Herevana – Wilderness – Lignum
Wilderness Lignum – a familiar Style but a new brewer, it’s all happening. When I say familiar style I mean whoa! triple naked Saison, what could possibly go wrong?
Wilderness Brewing of course make Wilderness Lignum and they are in 🇳🇿 Christchurch, New Zealand, making this one as a. Saison / Farmhouse – Flavored beer with some 5.9% ABV and 25 IBU things.
I like Saison beers, I like their honesty and rawness, and look them out as often as I can. I’ve got hopes.
The aroma made me smile, that cider like thing going on, which then fades to something deep and moodier.
Magnificently clear and clean it pours as though it lacks carbonation but the lack of head isn’t the story. There’s a magnificent aroma, it’s got things like vanilla, and orange going on according to me alone.
This is a woody beer, you can really get the baking, but again, its not the story that vanilla aroma, that’s in the beer too, and that orange, that’s there too. This is like a party going on in my mouth.
A really enjoyable beer this, which is at both times light, breezy and delicate, and then in the background it’s kicking off with that woodiness and hints of that ageing.
It’s a beer that made me smile and could easily lead to some pontification and wordiness about how lovely it is to get a really brilliant beer that seems so simple and yet was a labour of love and care.
Awesome. A lovely change from the recent diet of IPA’s and Pales back to a simpler profile, but one that just serves it up in bucketfuls. Loved it.
The Pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 9 on the arbitrary number scale. Everything they say about this is true, the oak/vanilla thing, not so much to the Bourbon (I’m not a bourbon drinker so who knows if I’m right or obvioulsy wrong) This is a beer to savour, enjoy and smile over.
This beer started out as an experiment to see what would happen if you aged a regular strength pale beer in fairly expressive oak barrels. Fermented out with a saison yeast in primary this beer then spent 4 months in an American oak (4 Roses) barrel before we racked it into a French oak barrel (ex pinot) for another 14 months. Finally we dry hopped the beer with HBC-472 – an experimental hop variety that has oak/bourbon/vanilla notes. The result is suprisingly smooth and subtle.
Herevana beers are those I drink at home, I’m not at some beer festival, like, for instance, Beervana, but am just in my kitchen, usually, dining room table, sometimes, or outside, occasionally, where I can take an average picture and write in real time about the beer that I’ve invested in, both in a monetary and emotional way.
Philip himself.
