Hooray, homebrew time! This is a Barley Wine that we brewed eleven weeks ago and bottled seven weeks ago. And like all our beers so far, the base is the second runnings of Sahti wort. We made a small batch of eight liters which we divided into three microbatches: a standard one, vanilla-infused one and Magnum-extra-hopped one. The beer pours cloudy, deep dark brown. Carbonation is astonishingly moderate, yet sufficient for the genre. I was afraid that it could have been too powerful as the amount of priming was a bit too abundant but obviously it wasn't. A light tan head rises mere half a finger's yardstick and dissipates quickly to a gossamer lace ring on the top. The nose experiences quite nice -- and predictable -- sweet malt with a caramelly nuance, intriguing date and some raisin. I expected raisin to win the race but it's actually date that comes before raisin. That's all perfect of course! Shy licorice signals of its presence from the distance, as well. The taste profile is positioned on the sweeter side. Now raisin takes the lead, escorted by sweet malt, rather abundant molasses and brown sugar. Date creeps into the picture as substantially weaker. Alcohol is not entirely camouflaged, I can recognize it and feel its warmth in my throat. In a nutshell, I was prepared for something less BW-like but this is actually quite decent. The body is light-medium to medium. The body tends to be a weak link of our homebrews but this is not that bad as a matter of fact. The beer finishes with sweetish malt that has developed a slightly bitter caramelly tang. Additionally, I can pick brown sugar, molasses and fermented raisin. Date is now history. Alcohol remains identifiable. The aftertaste learns a lot of interesting things from the Bible as related to alcohol. The mouthfeel is a tad heavy, medium-strong, moderately lip-glueing as well as slightly alcoholic and warming. It's not complex, rather vice versa. Furthermore, the mouthfeel is a bit raw. I only have four more bottles to go but I still may keep a bottle or two for the upcoming summer to see if there's any development. I doubt though, I guess this has developed what it would develop and further waiting will be either waste of time or even detrimental. But who cares, I'll do it anyway. I'm glad that this competes favorably with basic commercial BWs but, of course, it fails to fly high.