Barley wine is a strong ale from 6–12% alcohol by volume."Barley wine"

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History

The first beer to be marketed as barley wine was

Bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Wood * Bass or basswood, the wood of the tilia americana tree Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in th ...

No. 1 Ale, around 1870. The Anchor Brewing Company introduced the style to the United States in 1976 with its Old Foghorn Barleywine Style Ale. Old Foghorn was styled as "barleywine" (one word) out of fear that occurrence of the word "wine" on a beer label would displease regulators. In 1983, Sierra Nevada Brewing released Bigfoot Barleywine, becoming the second barley wine label in the United States.

Characteristics

Barley wine typically reaches an

alcohol Alcohol may refer to: Common uses * Alcohol (chemistry), a class of compounds * Ethanol, one of several alcohols, commonly known as alcohol in everyday life ** Alcohol (drug), intoxicant found in alcoholic beverages ** Alcoholic beverage, an alco ...

strength of 6 to 12% by volume and is brewed from

specific gravities Relative density, also called specific gravity, is a dimensionless quantity defined as the ratio of the density (mass of a unit volume) of a substance to the density of a given reference material. Specific gravity for solids and liquids is nea ...

as high as 1.120; equal to 320g/L of sugars. Use of the word "wine" is due to its alcoholic strength similar to a

wine Wine is an alcoholic drink made from Fermentation in winemaking, fermented fruit. Yeast in winemaking, Yeast consumes the sugar in the fruit and converts it to ethanol and carbon dioxide, releasing heat in the process. Wine is most often made f ...

, but since it is made from

grain A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached husk, hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and ...

rather than

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants (angiosperms) that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which angiosperms disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particular have long propaga ...

, it is a

beer Beer is an alcoholic beverage produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches from cereal grain—most commonly malted barley, although wheat, maize (corn), rice, and oats are also used. The grain is mashed to convert starch in the ...

. Breweries in the United States typically release it once a year during the autumn or winter. The two primary styles of barley wine are the American, which tends to be hoppier and more bitter, with colours ranging from amber to light brown and the English style, which tends to be less bitter and may have little hop flavour, with more variety in colour ranging from red-gold to opaque black. Until the introduction of an amber-coloured barley wine under the name Gold Label by the Sheffield brewery Tennant's in 1951 Beer writer

referred to a barley wine by Smithwick's thus: "This is very distinctive, with an earthy hoppiness, a wineyness, lots of fruit and toffee flavours." He also noted that its original gravity is 1.062. Martyn Cornell was quoted as saying, "no historically meaningful difference exists between barley wines and old ales". He later clarified, "I don’t believe there is actually any such meaningful style as 'barley wine'". Barley wines, such as Thomas Hardy's Ale, are sometimes labelled with a production date, as they are intended to be aged, sometimes extensively.

Taxes and legal impediments

Many jurisdictions have different

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ing schemes for potables based upon

alcohol content Alcohol by volume (abbreviated as alc/vol or ABV) is a common measure of the amount of Alcohol (drug), alcohol contained in a given alcoholic beverage. It is defined as the volume the ethanol in the liquid would take if separated from the rest ...

. Since barley wine has a high alcohol content, it is, in some jurisdictions, taxed at a higher rate than other beers.

Wheat wine

A variation on the barley wine style involves adding a large quantity of

wheat Wheat is a group of wild and crop domestication, domesticated Poaceae, grasses of the genus ''Triticum'' (). They are Agriculture, cultivated for their cereal grains, which are staple foods around the world. Well-known Taxonomy of wheat, whe ...

to the mash bill, resulting in what is referred to as "wheat wine". This style originated in the United States in the 1980s.

References

External links