Saint Arnold – Bishop’s Barrel No 11 Coming 9/21

From Saint Arnold:

Our barrel program allows us to play with a lot of different flavors. Sometimes unexpected flavors pair in a beautiful way! Such is the case with Bishop’s Barrel No. 11.

It started when someone brought us a bottle of barrel aged gin. Brewer Aaron tasted it, thought, "Hmmm, that might be an interesting accompaniment to Endeavour." A couple of drops of it were added to a pint and the results were promising. Next came the challenge of finding gin barrels. There aren’t a lot of barrel aged gins out there. Luckily we had visited a small distillery in West Virginia, Smooth Ambler, that barrel aged a gin in used bourbon barrels. After much work, we secured 30 of these used gin barrels.

We filled the barrels in April. Given we were using a very hoppy beer, we didn’t want to let it sit in the barrel for as long as most of our barrel aged beers. When we deemed it ready to be moved out of barrels a couple weeks ago, we noted that the hops were just a little more muted than we wanted, so we tried blends with between 5% to 40% fresh Endeavour, settling on 20%.

The result is Bishop’s Barrel No. 11, BB11, or as we refer to it internally, Gindeavour. It pours a beautiful copper color with an off white head. The nose is a spicy mix of hops, wood, juniper and a hint of bourbon. There is a bitter up front that is balanced with a nice malt backbone throughout. Piney, resiny hops balance with the juniper/gin character. There is a warming alcohol note in there too. The finish is focused with the hop bitter, malt and gin character all giving a pleasant linger.

Again, with all Bishop’s Barrel releases, bottles are available only at bars and restaurants. Keep up with the hashtag #BB11 on Twitter to find it in your area. Here are a few places we know will have it:

Monday, September 21

Front Porch Pub

Hop Scholar

Union Tavern