It is perhaps the most beautifully named beer I've ever come across, and it's not half bad either.
It is, of course, Howrye, a rye wine from Brown Paper Bag Project, brewed at Ramsgate in Kent. At 10% it pours a slightly hazy but most clear red, and smells unsurprisingly sweet at first. Orange, toffee, and slightly boozy, it could have been a hot soupy mess like Porterhouse's Louder*, but it stays good and enticing. It's sweet at first to taste too, with caramel, toffee, boozy orange pith and a hint of a flash of a smidge of bitter citrus skins at the very finish. Bittersweet and intense is how it goes. When I consider the contribution the rye has made I start to find little pockets of peppery heat, but I' eventually forced to conclude that this is largely the power of suggestion and instead I'm feeling the only half-hidden heat of the alcohol throughout.
Rye fetishists will either lament the lack of rye influence or immediately and gleefully detect the influence that I'd missed.
Who knows?
*it should be noted that Louder is much, much better if left alone until well after its best before date.
I'd be willing to bet this was just as hot as Louder when it was first bottled. The BPBP guys let it sit for three months before releasing it because they weren't happy with it. It worked.
ReplyDeleteHats off to them, it really worked. I do indistinctly remember having a sample of this at the Bierhaus during a BPBP night a while back, though I arrived late to the party and even the hosts were mixing up the names to there's no way of knowing. Certainly the bottled version is a success, and I always fear the worst when I see and Irish beer of ~10%.
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