As I was preparing my 'wish list' for the barley wine tasting I was to host in Los Angeles (please see this month's feature for details), a newsletter from Juneau, Alaska's Alaskan Brewing Company happened across my desk. In it was a story about something called Big Nugget, a barley wine which the brewery produced in 2001 and aged for a year-and-a-half in an old mine shaft at 55 degree Fahrenheit (12.75 degrees Celsius). My attention was caught. I made a call.
Hats off to Kristi Monroe, Alaskan's indomitable p.r. director, for securing a small keg of the barley wine and shipping it down to southern California for the tasting. But now I had the problem of placing within a flight of eighteen barley wines a beer I had never tasted and knew little about. So I picked the third position, mainly so that I would have a strong palate still when it came time to try it.
Of course, standing in front of a crowd of people with a glass in one hand and a microphone in the other is hardly the best way to taste a beer, but I had few options. What I sampled was an impressive ale with a wonderfully rich, fruity malt-accented body up front and a surprising hit of smokiness in the back. Had the creators of Alaskan Smoked Porter held a little smoked malt back for their barley wine? A quick check of the spec sheet, which I must admit I had not read beforehand, revealed that yes, they had, including with it some crystal malt and Chinook and East Kent Goldings hops. The overall effect was that of a barley wine of relatively modest apparent strength (9% alcohol by volume), crafted more in the malty tradition of the Brits than the hop-dominated American style.
In short, it was one hell of a beer. One that is worthy of a few more trips to that mine shaft and, if I may be so bold, much wider distribution.
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