Saint Arnold Endeavour was one of my gateway IPAs. When I tell beer people this, I get an odd mix of reactions. Usually, they tend toward incredulity; Endeavour is not a bashful beer. It’s HopsHopsHops from the pop of the top to the last fragrant drop, even if there is a generous malt body backing up all those buds. Regardless, it was the IPA that opened the category for me, with its heady dose of tropical fruit and peaches offering a lot of pleasure on the palate.
When I heard that the brewery’s Bishop’s Barrel Series No. 11 (brewed in February, racked in April and bottled September 11) was marrying Endeavour’s luscious, fruit-forward hoppy beer with aged gin barrels, I was excited. Of all the cocktail spirits, gin is easily my favorite. I love its ability to be stiff and straightforward even while offering subtlety and nuance. Bracing botanicals underscore gentle floral notes. To my mind, it’s very much the same model as what makes Endeavour such an engaging beer.
I managed to track down a few bottles of BB11 (thanks in no small part to a Google spreadsheet put together by local beer nerd Jose Cubria (@beernerds), and it took me a couple of days, and a couple of bottles, to decide what I thought.
BOTTLE ONE
BB11 pours a dark amber, tending toward caramel. A thinnish, off-white head goes creamy on the edges with a peak of larger bubbles. Moderate apparent carbonation keeps the foam dome in place.
On opening my first bottle, I was met with a nice juniper rush, backed up by a slightly savory edge. In the glass, the aromas read much more malt forward. Piney and resinous hops come through, followed by fleeting tropical fruits (dried papaya leading that first fruity wave), but not the absolute barrage of lush, mouth-watering fruit-forward hops I love so much in Endeavour.
The first sip brings the gin back, with a sharp, boozy leading edge. Alcohol, juniper, fir trees, citrus peel. A clean, moderately bitter finish closes with more pine and resin. The juniper and resin notes are nice together, complementary rather than contrasting flavors, but I miss the peachy, semi-tropical fruit notes.
I don’t get much overt barrel flavor – no deep caramel, vanilla or oak – which isn’t necessarily a complaint. I find that an awful lot of barreled beers are dominated by the wood. With this one, the fleeting nature of IPA forced the brewers to keep the beer in barrels for a relatively brief amount of time and not long enough for the coopers to stage their usual coup.
Overall, the beer is supremely well balanced, but to its deficit rather than benefit. For a gin-barrel-aged beer, there’s not really enough pronounced gin or barrel to make those adjectives stick. I deeply loved Endeavour, and DR11, but find it fairly difficult to be enthusiastic about this one. If that balance were firmly struck between gin barrel and the tropical fruit head rush of the base beer, that would be one thing, but this is a different thing entirely. It’s perfectly fine, but for a series like Bishop’s Barrel, fine might not be good enough.
BOTTLE TWO
I’m still getting hit up front by that gin nose, which is nice. Funny, it’s very clear during the pour, cascading up and out of the glass, but fades a bit once it’s all in. Halfway through the glass, it reemerges with a gentle swirl.
I’m warming up to it, on bottle two, with my expectations reset. Rather than necessarily missing the tropical fruit cannon of the standard issue, I’m enjoying how cleanly the spicy juniper notes of the gin intersect with the pine and resin of the hops, somehow never edging toward dank. I think the slight antiseptic notes of the gin, an almost eucalyptus thing flitting just out of reach, helps clean up all those earthy hop notes, lending them a sharper edge and finer definition.
There’s also a slight, pleasant sweetness I’d drunk right past in the first bottle. A bit of candied orange rind in amongst all that malt, tasting a bit like the batch I once made using a syrup fashioned from reduced IPA. Burnt caramel and spiced oranges. It’s clean, with a razor sharp finish and a nice, boozy warmth. If I were thinking of this in cocktail terms, it would be leaning more toward Martinez than Martini, but definitely meets the balance bar.
When you look at emerging styles like beers aged in spirit barrels, there’s a tendency to expect audacity. Audacity can be good. It’s not everything, though, and a calmer head and palate can often be an asset. That’s what I missed the first time, and where I’m landing a few bottles in. Rather than allowing this to be a beer defined by extremes, it’s a beer defined by restraint.
The botanicals of the gin temper the hops, mild wood tannins help balance the malty sweetness, all of the pieces work in concert. Nothing jumps out at you, as with the brash fruity hops of BB11’s progenitor, but that’s just because all of those flavors are so well integrated. That’s a tough task, resulting in a beer that has some demands.
Pay attention. This isn’t a big, obvious beer. If you’re expecting that, you’ll miss all the subtle things it does well. With bourbon-barrel-aged everything topping everyone’s ISO lists, it’s easy to let your palate get attenuated to a sledgehammer. BB11 is no sledgehammer, and that’s kind of remarkable.