Epochal - Aiken Drum

5.8% Scottish stock brown ale dry hopped with Amarillo This beer is a blend of ales brewed with crystal and amber malts, fermented neutral oak and Bordeaux casks with Pilgrim hops, known for their strawberry notes. These beers were aged for between a year and 18 months to achieve significant funk and subtle acidity before final blending and dry hopping with whole leaf Amarillo from Yakima Chief Hops. This is a singular, subtle and delicious beer combining approachably fruity vibrancy with deep funk and restrained, piquant acidity. It has a lovely colour at the paler end of brown, tight foam and a very pretty aroma of peaches, red berries, pineapples, flowers, pine, subtle oak, aromatic acids and a little biscuity note of amber malt. On the palate, it is light, tart, subtly bitter and most refreshing. The beer is named after the central creature in the 1825 poem The Brownie of Blednoch, by William Nicholson. Aiken Drum mostly goes around helping people with odd jobs but despite this, the poem inspired a delightfully goth depiction of him by Edward Atkinson Hornel (1889), which which currently hangs in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery in Glasgow (see below). He also managed to make it into a well known nursery rhyme, according to which his breeks are made of haggis bags and his hat is made of good cream cheese. So there you go, something to contemplate over a brown ale.

Epochal - Aiken Drum | Mixed Ferm Brown Ale | 5.8% abv | 375 ml

Click here to view this craft beer on Untappd