My second time drinking Nøgne Ø Andhrimnir Barleywine and still believe that this is a great brew but still prefer their own smoked barleywine, Sunturnbrew.
Very dark amber to reddish brown in colour with little to no head on this beer, a typical barleywine looking beer. The aroma is loaded with sweet malt extracts, caramel and toffee, a quite sweet barleywine that is quite fruity with no alcohol in the aroma which is good. Very heavy and thick flavours to this beer ranging from malt, dark fruits, sugar and some alcohol. Very well hidden alcohol again by Nøgne who seem to be kings with such tasks.
Definitely a more balanced barleywine now having tried it 1 year old and now 2 years after bottling and as with all barleywines, a sipper that needs to be consumed not too cold and not too warm in order to get the best out of it. The finish was long and enjoyable, dark fruits and raisins with a light bitterness in the finish.
Nøgne Ø Sunturnbrew, seen this Nøgne Ø beer in the past but never know why I never tried it back then, either way I now have consumed the 2 bottles left at BA Vasagatan and will roam the streets of Stockholm to get my hands on more of this superb smoked barleywine. The first batch of Sunturnbrew was so small that it was only available in Norway and is quite limited and hard to get here in Sweden. I love to drink barleywine, especially when the alcohol is not overpowering and the mouth is not ripped to piece when it is overly hopped, with just 50 IBU this was not the case. On the nose there was some caramel, roasted nuts, roasted malt, some smoke, dark bread, cola and tones of dark fruits & berries. Maybe this is meant to be the case but Sunturnbrew could be easily disguised as a winter warmer, julöl or a brown ale as it has most of the characteristics in these 3 styles of beer.
There was slight liquorice there but more to the taste than the aroma, sweet malt again, brown sugar like in sweetness, cola, some smoke and a nutty, chocolate, coffee finish that was just lovely. Where is the 11% alcohol here I ask? It did not hit me once when drinking this beer and this is a first for a barleywine style beer. It might be hard to distinguish smoke from roastiness as this was the case with some of the malt grains in the beer, more maple than honey and slight hops bitterness throughout the length of the beer. Medium bodied, with the smokiness in the beginning, malty backbone in the centre and the end dominated with dark fruits and slight bitterness like you get from dark chocolate. Slightly rum like with the spice and warm it gave off, I just adored this beer and without a shadow of a doubt give it my highest ratings and look forward to trying this beer again in the future.
Nøgne Ø Sunturnbrew Bourbon Barrel Edition, what a better time to taste the new Nøgne Ø Sunturnbrew Bourbon barrel edition than 1 week before it goes on sale here at the Systembolaget. Time will tell, before I tried it I was planning to buy 2 bottles at the very least, we will now see if this was the case or not. Been a while since I tasted the original Sunturnbrew so I decided to taste both the new and the old at the same time.
Enough said about the original Nøgne Ø Sunturnbrew, I love it, I love it and need to order a case. Now moving on to the aged Sunturnbrew that has spent 1 year in bourbon casks. The appearance was quite ok and had more of a head that the original one. On the nose it was very peaty, smoky and has a nice whisky touch to it. The mouth feel was a bit of a disappointment, quite thin and just too short for such a high alcohol brew. Very little sweetness left at all and there was a lot of bitter tones to it that do not really go well with this peaty aroma in my opinion.
So to sum up, this was not a beer I liked and will not be buying it here in Sweden, maybe trying it parallel with the original was a bad idea as I was blown away by it. As I said before, the original Sunturnbrew is a barleywine that is right up there with the likes of Bigfoot, Numbskull, Old Guardian & Behemoth. It has an aroma to die for and a syrupy finish that goes on and on, but the new version is just a totally different beer and not a barleywine any more.
