We’ve been helping Summit Brewing celebrate their 30th Anniversary with an extended anniversary party. By “helping” I of course mean drinking their great anniversary beers, so I’ll be really sad to see their anniversary year come to an end….but alas it must.
Fortunately Summit has found a way to put a fitting exclamation point on their celebration-sentence with the release of their last (but not least) Anniversary Beer, an English-Style Barleywine Ale. 
My mouth started watering back in March when I brought you a peek at the beer, and I’ll admit it seemed to take forever to get to this final release. Fortunately we kept busy by sampling their other 30th Anniversary beers (DIPA, Keller, & West-London-Style Ale).
But enough looking in the beer-view mirror, lets talk about this beer. Summit
30th Anniversary English-Style Barleywine Ale is the closer-beer for the 30th Anniversary Series, and Summit has decided to go out with a bang. This beer starts with their Extra Pale Ale recipe and amps it up quite a bit. The beer is brewed with pale malt from Rahr Malting, caramel malt from Breiss Malting and crystal malt from Simpson’s Malting in Scotland. Add in US & UK Horizon, Equinox, Fuggle and Cascade hops as well as English & Scottish yeast strains and I think you can see why I was so excited to try it. 
30th Anniversary English-Style Barleywine pours a deep and rich orange color with lots of sweet caramel malt and citrus aromas followed by some really pleasant toffee notes. The flavors follow with some really nice dark fruit and sweet toffee flavors as well as a really nicely balanced hop finish. You can’t miss the 11.5%-AbV booziness and warmth, but the complexity of the beer really makes for a nice and drinkable balance. This is exactly what I expected from the beer (in a good way) and it is a really classic example of what 
Summit
30th Anniversary English-Style Barleywine will be officially released on 11/19 in 12oz bottles, and as I mentioned, I think this is a really fitting end to the 30th Anniversary series of beers. Be sure to try
30th Anniversary English-Style Barleywine now AND set some aside for later (I can’t wait to see how it changes over time)…and as always, when you do try it, be sure to let s know what YOU think.
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