Gusswerk: Dies Iræ (Austria: Barley Wine: 10.9% ABV)
Visual: Very dark brown to black. Thin greyed head.
Nose: Brandy cream. Buttery shortbread. Black liquorice. Port. Butterscotch.
Body: Fruitcake. Liquorice. Port. Rum soaked raisins. Very smooth. Dried apricot. Tart blueberry. Light chalk. Cola. Werther’s Originals. Vodka. Slight fudge. Pear drops.
Finish: Brandy cream. Fig pudding. Liquorice. Port. Blueberry. Brown bread. Cola. Vodka. Pears.
Conclusion: Ok, this has a lot of liquorice flavor in it. I can deal with that. Not my favorite element in a beer, but not one that causes instant hatred of the entire beer either. It just needs to be used carefully ya know?
Anyway, for all its strength this beer is very smooth – there is a kind of alcohol edge to the flavours, kind of a vodka weight, but no fire or roughness which is impressive. Since this was a 2015 bottling and it is now 2017 its possible that is the aging going to work – I’m not sure if they hold back releases deliberately, or if I was just lucky to get an aged one. Either way it seems to have worked.
As can be guessed from the color in the photo, this works on the darker side of the barley wine scale for flavours. (as a side note – is it just me or do a lot of barley wines seem to do that these days? – I kind of miss the brighter barley wines at the moment.) Obviously it has the heavy liquorice I already mentioned, but also deep ESB like notes such as a fruitcake character, brandy cream, blueberry and port. The strangest thing about this, is that when it all blends together it can taste kind of like alcoholic cola. Another set of words I never thought I would type.
It’s good – not out of the normal range of quality for a barley wine, but good enough. It is also a tad expensive, so it needs to be a bit above just good for it to be worth the price tag unfortunately.
It does have a good range for the most part – tarter notes in the blueberry, obviously the heavy dry liquorice, and even some green fruit fresh pear notes. It is smooth, but with that it also seems to lack a bit of weight to the flavours. Probably part of the old aging trade off. Also in the latter half of the bottles it did seem to tend towards the heavier, drier and less exciting flavours. Another beer where sharing helps it show itself to its best.
So, pretty good, but with some small flaws, the dominance of the liquorice, the lighter flavours due to age and the wearing nature over time – between them I cannot recommend it at going cost – you are really paying for the ceramic bottle – but if you find it at a more reasonable price this is a good barley wine.
Background: Final beer grabbed from Craft Beer Kontor in Hannover, and to many people’s shock, this is not a German beer! Turns out this one is from Austria – now at the time I thought “cool, I’ve not done a beer from Austria before.” Turns out I was mistaken on that one, I have done a couple, still, always good to expand my brewery horizons. I will admit I grabbed this mainly for two reasons 1) Because I haven’t had many barley wines recently and 2) Because the ceramic bottle looked fecking cool. I am shallow. Dies Iræ is apparently a Gregorian chant describing the day of judgment – pretty cool imagery even for an atheist like myself. Anyway, this was fairly expensive – I’m guessing mainly because of the bottle – ah well. Also this, the 2015 edition,was drunk 2017 – and oddly lists on the bottle as 10.9% but on the attached cardboard as 9% abv. Googling suggests the 10.9% is accurate so I’m going with that. Drunk while listening to Praxis: transmutation. I considered going for Gregorian chants, but decided that would be a bit too much dedication to the theme.
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