This is only the third time we've released this beer, the last was the 2019 iteration that we released four and a half year ago. The first two versions of Incantation were such classic Floodland beers that I think I was maybe hesitant to try to stand up to them. This version from the 2023 harvest is one of the last beers we'll release from that harvest. Like its predecessors this is a blend of gin barrel saison refermented on stone fruit and berries. For 2023 we used a blend of a few different organic pluots from Collins Family, as well as organic Balaton cherries, and for the berry I used a blend of organic blackberries and red raspberries from Sidhu.

The Sidhu raspberries are really nice, but that berry tends to cut so intensely through anything you put it in that I'm always happy to blend in another berry to help diffuse the character, and the blackberries do a great job of that here. The 2023 harvest pluots were amazing and this beer is no exception to that, they have their usual big strawberry/fruit punch character that blends nicely with the candied cherry character from the Balatons. I tend to try to pick the most citrus-forward gin barrels for this beer, and for this blend that meant using a lot of 1st use gin barrels rather than the usual second use barrels I have used in the past, so while this has a lot of fruit it's the biggest gin character we've done on this beer, lots of lime zest from those that comes through.

If you want a beer that is both fruit and gin forward and which is punchy, but also opens up over time then this is the one for you. I am sure those of you who have had previous versions don't need to be sold on this, so I won't pat ourselves on the back too much about how great this is.

Unfortunately this is the last 1st use gin barrel we have from Big Gin barrels in the building. Hopefully we'll have more in the future, but this will be the last 1st use blend for a few years (we have a second-use blend coming late this year and that's the end of what we have due to lack of barrels).