Beer – #907 – Garage Project – Rum and Raisin
A special heer this one. Garage Project – Rum and Raisin. Nicest presentation for a while, cork, cage, dinky looking bottle, also eye wateringly expensive in the scheme of things. Also Vinyl music, because it’s a Sunday. Two things then, a new beer, and a first time playing this album.
…The ultimate decadent…
This is a 375ml bottle of a beer that is 11.5% ABV, 335 calories, and this would be 3.4 standard drinks worth. Good job I’m sitting at home.
Brewed by Garage Project in the style of an Abbey Tripel and they are in Wellington, New Zealand
Sunday Smiles
A Belgian triple, brewed with Special B malt and dark sugars, designed to taste like Rum & Raisin even before it hit the barrel.
Plump organic raisins were soaked in a bottle of 12 year old Appleton Estate Rum and infused with the beer in the conditioning vessel.
So, what could possibly go wrong?
Aroma is of steeped fruits, chocolate and raisins,
Hazy brown pour, almost muddy, and there’s no head worth a mention. Aroma in the glass really kicks off though.
Alcohol rich fruity sharpness.
Taste is firstly an alcohol tang then a bitter bitterness that’s mostly like red wine tannin, which leaves a dry edginess on the tongue.
Not at all expected, and possibly not welcome.
Then again it is Rum infused, perhaps I’m confused, perhaps this is exactly the thing it’s supposed to be. Perhaps I should take up Rum.
I’ve been sipping, because this isn’t a beer you could or should quaffing n gulps, and it’s consistent and steady, the alcohol tang doesn’t get bigger or fade, but there is some life in the fruit parts of this that really do hold their own and provide a quite interesting counterpoint to the tartness that this has.
Either this does truly get better as it gets warmer, or it’s the booze talking, but two sides of an album in and this is developing quite a lovely feel about it. Not so much that you can forgive the early challenges but it really does settle into itself and I’m enjoying the whole nose to mouth journey.
Also probably going to be upset when it’s finished. Also drinking this at home instead of in company you get a chance to get up and mooch about and come back, no pressure to have it there and then.
As it turns out this is a great beer for a relaxing Sunday.
The Music, well that’s pretty raw and original punk as I properly remember, jangly couple of cords and manic drum work with shouted and often incoherent singing about this and that. Also brilliant 🙂
The last couple of sips are almost a bit like a syrup experience, the glass full of wafting full aroma, the beer looking like treacle almost sitting in the glass, it’s good.
The pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 9 of its things from the thing. Because it is actually as good as it should be and not as good as you’d like it to be (to be honest it’d be a 9.5, but there’s no middle ground, you can’t neatly win, you either do or don’t. To get this to 10? Hard to say tone down that alcohol tang. But I’d like to have had a bigger fruit feel.
The double dip review
- Where did I get it? Liquorland in Forrest Hill, but this is a really short spread supply beer, so if you missed out you missed out.
- Am I enjoying it? I ended up loving it, but that might be the beer talking.
- Would I have another? The finance and entertainment director (MrsPhil) had kittens about the price of this little bottle, I daren’t ask, but if you’re buying….
- Would I share with a friend on a porch and set the world to rights? You’d have to pick the time for this, it is a contemplative kind of beer that needs time and patience, which are all worth it and pay dividends in the end.
Music for this: ” Toy Love ” with the album ” Toy Love” on Vinyl, but listen to ” Cuts” here on spotify
Toy Love were together for less than two years (1978–80) and spent a large part of that time in Australia. They released just one (self-titled) album, however the band members were apparently appalled by the mixing of the tracks which took the edge off the band’s deliberately raw sound. Allmusic gave the album a 3/5 rating.[2] In April 2005, this album was remastered and released along with a bunch of demos and unreleased tracks as a double CD entitled Cuts.
ABBEY TRIPEL
Like other abbey ales, Tripels are strong, yeasty-malty beers. But they are also pale, and have a notable hop profile. Hop bitterness may be higher than a typical abbey ale, up to 35IBUs. But the finish is where the hops really shine, as tripels should finish fairly dry. Otherwise, maltiness is still essential to the style, and the assertive yeast note typical of all abbey ales will be more apparent in tripels, since they do not have the rich dark malts to distract the palate. Alcohol flavours feature more prominently in Tripels than in just about any other style.
A life just as ordinary 