Beer of the Week: Hale’s Ales Cascade Mist Wet Hop

One of the great things about where I live is that I have 5 (and soon to be 7) breweries within walking distance of my house. It makes for a regular rotation for me to stop in to each of these places and try the new and exciting stuff that they have on tap, and, in the case of Hale’s Ales, try the beers that they don’t bottle. A recent trip to Hale’s yielded such a treasure – the very last of their fresh hop beer. I unfortunately can’t find any stats on the beer (I did find a single reference to it being 5.5% ABV), so you are just stuck with my description.

The beer is very pale yellow in color with a snow white head. I took one look at it and thought to myself that this was going to be a major letdown. It wasn’t helped when I took a whiff of the beer – faint notes of grain with very mild hops, if you did not know what you ordered, you would possible be thinking pilsner. It is a good thing that I did not judge a book by its cover. The first sip delivered a very crisp and refreshing beer with lots of hops flavor up from with notes of orange and lemon lingering for a short time before giving way to citrus peel, grain and hop resin. A slight bitterness hides in the finish on this beer, but it is not particularly pronounced and it provides a nice counterbalance to the citrus notes. It is also just enough to remind you that this is a fresh hop beer but not off-putting to the point where a non-IPA drinker would hate it. There is great balance between the citrus and grain and it is a nice change of pace from the fresh hop IPA’s that tend to dominate the market in Seattle. When this beer makes a comeback, you should belly yourself up to the bar at Hale’s and knock back a few of them.

Hale’s Cascade Mist was an unexpected surprise when I went in the brewery and it made for a very happy Iron Chef when I left.

Hale’s Cascade Mist Wet Hop wafts in with a cloaking 4 cloudy days out of 5.

The Ballard Beer Revolution

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Holy hops, Batman! Ballard is really becoming a hotspot for beer. I saw this on myballard.com, yet another brewery opening soon. That means when Peddler Brewing opens, we will have the following breweries in a 1 mile radius:

Hale’s Ales
Maritime Pacific
NW Peaks
Hilliard’s
Reuben’s
Populuxe (if they ever get their act together and finally open)
Peddler

I am not surprised that a brewery moved into the old Maritime space. I think it is a good location for a small operation.

If beer is not your thing, there you can always visit my friend Jason at the fun tasting room of Domanico Winery. Now if we could just get a distillery….

Beer of the Week: Hale’s Rudyard’s Rare Barley Wine – 2006 Vintage

By Iron Chef Leftovers

2004016509 — Photo Credit: KEN LAMBERT / THE SEATTLE TIMES

I am not usually much of a barley wine fan, there are a small handful of them that I like, but generally I tend to stay away from them since they are expensive and not high up on my list of beers I enjoy. Recently, I was at a friend’s place and he has a nice stash of vintage barley wine which he was kind enough to share some with me. One of the bottles that we opened was a 2006 Rudyard’s from Hale’s Brewing. This was poured from a 12 oz. bottle and comes in at around 10% ABV. We served it room temp to get the full effect of the beer.
The beer pours almost black like a porter with a small amount of carbonation and a fair amount of sediment at the bottom of the glass. Subtle hints of smoke and wood with a slightly musty smell permeates from this beer – it almost smell like a campfire that has been put out for an hour or so, nothing overpowering, but you know it was there. On the palate, this was a very different beer. Chocolate and malt dominate the tongue, with the some molasses there, but not in a cloying way. The beer finishes very long, fading into stone fruit (we thought cherry) and cocoa nibs at the end.

I did a little digging to find a review of what this beer was like upon release and I stumbled across this from beeradvocate.com’s rating board written in March 2007:

Poured from a 12oz bottle marked Dec 2006, so I’m drinking it relatively fresh. Pours with a thin mocha colored head that dissipates quickly. Very dark, color reminds me of molasses. Smells faintly sweet, of vanilla perhaps? Tastes of toasted malt. Very smooth, very nice. Hard to believe it’s almost 10% abv… VERY easy to drink… Retired? Hmm….if that’s truly the case then i guess i should consider myself lucky to have found this.

It surprises me that so much of what was in the original tasting notes, we tasted in the beer. I didn’t get any real vanilla, but that is probably where the campfire smell came from.

This was an overall amazing beer for being 6 years old and is easily on my list of beers that I wish I could have again but probably never will. It seems the key for me might be to buy a barley wine and stash it away in the cellar for 5 or 6 years.
Rudyard’s Rare manages to swing in with a stellar 5 Jungle Books out of 5 on the literary scale.

I really want to thank Bill D. for sharing his last bottle of this amazing beer with me.