Here’s a question for you: Does Garrison own a filter? I know this sounds silly, but I’ve only had two Garrison brews, and they were both unfiltered. The Imperial Pale Ale was magnificent, in all it’s unfiltered glory. What does the Ol’ Fog Burner have in store? Incidentally, unless you’re on the east coast, you likely won’t find this beer. Possibly at a specialty beer bar like Volo, but certainly not at the LCBO (yet). My bottle came from friend and blogging cohort, Troy Burtch. Troy gets around, when it comes to beer. Thanks bro! Incidentally, this bottle is from their February 2010 batch. It’s about a year old. This might seem strange, to the unitiated, but barleywines are one of the few beers that are not just able to rest in a bottle for a while, but actually benefit from a bit of time laying down. The day Bentley was born (August 2008), I drank a bottle of Mill St’s 2003 barleywine, and it was a totally different beast than it had been. If you have the time, money and patience, I would suggest never buying a single bottle of barley wine. Two at least, five would be better. Drink a pair immediately, then one a year till you’re out. Make notes and compare. You won’t be sorry you did.
Ol' Fog Burner - Garrison Brewing Co.
From a 500ml bottle with a batch numbers and a bottled-on date on the attractive label, the beer pours a tawny brown with an off-white head that is pretty active and sticks around to the very bottom. Aroma is warm and malty-sweet, with yeasty esters; spicy and almost medicinal. Malts are so sugary, there’s a rum-like quality to them. A bit of hops seems to be present, but I’m not sure. The 10.4% alcohol is definitely noticeable too. Oh my, taste is just wonderful. The sweetness that was so prominent in the aroma is much more in check on the palate. The initial sweetness is immediately cut by the alcohol and yeast, with a nice hop profile that is a little resinous and pretty dry. Malts are still heavy with dark caramelly sugar, though nice dark dried fruits are coming out as it warms (definitely let this one rest out of the fridge for a good 20 minutes minimum). It’s a fascinating study in balanced brewing. Barleywines can so easily be over sweet and cloying, or over boozy and hot, but this is just wonderful. The spices from the yeast dance with the spices in the hops; the dry resin finish cleans up the dark sugary sweetness; the sharp alcohol note cuts through a certain musty quality from the (I assume) bits and pieces left behind from not being filtered. This is just magical. Even the mouthfeel, which is medium to full bodied is kept from being overwhelming by the hops on the finish and a moderate carbonation. Somehow this beer achieves being both dark and jammy, hot and boozy and nicely hoppy, in the span of a sip. At 10.4%, I probably wouldn’t plan on two of these in one night, unless it was a foggy damp evening in Halifax… As it is, one bottle is keeping me wonderful company on a cold wet day on the shores of Lake Ontario.
Cheers Garrison; let’s get more of your brews into the LCBO, okay?
