Ahh . . . the holidays. The perfect excuse to overindulge and only feel slightly guilty about it. Though it does tend to make the reality of January suck a little bit more.  The Christmas weekend brought meals of crab, steak, country ham, warm apple crisp and lots more. With the new year’s weekend on the way, there’s still a great festive feeling in the air.

For me, the holidays have been the perfect excuse to “clean out” the beer collection by finally opening up some long held bottles and a few new, big and bold ones I hadn’t found the right time to try.  I’m also hoping to get out to the local breweries sometime this week and sample the various winter ales.

Day 5 of the 12 Days of Christmas Cheer brings us one from Hood River Oregon’s Full Sail Brewing Co.:  2010 Reserve Old Boardhead Barleywine Ale.  Though available year-round, this rich, deep barleywine is a great sipping beer while watching the snow fall from the warm side of the window.

Old Boardhead Barleywine (9% abv, 91 ibus) has an orange/copper color and appeared a bit hazy at first. There is a nice off-white head that doesn’t stick around for long. I picked up faint aromas of resin hops, though it was competing with some wonderful cooking smells in the kitchen.  The flavors start out with a deep malt followed fairly quickly by a good pine hop punch.  From there it transitions into a solid, but balanced full-bodied beer.  The hop flavors and bitterness sit on top of a substantial malt back and the finish is comprised of swirling malt and hop bitterness.  It sweetens a bit as it warms, but stays nicely balanced with a good hop finish.