Tasting: March 00, 2012
Style: Barley Wine

Introducing “Knickerbocker – Lin-sanity — I mean “Weyerbacher – Insanity”. Sorry – couldn’t resist. Actually, there was a Knickerbocker beer brewed by Jacob Ruppert Brewing. For those old enough, Ruppert was a regular sponsor of Yankee baseball in the 50’s and 60’s – but the brewery ceased operations in the mid-1970’s. I suspect that if Jacob Ruppert Brewing was still in business today that they’d be cranking out some play on the latest pop culture/sports icon Jeremy Lin on the Knickerbocker label.

I’ve been on a real barley wine run over the last few weeks. I like the style and I like what brewers are doing to tweak this English-style classic. I like malty or semi-sweet beers and I like rich flavor and full-body and I’d call those atypical for a barley wine. If you’ve read some of my recent posts, you’ll note that some breweries are really hopping up these barley wines. I’m not sure that you’d still be able to call it a barley wine, since the intended style features primarily grains. They call the hopped version – what else — American-style.

This one checks in at a healthy 11.1% alcohol by volume and the label notes that it was aged in oak barrels. Smells sweet — first sip gives me figs, caramel and vanilla. Really rich — a bit fizzy at first – but that settles down, but it is a little boozy. I like that they’ve stuck to the English-style sans any hop presence. My lips are so sticky. Really nice – almost Lin-credible – 89 points.