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Happening This Weekend – Barleywine Bacchanal 2011
It’s that time again. Are you ready for barleywine season? Ready or not, here it comes. Starting this Friday the 25th, West Seattle’s finest beer emporium, Beveridge Place Pub (6413 California Avenue Southwest) hosts it’s 9th (I think) annual festival of all things barleywine.
From BPP’s website:
FEB 25 – MAR 5, 2011: Barleywine Bacchanal!
A Decadent Celebration of the Biggest, Boldest brews! 50 rotating barleywines on draught from the West Coast’s best breweries including many new releases as well as vintages from the cellar! 24 dedicated Barleywine Taps throughout the Fest! Look for upcoming information regarding special tasting events during the Bacchanal.
In case you’ve never been to this festival before, this is how it works, or at least how it has worked in the past… BPP will post a schedule of what beers they plan to tap on each day of the fest. This is very unlike the way Brouwer’s does their Hard Liver Fest (March 12 – 16). As it says above, BPP doesn’t tap all of the b-wines at once. Each day they will have 24 on tap and shuffle through the entire collection as kegs blow/days go by.
This has the potential to remove some of the weight off of your shoulders when it comes to attempting to get all of the rare offerings at once, but it could also mean that you will need to go to the pub on several occasions to get everything that you want. We will try to keep you abreast of the schedule as it becomes available so that you can work out your game plan.
Obviously, we have yet to see the list for this year but one could reasonably assume that some, if not all, of the following standards will be available.
Avery Hog Heaven
Deschutes Mirror Mirror
Dogfish Head Olde School
***Firestone Walker Abacus*** – If we are really lucky.
Fish Leviathan
Hale’s Rudyard’s Rare
Pike Old Bawdy
Port Angel’s Share
Port Townsend
Rogue Old Crustacean
Sierra Nevada Bigfoot
Walking Man Old Stumblefoot
Flying Dog Horndog
Left hand Widdershins
Mad River John Barleycorn
North Coast Old Stock
Victory Old Horizontal
New Old Lompoc Old Tavern Rat ‘08
Alaskan Barleywine
Anchor Old Foghorn
Stone Old Guardian
Lagunitas Old Gnarleywine
Big Sky Old Blue Hair
Glacier Old Woody
Great Divide Old Ruffian
Green Flash Barleywine
Hair of The Dog Doggie Claws
Moylan’s Old Blarney
Ninkasi Critical Hit
Preparing For Bacchanal: Dear Barleywine, a beer time capsule
The Barleywine Bounty: 14 for 2014
We here at Beer Blotter have full hearts. Sure we do. We love that mushy stuff.
Over time we have accumulated a bevy of wonderful fans and colleagues in beer. We want to give each of them a chance to tell their wonderful stories and share their great love for the beer they wrap their hands around each evening.
In preparation of Beveridge Place Pub’s Barleywine Bacchanal, a couple of our most favored contributing friends wrote monologues to their beloved – barleywine.
The muse…..14 bottles of recently released Barleywine. The goal…..to lock them away in February 2010 – and open them in February 2014. After 4 years of aging, I just hope we are invited to the uncapping.
Lets see the list:
Anchor Brewing Old Foghorn
Sierra Nevade Bigfoot Ale
North Coast Old Stock Ale
Hair of the Dog Doggie Claws
Alaskan Barleywine Ale
Marin Brewing Old Dipsea
Lagunitas Old Gnarlywine
Stone Brewing Old Guardian
Green Flash Barleywine
Great Divide Old Ruffian
Deschutes Mirror Mirror
Midnight Sun Arctic Devil
Flying Dog Horn Dog
Victory Old Horizontal
Damn that looks good. So, lets lend an ear to our friends and see how inspired they were:
To be locked away in youth…
A Letter
Dear Barleywine,
I write you this day with hope that you find my words, within yourself merriment, and that these words touch you deeply with the purpose steeped upon them. The seasons have changed, brought bitter airs and quelled growth – ever bare, and within myself spawned yearning for warmth. An engulfing fever, submerged so to leave no piece of thy depth unwrapped. Might we emblaze the year’s provisions? Not lest our souls, and heart be abandoned. The steam of my exhale, the burn of my blood aches for infusion with your essence. I thirst for the remedy that lies in you, O impassioned elixir. Might we meet today and churn glowing red from this dead place? Might our tangling force back the encroaching destitution? This season I ask of your hand in melting this glacial encasing, and that together, each Winter passed, our allegiance advanced, tactics tempered, passion prospered. Will we be merged now my sweet nectar, and age together with graceful longevity?
With all my allegiance,
Timperial
…brought to maturity in the cool, dark confines…
A Poem
To break a young stallion takes patience, and time
Strewn flora, trot leaves wake scented with herb and pine
A steady handler calms the wind’s stir, strives to bring sweetness forth
Within of the eye of our student, great tales of a deeper worth
A bond is born in one moment’s blind plunge, foreseen in dark tomb
By hand interwoven in mane, violence seized, froth of realized womb
Only to be reborn from this earth, maturation sees that glimmer sprout
Complexity developed within, to be shared and savored without doubt…
…a time capsule locked and buried...for warmth in the frostbitten air of Winter 2014.
