Drake's Batch 5000

5000 brews is a big deal for any brewery, so we decided to mark the occasion with a big time beer. For our 5000th brew, we decided to tackle the Belgian Strong Golden Ale (made popular by Duvel) - but with our own spin. We made it big (just a hair shy of 11%), got a little excitable with the hops (dry-hopped with Willamette, Vanguard and Calypso)... but we wanted to do more. So we filled up a couple fresh Orange Muscat barrels with the beer, aged it for a month, and then blended it back in to the primary batch (making it ~30% barrel-aged). We also added a barrel of our Hefe that we fermented with Fantome yeast because that’s what we do. The final blend is intensely friuted with a good amount of spice in the aroma. Flavor starts vaguely sweet with all those fruit notes from the nose on your tongue, and dries out in a nice warming burst of alcohol and spice.