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Beershoppen 10 års Jubilæumsøl
Our Rating: 2.88 / 5
Beershoppen 10 års Jubilæumsøl is a 10% American Barleywine brewed by Åben with Sabro. Cleanly fermented and firmly bitter, it drinks leaner than expected, with light caramel sweetness, restrained hop expression, and a narrow flavour arc that divides opinion on whether it earns its strength, style, and celebratory intent.
Beer Name: Beershoppen 10 års Jubilæumsøl
Brewery: Åben
Beer Style: American Barleywine
Alcohol: 10.0%
Taste Notes: Light caramel, pale cooked sugar, woody, bitter, alcohol, lean
Serving: Can
Serving Size: 440 ml (14.9 fl. oz.)
It’s An Anniversary
Beershoppen 10 års Jubilæumsøl sits at 10.0% and declares itself an American Barleywine, brewed by Åben with Sabro. It’s an anniversary beer for Beershoppen, celebrating 10 years. In the glass, it pours deep copper with a brownish pull, clear enough to read through, capped briefly by a thick, pale head that collapses quickly and leaves the surface mostly bare.
Aroma opens quietly. Light caramel leads, closer to pale cooked sugar than toffee, followed by a restrained hop presence that reads woody, faintly coconut-adjacent, and herbal. Sabro’s signature fruitiness stays dialled back, contributing bitterness and edge more than aroma saturation. Alcohol shows as warmth, not solvent, but it occupies space that malt depth never fully claims.
On the palate, sweetness arrives fast and fades just as quickly. Caramel registers clean and simple, then gives way to a firm, lingering bitterness that defines most of the sip. The bitterness quality is tidy and modern, consistent with American hopping, but it outpaces the malt in both duration and weight. Carbonation is low and soft, smoothing the delivery but also flattening the mid-palate.
Heated Debate
With warmth, the beer opens only slightly. Caramel broadens toward light milk chocolate and gentle sugar crust, but never develops into the layered toffee, dried fruit, or oxidative richness we’ve come across in American Barleywine before. Sabro continues to shape the structure more than the flavour, lending a clipped bitterness and faint woody tone without pushing expressive hop aroma. Alcohol warmth grows clearer as temperature rises, yet it remains loosely integrated, adding heat without amplifying flavour in any meaningful way.
American Barleywine, per BJCP 2021, allows assertive hop bitterness alongside high malt sweetness, full body, and pronounced alcohol presence. This beer meets the bitterness and alcohol criteria cleanly.
Where it struggles is in body and malt depth. The mouthfeel lands closer to medium-thin than full, and the malt profile stays narrow, leaving the hop bitterness to carry the beer once sweetness drops away.
That imbalance explains the split in our scores, but also the generally low scores given by us.
The higher scores recognise the clean fermentation, the hop profile, and controlled bitterness. The lower scores reflect frustration with a flavour arc that feels static, a texture that undersells the strength, and a profile that reads more like a very strong, bitter-leaning brown ale than a fully realised American Barleywine. It’s generally lacking in many areas, and the ones it delivers on, it does so without more than a bare minimum.
On Untappd, the beer holds a 3.57 average. Our group ranged from 2.25 to 3.25, averaging 2.88.
Taken together, those numbers map directly onto the glass: technically tidy, structurally almost coherent, but taste is flat, bordering on boring and unremarkable, especially given the style and the occasion it marks.
- Laurits: 2.25 / 5
- Viktor: 3.00 / 5
- Jesper: 3.00 / 5
- Casper: 3.25 / 5
Our Average Score: 2.88 / 5
