I wish I had a cool story about how I scaled a 14′er in Colorado and at the summit I was greeted by the Dalai Lama, Vishnu, Buddha, Jesus, and the pope and we all sat down and put a few back and talked about life, but alas my story is not that cool.  I split from work early to take my parents to the airport, and stopped at the store on the way home.  It was, however, the first time I’ve ever seen this beer.  While I’m not always sold on the beers from Boulder Brewing, I figured I’m always up for something high AC, and potentially bitter.  The Killer Penguin, thus called my name.  In Spanish, you would call this, “El matador pengüino”, but alas, they would never have anything like this in Mexico, and beer like this is uncommon in Spain, at best.

El matador pengüino pours a clear copper, with a thin head that leaves plenty of itself on the rim.  It smells sweet and malty, with a hint of alcohol, and a hint of spontaneous fermentation, although I can’t testify if that is in fact the case.  As for the taste, it’s very sweet, with a definite presence of alcohol.  As far as I’m concerned, there aren’t enough hops to make this truly interesting.  Although my idea of a barleywine is that it should be considerable hoppier than any standard ale and that it should also be considerably sweeter, this beer does not necessarily qualify under those pretenses.  It does however, qualify quite easily as strong english style barleywine.

I’ve got to admit that this is not my favorite beer, nor is it my favorite style, but I’ll try not to let that cloud my judgment.  This beer does have several positives, but they tend to not come out until the beer has sat a bit.  There is a great malt flavor, and when it warms up, it really gets a nice alcohol burn.  However, there is nothing distinct about this beer that really takes me for a loop.

6.5/10

-brian