Ah, barleywine. It’s not a wine at all, I’ll have you know, but a style of beer so strong in alcohol content, so rich in flavor and complexity as to beg a comparison with wine. Rich and warming, barleywine is usually a great winter beer, perfect to take the chill off your bones after a cold day spent trudging through the snow.

Beer enthusiasts like myself, however, love the stuff anytime of year. And I’m happy to say that Flying Dog Horn Dog Barleywine Style Ale is a great example of such a brew. With about twice the gravity and alcohol of your usual beer, this is a formidable beer indeed. But that’s OK. You know you can handle it. Unless, of course, you're drinking away from home. When you can handle the beer, just handle the keys to a friend.

Flying Dog calls its barleywine Horn Dog. All of their beers have some sort of canine connection. And the dog on this beer’s label does seem to be, um, horny. Well, he has a horn on his head anyway. And though I’ve never seen a horned dog, I have often enough heard people referred to as a horn dog before. Since alcohol can increase the libido in some people (or perhaps just reduce their better judgment), the name of this beer may be an apt one.

Horn Dog Barleywine Style Ale is sold in four packs, for which I paid $7.99 here in Georgia. I think the brewery could go the extra few bottles for its loyal customers and give us six for that price, but what can you do? The beer is well worth $2 a bottle. How many times have you paid more than that for a bottle of Bud at a bar?

Flying Dog Horn Dog Barleywine pours to a dark brown to chestnut color with a light but creamy head formation and a sweet raisiny nose. The palate has a thick, creamy, and very rich mouthfeel. This is definitely a full bodied beer. There are lots of complex flavors going on here, most notably a huge dark fruit component reminiscent of raisin and prune.

But wait. There’s more. Swirl carefully in your mouth and you’ll get notes of light chocolate, orange, caramel, and fresh bread. In the finish, a respectable citric bitterness emerges, fighting its way through all of that wonderful yeasty malty complexity to deposit a lingering bitter buzz on the tongue.

When it comes to barleywines, this one is a sort of in-betweener I think. It’s got the huge malty complexity of say, a Young’s Old Nick or an Anchor Old Foghorn. But it also has some of the big hop character of a Bigfoot Barleywine or an Old Crustacean. Of course, it’s not quite as hoppy as those beers.

I can’t see how so wonderfully complex an ale deserves anything less than five stars. At over 10% alcohol by volume, this a sipping beer, and one that will age nicely (and mellow) over time.