Sierra Nevada Bigfoot 2013

A few weeks ago I wrote about Beer Balance. In that post, I mentioned that I do my best to hop from beer style to beer style. One style that I have neglected over the years has been Barleywine. It's not that I had anything against them. For whatever reason, they just never found their way at the top of my to drink list. I decided to put an end to that and drink a few recently. I had 21st Amendment Lower Da Boom a few weeks ago, but today I'm going to be reviewing Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot 2013.

Style: Barleywine

ABV: 9.6%

IBU: 90

Appearance: I really liked the way this bad boy poured. You know what they say about Bigfoot....when you pour it into a glass you get a big fluffy head. Amber brown in color, Bigfoot was looking much more attractive than I expected. The picture above isn't my own, but it might as well be and as you can tell Bigfoot is rather attractive. You have to wonder why he's been avoiding the limelight all these years.

Nose: I didn't find this beer to be incredibly complex in the aroma department. Try as I might, I could only sniff out a few different notes. The majority of what came through was caramel and a really heavy malty presence. I was expecting the hop notes to be quite a bit bigger given that this is an American Barleywine but there was just a little bit of grassy hops making their way through.

Taste: Bigfoot is full of sweet malt up front, but be careful not to take too big of a swig. The alcohol in this one will hit you. At 9.6% it's pretty high in alcohol, but not so high that the alcohol should be burning quite the way it was. The end of the sip was where I finally got some of the hops I was expecting as it finished slightly spicy and dry.

Final Verdict: I like the heavy malt of Bigfoot. It's a little too late to be drinking something as heavy as this in my neck of the woods, but given a cold night I know I'd love to have a beer like this sitting next to me as I read up on all the interesting news of the day. In my opinion, some Barleywines get a little too hoppy and end up feeling more like DIPA's than Barleywine. I have to give them props in not going overboard here. As I mentioned before, I could definitely see myself sitting down with one of these in the future, but this isn't a beer I could ever see myself drinking more than one of at a time. The alcohol burn is just too much to stick with for longer than one beer.

On a side note,  I read that  that Bigfoot apparently ages well in the cellar. If I see a 6 pack of them sitting around in the future, I think I'd like to age a few of them and see how that works out for me. Does anybody have any experience with aged Bigfoot's?