'Old Guardian' serves up high quality barley wine

By: Mike Partel

Posted: 4/24/09

Beer lovers are often called arrogant, conceited and snobbish. This may be true, but we know what we like. We prefer quality - quality ingredients, quality taste, quality packaging. It's not our fault that we get a little condescending when beer is involved. It's a passion. These days, numerous brewers across the country feel this passion. They feed this passion, their friends' and neighbors' passion, and would feed their neighbors' mothers' passion if they could. They do this not so they can make millions of dollars but to spread their love of beer. So it is with such heartfelt sentiments that we travel to San Diego and the Stone Brewing Company, which gives us Old Guardian Barley Wine Style Ale 2009.

Stone was founded back in 1996, when beer aficionados Steve Wagner and Greg Koch got together with a dream for better beer. For seven years, they had been running into each other and discovering how their tastes for beer fell in line with one another. Eventually, they came to the logical conclusion - a brewery - and got to work on the flagship Stone Pale Ale. Drink one. But, this is not our topic of discussion. The granddaddy of malty beers, the barley wine, holds that place today.

Barley wine is a style of beer that utilizes large amounts of malt to pack a high concentration of alcohol into a relatively small beverage. Technically, the true name is "barley wine-style ale" referring to the fact that it is a beverage of wine-like strength, brewed as an ale from barley. Originating in Britain in the early nineteenth century, they were exquisitely sipped from a glass while puffing on a fine cigar, or taken with dessert. Traditional English variations focus on the malt and fruity esters while the American equivalent, like most American versions of English beers, pack far more hops in the bottle, tipping the scale away from malty.

Best served in a snifter for that special aromatic release, barley wines are, as mentioned, a special occasion or dessert beer. The excessive residual sugar, the high alcohol, and the fruity characteristics commonly found in them are too powerful a combination to knock back after work or with lunch, but, I digress - back to the glass! Snifters are excellent for this style because they do not draw attention to the darker and often cloudier appearance of the beer, but focus on the slow sipping and flow of the aromas to your waiting nostrils. The narrowed lip on the glass inhibits this, if it is a purely Brandy snifter, but some designed for beer widen more than usual. The main reason you go for this glass though? Elegance. You are sipping delicious dessert. Try to make it feel a little fancy, won't you?

Ok, on with the review. The 22-ounce bomber poured nicely into my snifter as a cloudy, darker amber color with a negligible head formation that was slightly off-white. The aroma that resulted included such esters as citrus (it is an American recipe after all), plum, caramel and toasted barley. It was pretty standard really - pleasant and rich, without overpowering your senses.

After taking a sip, I found a great combination of flavors. There were notes of plum, honey, caramel, citrus, a bit of wood and mild alcohol. With very little after bite, this 11.3 percent hulk went down smoothly and was not overly sweet. I've had barley wines before that really just make you feel as though they are actually cheaply made wine, but this was indeed something you could just relax with. I could picture someone sitting down with some friends, on a stormy night in front of a roaring fire with a glass of this.

This was a well-made beer from high quality ingredients, just as the brewers hoped for. My only problem with it was that I did not have longer to cellar it. Even though it is great when still young, it would have been far superior with an older vintage. It's a strong beer, after all, with flavors that meld more and more over time, aging like its fruit-based counterparts. I would recommend this to anyone who has little taste for over-the-top hop bombs, likes to appreciate beer rather than pound it, or anyone who enjoys a fine wine but would like to venture into the grain part of the world with a good, solid beer.