Review - Honey Brains

We use whatever bottles we have hanging around.

 A little background here: Our first beer together was a barley wine called Brains.  The tag line was "We Are Scientists".  If I remember correctly, it was named Brains because it was ready on Halloween and we were thinking Zombies!  Plus it was really high ABV so it goes right to the head.  Anyway, our first true home brew endevour was to recreate Brains with some tweaks (see Our Beers page).  Honey Brains, aka Brains 2.1, is our second attempt at the original Brains recipe.  We added quite a bit of organic honey purchased by Dan's mom in Syracuse, hence the Sweet moniker.  We thought this was going to be the beer to make the finals of the Home Brew-B-Q (alas!).  It's also entered into the upcoming BURP competition next week (fingers crossed).  I'm looking forward to getting some judging feedback from both.

Now on to the review:

Appearance: Pours a copper color with a thin, white head that reduces quickly to a skinny ring.  It seems to retain that small ring for quite a while.

Aroma: Sugar-coated dark fruits, like prunes, and faint apricots.  Definitely can smell the alcohol in there as well.

Taste: Surprisingly peppery taste mixes well with dark toffee, malt and a bit of strawberry.  Alcohol burn with more berry in the finish.

Mouthfeel: Light, prickly carbonation gets the front of the tongue.  It then finishes very dry on the sides of the mouth and that feeling lingers for quite a while.  I can feel the alcohol on the back of my throat.

Overall: I think this is a solid attempt at a barley wine.  The smoothness of the beer has dropped a little bit during aging, giving way to some more alcohol notes.  You may have noticed that I mentioned that a few times, and that's because the 9%ABV is prevalent here.  That doesn't mean it's "bad," you just have to enjoy big and boozy beers.  Were we to brew this again (which I'm sure we will) I'd push to add more bittering hops, hoping that a hoppier finish would balance out the alcohol notes.  I continue to enjoy this beer, but it's certainly not for everyone.  You need to be a malty beer lover (me!) more than a hop-head.

The "2" on the cap is for the second version of Brains.

We received a ton of positive feedback last Saturday night when I poured Brains Explosion, Honey Brains and Weisenheimer for a few friends.  Their consensus: "I'd buy a 6-pack of this beer."

I think this is an excellent beer considering we are almost complete novices.  I hope that, given time and experience, this recipe will become an excellent beer.