This is a beer that needs talking about, so I'm going to do just that. For those looking at the timestamp and saying it's not Wednesday, I say to you that I've not been to bed yet, so it's still Wednesday to me!
This is a beer that Peter brewed with the rather idea of using a kilo of 2013 Cascade from Simply Hops (note, 2013 cascade is the latest cascade available, the hops of one year are bought the next). Details of the brew can be seen here.
A rich and deep red beer is poured into the glass, I was careful in my pouring, but the yeast had welded itself to the bottom of the bottle, so I could have been less careful it would seem. The beer had a fairly thin head that quickly became a ring around the glass edge.
So a 10+% beer with a fuckload of Cascade, and some sugar to help dry it out. Well, how did that end up 4 months later? I'd had this beer a while ago at the brewery and it was a pretty massive beer then, with lots of big hop aromas and flavours, it was delicious and tasted "greeen" and "fresh".
Now the aroma is almost of Rakia, a warm toffee with spices that lift it. I'm tempted to open a bottle of rakia to compare to see if my memory is right.
This is a barley wine, and no mistake. But a barley wine unlike any I've had before. It's sweet and toffee like, as expected, but there's also the spiced herb flavour going on from the masses of hops used in the making of this. there's no discernable bitterness from the hops now, the body and strength have taken over that one.
It's remarkable, it really is. I don't know how to classify it at all. I say it's a barley wine, but it's so different to any I've had. I fall back onto that term just because of the strength and sweetness. If Peter came up with a different name, I'd go with that. Maybe this is closer to the barley wines of the Victorian era as mentioned by Martyn Cornell (@zythophiliac) in his book, than the beers we get nowadays called barley wines.
I think everyone should brew their own version of Cascadia, with whatever hops are their favourite. Go crazy, hops are cheap, and aplenty!
This is a beer that Peter brewed with the rather idea of using a kilo of 2013 Cascade from Simply Hops (note, 2013 cascade is the latest cascade available, the hops of one year are bought the next). Details of the brew can be seen here.
A rich and deep red beer is poured into the glass, I was careful in my pouring, but the yeast had welded itself to the bottom of the bottle, so I could have been less careful it would seem. The beer had a fairly thin head that quickly became a ring around the glass edge.
So a 10+% beer with a fuckload of Cascade, and some sugar to help dry it out. Well, how did that end up 4 months later? I'd had this beer a while ago at the brewery and it was a pretty massive beer then, with lots of big hop aromas and flavours, it was delicious and tasted "greeen" and "fresh".
Now the aroma is almost of Rakia, a warm toffee with spices that lift it. I'm tempted to open a bottle of rakia to compare to see if my memory is right.
This is a barley wine, and no mistake. But a barley wine unlike any I've had before. It's sweet and toffee like, as expected, but there's also the spiced herb flavour going on from the masses of hops used in the making of this. there's no discernable bitterness from the hops now, the body and strength have taken over that one.
It's remarkable, it really is. I don't know how to classify it at all. I say it's a barley wine, but it's so different to any I've had. I fall back onto that term just because of the strength and sweetness. If Peter came up with a different name, I'd go with that. Maybe this is closer to the barley wines of the Victorian era as mentioned by Martyn Cornell (@zythophiliac) in his book, than the beers we get nowadays called barley wines.
I think everyone should brew their own version of Cascadia, with whatever hops are their favourite. Go crazy, hops are cheap, and aplenty!
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