Brewmaster Jason Perkins held a short live tasting via Periscope on Jan. 26 from the company’s wild barrel room to showcase a new beer that will be available in a few months from the Portland, Maine brewery with limited distribution in 375ml bottles: Hive 56.
A Porterish, Belgian Dark Strongish concoction with secondary additions of Brettanomyces and honey from the company’s beehives located on the brewery’s property, lending the beer’s name to the hive the honey for the beer came from.
Perkins described the beer as having a chocolate character, but not the astringency of a Stout.
“You get these nice big bold chocolaty roasty flavors and a little bit of clean sourness,” he said. “For a bigger maltier beer, we wanted some more aggressive, but not bad, notes to come through.”
The beer will be aged for a total of 18 months in wine tanks from Portugal that held a red wine from the Douro region, similar to a Cabernet.
“It’s hard to tell if we are getting some of the flavors from the wine barrel or the Brettanomyces,” Perkins said during the tasting session.
Although unofficial, Perkins believes the beer will clock in around eight percent.
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