Out of the Cellar: Kitchen Sink Barleywine

I recently stumbled upon a box of homebrew that I'd been cellaring for quite some time. Nearly three years, to be exact. I'd kind of forgotten about it, so finding the box was a pleasant surprise.

Half the fun was deciphering my markings on the caps. I'm sure it made perfect sense to me at the time. Three years on, not so much.

The first beer I deciphered was a bottle of my Kitchen Sink Barleywine. Let's see what happened over the years.

First off, the beer is as bitter as ever. I was expecting that side of the beer to dial back, but that doesn't seem to be the case. However, the hop aroma has become much more subdued. The pine is still there, but the citrus has mostly faded. With much of the hop aroma out of the way, the biggest development in the nose is a prevalent mix of toffee and tobacco. They give the beer an almost English Barleywine character.

Once in the mouth, more changes are in store. The aforementioned bitterness still hits right away, but the hop flavor is more pine and anise than citrus. The toasty character of the malt has done almost a complete 180 and become steeped in toffee. This is very interesting to me, as the beer has zero crystal malt in the grain bill. Victory and English Brown are the only specialty grains, so I'm guessing the sweetness developed from the long boil. The assertive hop flavors in the beer's infancy probably masked it.

One thing that hasn't changed is that this is very much a sipping beer. It still has a very dense body and an alcohol warmth that tell you to slow down.

My final thought is that I'm really happy I stumbled upon my box of beer. I'll be trotting out other beers from it soon.