Herevana – North End – Salt and Wood Stout Varadero
It is the BeerJerkNZ beer of the week time, and it’s always good!
North End Brewing Co produce the North End Salt and Wood Stout Varadero, which happens in Waikanae Beach, Wellington, New Zealand 🇳🇿 – and it is a Stout – Flavored / Pastry with an ABV of 7.2% which is 2.5 standard drinks in NZ
I know that acquaintances really like this beer, but also that I’ve had it before, wherein I had mixed feelings. I wonder if prefacing it with a more standard Oatmeal Stout that is will lift this take?
Absolute scenes as there appears to be 101% beer in the can. I guess it’s a thing. I can live with it.
Gorgeous looking beer that, pitch dark, off mocha head large and proud. Aroma is quite understated in the glass.
Well I’m pleasingly and pleasantly taken aback. There’s a lot of an okay note in this, woods, but it it quite understated and background, lurking, just there, just enough .
There is also a firmly pleasant sweet softness in this, and a bonus surprise of a lick of dryness.
All these things are amazing because I went in to this expecting something not this. Which is on me.
There’s nothing outstanding or differnt about this, but it is in and of itself quite lovely. Understated and just doing what it wants to do, it gets better with warming.
I think I should have had this at the end of an evening as it lets you drift along with it without challenging you, when you can appreciate that is it quite lovely and you need a bit more of this in your life.
The Pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 8 on the arbitrary number scale. There is a lovely softness about this, understated and measured. It is mellow and enjoyable, it’d be a lovely beer to finish an evening on as it doesn’t take you anther or challenge you with notes that ping and pop. And I’m good with that.
Music . Changüí: The Sound of Guantánamo. Various Artists
Between 2017 and 2019 music journalist Gianluca Tramontana traveled to the Guantánamo region of Cuba and immersed himself in a 150-plus-year-old culture of rural, riff-based, foot-stomping, largely improvised music. Through his journey into changüí music he recorded these musicians in their homes, backyards, and porches.
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.
At North End Brewery we love rum: we love drinking it, we love matching beers with it and most of all we love aging beer over the oak barrels that were used to make it. Stout Varadero is the result of a collaboration with Wellington rum purveyors: Havana Bar. A dark, rich, warming oatmeal and rye stout aged on a blend of 3, 5, and 15 years old Ron Varadero rum barrel oak.
Brewers Notes
Stout – Flavored / Pastry
The “Flavored Stout” is a full-bodied black beer with a pronounced roasted flavor, often similar to coffee and dark chocolate with some malty complexity and some variations can be quite hoppy. The beer also contain a clear flavoring element. The balance can range from moderately bittersweet to bitter, with the more balanced versions having up to moderate malty richness and the bitter versions being quite dry. It also feature an harmonious marriage of the additive and beer, but still recognizable as a beer. The additive character should be evident but in balance with the beer. (For example: fruits, spices, herbs, vegetables, coffee, honey, chocolate, maple sirup, chilies, nuts, vanilla, liquor – BUT not including Smoked malt, barrel-aging or a Sour element resulting from the brewing process). In the case of over-the-top, highly sweet, adjunct-heavy stouts reminiscent of a liquid version of cake or pastry, the name “Dessert Stout” or “Pastry Stout” if often used
A life just as ordinary 