This weekend (February 27 through March 2) Beveridge Place Pub in West Seattle invites you to enjoy the warm glow of some seriously big-ass beers. It’s time for the annual Barleywine Bacchanal. A taste of the taplist is provided below.
Over the decades, beer styles have come and gone, evolved and changed. The American light lagers of the 70s made room for the craft-brewed pale ales of the 80s. Those gave way to the amber ales of the 90s, which eventually yielded to the robust pale ales of the 2000s. Then, that style stepped aside for the IPAs and Hazy IPAs of the teens. Now, it seems, we’re back to a new kind of pilsner. It’s an ongoing cycle of reinvention and reintroduction. One style, though not often found on taplists, remains firm and unchanged: barleywine, with its roots deep in the English brewing tradition, is as timeless as it is robust.
Barleywine For Beerginners
Bass Brewery brewed the first documented barleywine in 1854, naming it Number 1, but the style’s history is older than that. Historians say that Barleywine was introduced a century earlier, when tensions between France and England slowed the flow of wine across the English Channel. The royals ordered local brewers to create something that matched wine’s alcoholic strength. Various forms of high-octane barley beverage probably existed long before that, but this was the first time the term barleywine appeared: a barley-based beverage to replace wine on the tables of the most noble aristocrats.
Brewers knew how to do it, but barleywine was expensive to produce and nobody could afford to drink it. Imagine making a pot of coffee with freshly ground beans (first runnings). Now imagine making a second and third pot with the same coffee grounds (second and third runnings). Blend all three pots together to make one large batch of coffee. At best, that final batch is what normal folks drank. Barleywine was like that first pot of coffee: stronger, richer, more flavorful. Regular folks didn’t get to drink the good stuff. No more!
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Beveridge Place Pub Barleywine Bacchanal XXIII
To commemorate the event’s 23rd year, Beveridge Place Pub will tap into 24 barleywines from near and far. Here is a list of just some of the beers you will find on tap at this year’s events. The beers are available in taster sizes or larger pours. Also, you can order a self-designed or staff-recommended taster flight.
- Echoes Glutenous Prime ’24
- Ecliptic Pineapple Orange Giant ’20
- Fremont Brew 6000 ’22
- Jellyfish Old Corrosive ’19
- Matchless Ol’ Lifewine ’21
- Sound Old ’88 Wheatwine ’16
- Midnight Sun Termination Dust ’18
- Fort George Etymology ’22, and more!
Visit our Events page for information about other upcoming beer events.
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