Beer of the Week: Hale’s Rudyard’s Rare Barley Wine – 2006 Vintage

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I am not usually much of a barley wine fan, there are a small handful of them that I like, but generally I tend to stay away from them since they are expensive and not high up on my list of beers I enjoy. Recently, I was at a friend’s place and he has a nice stash of vintage barley wine which he was kind enough to share some with me. One of the bottles that we opened was a 2006 Rudyard’s from Hale’s Brewing. This was poured from a 12 oz. bottle and comes in at around 10% ABV. We served it room temp to get the full effect of the beer.
The beer pours almost black like a porter with a small amount of carbonation and a fair amount of sediment at the bottom of the glass. Subtle hints of smoke and wood with a slightly musty smell permeates from this beer – it almost smell like a campfire that has been put out for an hour or so, nothing overpowering, but you know it was there. On the palate, this was a very different beer. Chocolate and malt dominate the tongue, with the some molasses there, but not in a cloying way. The beer finishes very long, fading into stone fruit (we thought cherry) and cocoa nibs at the end.

I did a little digging to find a review of what this beer was like upon release and I stumbled across this from beeradvocate.com’s rating board written in March 2007:

Poured from a 12oz bottle marked Dec 2006, so I’m drinking it relatively fresh. Pours with a thin mocha colored head that dissipates quickly. Very dark, color reminds me of molasses. Smells faintly sweet, of vanilla perhaps? Tastes of toasted malt. Very smooth, very nice. Hard to believe it’s almost 10% abv… VERY easy to drink… Retired? Hmm….if that’s truly the case then i guess i should consider myself lucky to have found this.

It surprises me that so much of what was in the original tasting notes, we tasted in the beer. I didn’t get any real vanilla, but that is probably where the campfire smell came from.

This was an overall amazing beer for being 6 years old and is easily on my list of beers that I wish I could have again but probably never will. It seems the key for me might be to buy a barley wine and stash it away in the cellar for 5 or 6 years.
Rudyard’s Rare manages to swing in with a stellar 5 Jungle Books out of 5 on the literary scale.

I really want to thank Bill D. for sharing his last bottle of this amazing beer with me.