Dieu du Ciel! Solstice D’hiver

Dieu du Ciel! Solstice D’hiver is an American style Barleywine. I opened this 2013 bottle in November of 2014. From the website: … brewed only once a year, at the end of the summer… aged for a few months… Then, it is sold starting mid-December of each year…

Pours about as expected, a bit of a murky brown maybe. The smell is really nice on this, sweet and malty with notes of brown sugar and faded hops. So much more hop bitterness in the taste than on the nose, a bit of that “minty” hop type thing going on here too. Solid caramel notes as a malt base, but this really could use a good bit more of that brown sugar sweetness I get in the aroma. Even at around a year of age the hops dominate this a bit too much, my tongue is actually tingling a little with each sip! Some dark fruit notes are coming out as this warms, giving this some much needed complexity.

This is a good Barleywine, but I think I’d like to try it again a bit fresher at some point.