BY MATT STEVENS for WEEKLY VOLCANO 3/27/26 |
After a weekend of outside adventures of bike rides, hikes, and wiffle ball at the park, I earned a big beer for myself. I hustled over to my neighborhood brewery. Narrows Brewing opened their new pub in Proctor in 2025, and it has quickly become a local crash spot. If you can sneak in past the happy hour crowds, I heartily suggest it.
I pulled Barley’s Whine, a barley wine–style ale. A barley wine is a strong beer, with lots of hop flavor and malt flavors. It also usually packs a wallop at around 10 percent alcohol, so the alcohol flavors are also present.
Narrows’ offering comes in at 11.2 percent alcohol, so it nails that style guideline.
Narrows gifted me a beautiful tulip glass that concentrates the nose of the beer.
On the pour and appearance, it pours a very dark brown and very cloudy. It’s thick, but not overly viscous. Sometimes you’ll encounter a barley wine that is black and oily and moves like motor oil that’s been left in the crankcase for three years too long. This is not that beer.
The big alcohol content in the beer really comes through in the nose. The alcohol overwhelms the other malt flavors in the smell, which it shouldn’t according to the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guidelines. The BJCP is the standard for evaluating various beer styles.
While the beer’s nose is not right on, the flavor profile is great. The strong alcohol is there, but it is balanced out by the malt body. There are hints of Christmas flavors here: caramelized sugars, nutmeg, cinnamon. It’s a little peppery or effervescent on your tongue; a broad swell of caramelization is the overall taste profile here. The hops are present but very subdued compared to the malt and caramel flavors.
The broader mouthfeel is fantastic. The alcohol settles back and really clears the way for the strong malt body. It’s a thicker beer, and it forces one to drink a bit slowly. If you come in thirsty after a jog or a bike ride, I would heartily recommend ordering pretty much anything else. This is a great beer to end a busy day when you are already hydrated but a little sore. A beer to go with a fireplace or a cigar. Or both.
Overall, this is an extremely solid beer. While it doesn’t nail the nose or overall flavor profile, having a lower hop aroma, it’s still a very enjoyable beer. Narrows in Proctor and down at the marina on South 19th allows you to bring in some outside food.
