Tuesday, September 25, 2007

A New Beer From The Pink Elephant

Right, after several days of recovering from what was a vigorously enjoyable weekend I’m back with a new beer from Roger Pink. Like all of Rogers beer his new one is utterly original and doesn’t smoothly fit into a style. Trumpet Barley Wine is a 10.5% abv hoppy pale ale that uses manuka honey as an adjunct.


Pink Elephant Trumpet 10.5%abv
Vintage 2007. Pours a light amber gold with a white tight head. Aroma displays masses of NZ hop character, fruit mainly grape and orange, spicy notes, a touch of woody character and as it warms a hint of caramel malt character. On the palate there is heaps of hop flavour with oranges being dominant; malt makes an appearance with a hint of sweetness leading to a short tart finish. Another original classic from Pink Elephant, perhaps more a historical IPA than a Barley Wine.



5 comments:

Greig McGill said...

Wow... we must have had very different beers. Even the colour of the one I had was different, being a deep ruby. Aromatically, there was a beautiful port and raisins miasma, and while like you, I found some orange character on the palate, it was deep and woody, with more port qualities, a good hop bitterness to balance, a slightly harsh, but warming alcohol note and a smokey lingering finish.

Maybe he mislabeled the bottle? The alcohol was very evident in mine - how was yours?

Kieran Haslett-Moore said...

The bottle we tried didnt have much perceptible alc, certainly no fortified wine character, just loads of fresh hops and a tart dry finish that I suspect was from the honey. Adam and I both tried it and got similar things, Adam has anouther bottle , wonder what that will be like when we drink it. Roger certainly could never be accused of being consistant.

Kieran Haslett-Moore said...

what batch was yours? ours was batch 001 bottle 212.

Greig McGill said...

Batch 001 also, can't remember the bottle number but it was in the 100s. It's the colour that seems the biggest difference, and makes me wonder if he has mislabeled a bunch of beers. I blamed the smokeyness in the finish on the manuka honey. I wonder which of us has the "real" trumpet? :)

Kieran Haslett-Moore said...

We evaluated Trumpet split 3 ways into small thin glasses which lighten the colour, im confident its the same beer, just tasting very different obviosly.