I was in the process of scheduling a meeting with an associate and we finally agreed on a date, site and time for the meeting. Or, so I thought…

As we ended our conversation, my associate stated the meeting was a…definite maybe. What? How can something be polar opposites? Maybe doesn’t mean definite and definite doesn’t mean maybe, right? Good grief! I was clearly confused.

What we’re dealing with here is an oxymoron — no, not a moron filled with oxygen, but rather a combination of contradictory words. And an oxymoron can be seriously funny.

Eventually, we settled on a date to meet and our meeting became an open secret between us. It’s interesting how our conversations are filled with oxymorons and I’ll bet even odds that you say a number of them every day!

I came across an oxymoron a while ago while researching types of beers for a magazine article. The article was to focus on highly hopped beers and I read a piece about a beer called a Barleywine (or barley wine).

That name — Barleywine — was a bit shocking to me because wine is made from grapes and sometimes fruit but not barley. Beer is made with barley. How can one call a beer made with barley a wine? It seemed pretty ugly to me and I needed clarification.

Historically a Barleywine type of beverage has been around for thousands of years. The ancient Greeks made a beverage from fermenting grains and called it barley wine. It wasn’t until the later half of the 19th century that an English brewery (Bass) produced a hefty alcoholic ale and called it Barley Wine. The beer wasn’t introduced to the United States until around the mid 1970s when the Anchor Brewing Company of San Francisco began making its Old Foghorn Barleywine (one word) Style Ale. Well, that’s nice to know but I was still clearly confused as to why a beer was called a wine.

The English still make a barleywine, but it’s made with fewer hops than the American style beer. The English beer’s color ranges from a reddish-gold to black while the American brew’s color range is from light amber to light brown.

There are two significant reasons this beer is called barleywine and they are: 1) high alcohol content and 2) their complexity.

Barleywines have an alcohol content that is usually in the 12-16 percent ABV range. That’s the same range as most wines and it’s one reason why the beer became known as a barleywine.

Secondly, to get to this high ABV, the beer is heavily packed with…barley! That barley is malted and the sugar in it becomes the trigger for an extremely sweet, high alcohol brew and here’s where the complexity of the beer begins. To balance the malt’s sweetness, the brewer packs in high amounts of bitter hops. Thus, because you have a beverage loaded with sweetness and bitterness, it’s perfect for aging. This aging process brings out the complexity of the beer and turns it into something that is disgustingly delicious.

Almost two years ago, I was invited to Bank Brewing in Hendricks to be there when its first Barleywine — named Foreclosure — cask was opened. It was a special time for me and I got to sample some of the beer right out of the cask. The beer was rather bitter but had a layer of sweetness that was the foundation of the beer. It was perfect for aging.

I purchased a bottle of Bank’s Foreclosure and let it age for over 18 months and then couldn’t wait any longer.

I reviewed my notes from the initial sampling and popped the cap from the now 18-month-old bottle. The aroma was nothing like the first sample. It was very muted and much sweeter. Then I tasted it and found the hops had reversed positions with the barley malt. Now the malt was the body of the beer and the hops were much more in the background — the foundation of the beer.

I have one pretty ugly confession to make. I’m sorry I didn’t purchase two bottles of the original production of Foreclosure. It would’ve been sweet agony to wait another 18 months to taste how the beer would change in that period of time.

So, oxymorons are around us all the time. In this column, I’ve included 11 oxymorons. Can you find them?

Next week, the heavy reds are in town.

As always, eat and drink in moderation but laugh with reckless abandon!

Cheers!