I don’t care what the abv is, as long as it is balanced well. I’m not a big fan of overly malty beers, which higher alcohol beers tend to be.
Most yeast strains aren’t very efficient above 9%, so brewers tend to load up on the grains to make the simpler sugar molecules more abundant for the yeast to eat. However this leaves a lot of unfermetable sugars in the beer (malt flavor). To balance that out, sometimes more hops is used. So you might have a 12%, but chances are its going to be very malty and/or hoppy.
Usually the only time I actually enjoy anything above 9% is when extra wild yeast strains are added after the original yeast has eaten up all the sugar/malt it can eat. These wild yeast can survive in much higher abv, and will eat up the previously unfermetable sugars to create more alcohol, but also add a bit if tart/funkiness to the beer. So you can have a 14% beer that doesn’t need extra hops to cover up the malt, as most of the malt has been replaced by a tart/sour flavor (much like wine).
tl;dr
I like most beer up until around 9%, anything higher would either need to be a sour beer or lambic style. Barley wine? No way, Jose.