Sour Cherry Crop - 2025

I can't believe it but this is the sixth season for my sour cherry trees.  They have grown up to 10 feet high and close to 10 feet wide and produced a lot of fruit for me this year.  Read about previous seasons (Season 1, Season 2, Season 3, Season 4 and Season 5) 

These are North Star Cherries which have a dark fleshed fruit which have a flavor similar to a sweet cherry but with a higher level of acidity and lower levels of sweetness.  I enjoy eating them but will use most of them in my beer

6/28/25

6/4/25

5/3/25

4/20/25

Growing Notes:

• 6/3/25 - I have a large amount of fruit that is ripening.  I wait until the fruit is a purple color before picking

• 6/20/25 - I have been picking for the last couple weeks, twice a day, and even though there is some fruit high up in the branches I am calling it good. I've gotten 37 lbs of fruit this year
• 6/22/25 - I did some pruning of the lower branches which were making it difficult to mow under the tree
  

English Barleywine (2024 Version) - Tasting Notes

This was my Eleventh attempt at the English Barleywine style.  I brewed this on Memorial Day in 2024, fermented for a month or so and then let it bulk age for what turned out to be close to 10 months.  I would like to think that a high alcohol beer like this one can benefit quite a bit from that kind of mellowing time (but maybe I'm just justifying my own laziness)

I am going do drink half the batch this year and then will leave the remaining 24 bottles to be consumed once a year in a vertical tasting with my growing collection of Barleywine.  This is a big, sweet beer (10% ABV and finished at 1.034) so I believe it will age very nicely (I'm lucky enough to have a cool and dark basement in which to store it).  It already has a great complexity and I expect some age will add to that

Tasting Notes:

• Aroma:
• Fruity ester character (apple) along with caramel and toasted bread.  I get an oak aroma along with a wine like character along with a mild alcohol aroma. 
• Appearance:
• Light brown and quite cloudy.  It pours with virtually no foam (just a flurry of bubbles which is soon gone.
• Flavor:
• Caramel and lightly toasted bread up front which then fades into some fruity character.  It has a fairly strong oak flavor in the mix as well.  The finish has a bit of bitterness and then is mostly rich and sweet malt flavor - I think I get something like chocolate in the finish as well.  The alcohol is slightly present in the flavor but well in the background
• Mouthfeel:
• Full bodied and pretty sticky on the palate.  It drinks with a slight bit of astringency with some alcohol warming character.
• Overall:
• This is a boldly flavored and very complex beer.  It has very nice malt and yeast derived flavors.  I oaked it generously and it contributes a nice element to the overall flavor - gives it an extra bit of richness which melds well with the other flavors