Deschutes Brewery - Class Of '88 Barley Wine Ale

What's up everyone? It's time for another beer review here at Tastes Like Beer and I'm going with one of my favorite styles. What's that?

BARLEYWINES!!!

That's right. Tonight, I'm drinking a collaboration beer between Deschutes, Rogue, and North Coast Brewing. This is the Class of 88' Barley Wine Ale. It's an American style barleywine that comes in with an abv of 10.2%. So let's quit bullshitting and get this poured. I'm looking forward to this one.

Class of 88 pours out a really nice golden orange color with a solid white finger of head. It's sticking around a bit but as it dissipates it leaves behind a pretty thick lacing that looks a lot like sea foam. There's a lot of carbonation streaming up from the bottom of the glass. There's quite a bit of chill haze but you can definitely see through this beer. It actually reminds me quite a bit of an Imperial IPA. Let's get the nose.

Very interesting nose. First thing I'm picking up is a bubble gum flavor. That's followed up quite a bit by a banana character. Very surprised to get this in an barley wine. I'm getting some peach flavors, sort of syrupy, and sweet. I do get quite a bit of alcohol on the nose as well. For a barley wine and 10.2% I'm not too surprised but usually I've found it to be a bit more masked. There's maybe some caramel notes coming out as well. I'm not getting a lot of hop bitterness. Let's see how it tastes.

First thing I'm getting is a bit of hop bitterness. I didn't get it on the nose but it's here first thing. I'm picking up that peach character and it follows the nose quite well. It's very syrupy and sweet. It helps bring the hop bitterness into the middle of the mouth well. Then things get sort of strange. I pick up an immediate bit of alcohol. That's followed by a somewhat off putting banana character. I know it was there in the nose but it's just weird. It's very strong in the middle and back part of the mouth. And that's really it.

Overall, this beer is just... well, it's bad. I don't know that I'd consider this a barleywine. I can't really place this beer. It's got this belgian bubble gum yeast ester that really just takes it to a different level. I don't know if this is maybe just a bad bottle or what. The label describes it a bit differently than I'm tasting. I'm just sort of stumped by it.

Rating: D