The Schitz! Barleywine Tasting

Tuesday was the one year anniversary of our cat, Schitzie's, death.

A little less than a year ago, I posted that I would brew up a big Barleywine in her memory. Well, it was brewed up quite a while ago, and has aged for almost a full year. Tuesday night, it was time to try it out.

I had tried The Schitz! Barleywine before Tuesday night though. However back then, the beer had only bulk aged for about a month in the secondary. It was extremely hot flavored, with a very prominent alcohol flavor. Thankfully, after almost a year the beer has really mellowed out.

The Schitz! turned out to be a pretty strange color. A medium brown color that has some strong red and orange highlights. This bottle, which was a large 16 ouncer, didn't have much head retention or carbonation in it. I'll need further research to see if this is just from this bottle, or for the entire batch of beer (oh no!).

The smell of The Schitz! was very malty and caramelly sweet with some fruity esters fairly prominent. The hop aroma and flavor have either aged out of the beer, or just were never present. There's no real way to know since I hadn't tried one till now. The flavor is very similar to the nose. Very malty with lots of caramel flavor and a bit of fruity esters. Overly not bad, but there should be more hop flavor for this to truly be considered an American Barleywine. It can still pretty much pass for an English Barleywine though.

This is still a very strong ale. At somewhere between 10-11% abv, this beer will kick in with just a quarter of it in you. I'll have to make sure to be careful around The Schitz!, she's definitely going to sneak up on me!