Jean and I drowning in 26 pounds of whole-leaf Horizon and Galena hops

This Thursday at 5 pm we’ll be tapping the ’09 batch of our Golden Barleywine.  This beer by the way, isn’t a barleywine at all.  I just called it that because when I first brewed it I didn’t know what else you’d call a 10% alcohol hop bomb.  This was before the days when Double IPAs had their own category.  Also because I was inspired to brew this beer at a barleywine festival.

It was at the 1997 Split Thy Skull barleywine festival, then hosted by the now expatriated Jim Anderson.  I wasn’t even a professional brewer yet.  Just an eager homebrewer and a server at the original Dock St. who hassled the brewers daily to let him scrub the floors in the brewery for free.  I was diligently working my way through the list of rich, malty, high alcohol beers when I came across one I didn’t recognize.  It was from Big Hole Brewery in Montana.  Jim had a knack for getting beers at his events that weren’t normally available in our market.

I stepped up and ordered one and the bartender handed me a (what??) glass of bright golden liquid.  The beer geek in me scoffed at the breach of style guidelines.  Barleywines are supposed to be dark!  The one we brewed at Dock Street was black!  But what the hell, I’d already paid for it.  I raised the beer to my lips and it woke me up and set the groundwork for the beer I still brew 12 years later at Iron Hill.

This beer was dry and wonderfully bitter with a huge American hop aroma and flavor.  I remember thinking it was one of the best beers I’d ever tasted.  Looking back, it also may have just been the fact that it was incredibly refreshing to have something dry and bitter after a morning of drinking sweet chewy brews.  Either way it was the one beer that stood out to me that day.  Right then and there I thought “when I’m a professional brewer and I make a barleywine, its going to be golden and hoppy”.

I’ve never been to Big Hole Brewery and I haven’t had one of their products since that morning in a dive bar in the basement of an old Sugar Refinery.  I even did a little googling before writing this post and it doesn’t appear as though they have a website.  The label above was the only graphic I could find related to the brewery and I don’t think the beer it adorns has anything to do with what I tasted back then.  I did find a couple of Beer Advocate and Pub Crawler reviews though, so hopefully that means they’re still around and making great beer. 

So anyway I’ll be releasing this beer on Thursday for our Mug Club Renewal Party.  I’ll also be tapping a two year old firken of the same beer.  Should be an interesting comparison.

So if you’re in the mug club come out and renew.  If you’re not come out anyway and enjoy a Golden Barleywine (or whatever you want to call it).  By the way, if you come to Iron Hill with any sort of frequency and you’re not in the mug club you may be crazy.  Check it out.

The mug club renewal will begin at 5 pm.  We’ll be putting some appetizers out around 5:30 and raffling off some prizes at 7:30.  Mug club members will also be able to take home both their 2008 and 2009 mugs that evening.

I look forward to seeing all of you there!

Cheers,
Chris