of that realm of brewing, few would suggest that they should be considered barley wines. Thomas Hardy Ale, on the other hand, is brewed with a lager yeast, albeit at fermentation temperatures conventionally connected with ales, and while it might be considered irresponsible to categorize it a lager, is it much different to suggest assessment of these Germanic big beers as belonging to the same camp? Samichlaus and EKU 28 are simply monsters by any stripe of interpretation, often vying for world’s strongest beer honors (Thomas Hardy is frequently a combatant as well), but the clarity of their yeast character combined with the bright, syrupy nature of their flavor makes them something decidedly other than the big ales of Britain and America. The process of producing eisbock—prescribing light freezing and the subsequent, alcohol-favoring removal of ice—would in its own right remove it from contention, but as one of the world’s biggest beers it bears mention.
