Oh my God, I have never had this much freaking Barelywine in my life. For those of you who do not know, a Barleywine is a very strong style of beer that starts at about 9%. Of course, in America we like everything big, so with brewers today there is no limit. I think we topped out at a 17% homebrewed Barleywine. But thanks to our gracious host, John, we did a blind tasting of about 20 different BWs. About half of which were aged in barrels. Blind tastings are great b/c one has no biased opinions of the beer they are drinking. Which pretty much explains why most of the ratings were very similar. After the tasting we broke into a bunch of other BWs. We had different vintages of Old Salty and Full Sail. Surprisingly, the Full Sails were all holding up really well. I wouldnt say so for the Old Saltys. In between we even snuck in some other beers like the tomato and basil beer. Sounded interesting but I wasn't going to be the first one to pass out. I got there at 2:00 in the afternoon, by 1:00 in the morning it was Paul and I just opening random bottles of BW, while everyone else slept.

Sunday morning was a different story. Slept fine and had no problems but in the morning my stomach was not a happy camper. No matter how much water I drank, my belly wasnt having it. I am still not sure if it was the BW, the Buffalo Chicken pizza, or the warm green pickled tomato that I ate around midnight but I had the urge to purge. Driving home was very hard but by around 6pm I was feeling fine. Had my little cousins come over, ate some good food and the Jets beat the Pats, that pretty much just topped everything off. And while 12 hours ago I was thinking that I wont drink for a week, right now I am in the mood for a beer... just not barleywine.