Death Come Quickly (2021)
Floodland Brewing in Seattle, Washington, United States 🇺🇸
Farmhouse - Saison Rotating Out of Production|
Score
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(an unfortunate note that I fucked up the label on this. We label saisons by the year in which they were packaged, and so I typed 2022 when laying this out, although the consistent/proper vintage would be 2021 since we treat these honey referments as more like fruit beers and label them by the harvest year. These beers take so long to make that we'd moved well past thinking of 2021 when the labels were made in early 2023. Unfortunately the bottles were already labeled by the time I caught my mistake. It's clear from the 9/19/21 honey harvest date in the details that this should be labeled '21)
This is the third (or fourth if you count Everything Is Fire) iteration of our raw honey referments, where we take aged beer and let it undergo a slow fermentation on room temperature raw honey that we source from local apiaries. This is a really special blend because it's the first with honey from Cougar Canyon Apiaries. I wrote a bit about them in this 2022 news email that is worth revisiting:
https://mailchi.mp/23f9a85f58a1/floodland-news-8988019
The specific honey we used in this beer is referenced in that email, harvested at elevation from a site they keep at Buzzard Lake. Gert told me that the wildflowers there that time of year are mostly knapweed, spotted and diffuse. Knapweed is a type of thistle, and if you have spent much time in rural areas in Washington you know how invasive thistles can be and how much they have spread in recent decades. Like a bunch of invasive wildflowers, they have historical medicinal use, plus they have some beautiful flowers and bees love them, resulting in honey that is absolutely amazing. We used a star thistle and knapweed honey previously in DCQ, so it was fitting to use a similar honey in this batch.
One of the common misconceptions about honey in beer is that it adds sweetness. Honey, unlike malt/grain sugars, is completely fermentable. So it would be more accurate to say that it dries the beer out. There can be a trick that these kinds of flavors and aromatics play on your mind, though. You have years of built in sense memory which tells you that the smell of honey is sweet, so when you smell honey you can easily associate sweetness where none exists. This beer is bone dry, like most of ours (in Belgium and Italy and other places they call these dry beers "digestible" because they are known for being easier on your body, and these beers are also well documented to be healthier for you than even "regular" ales and lagers, which themselves are good for your digestive system).
The goal of Death Come Quickly and these honey referments that we started early on was to be able to take really high quality raw honey and then slowly referment it at ambient temperatures. Most brewers use honey by putting it in the kettle, which is easy because the high heat dissolves the honey, but it also nearly boils the honey which drives off a lot of subtle aroma and flavor compounds (and kills any health benefits) from the honey. It's hard to tell a beekeeper who puts an enormous amount of work into making nuanced and subtle single site honey that you are going to boil the result of their work. Additionally, a vigorous and fast fermentation would also scrub aromatics, so we baby these, which is extremely time consuming and labor intensive. The result, though, has in the past always been more than worth it, and this batch really showcases even more of a distinct honey character than any we've released before. It also has an intense lemon/lime powdered candy character, like melon jollyrancher mixed with sprite mixed with Smarties. It's exceptionally characterful and should age nicely.
The last iteration we released at 14 months in the bottle, these tend to condition very slowly. This one was tasting good for the July release but we decided to hold it back another few months. It is now approaching 11 months in the bottle. While most of the beers don't need that much time in the bottle before release, this beer moves more slowly than others, but it is definitively worth the wait.
Bottling date: 10/20/2022
Cellar: Should drink well for the next few years. Best before fall 2025, drink by fall 2026.
This is the third (or fourth if you count Everything Is Fire) iteration of our raw honey referments, where we take aged beer and let it undergo a slow fermentation on room temperature raw honey that we source from local apiaries. This is a really special blend because it's the first with honey from Cougar Canyon Apiaries. I wrote a bit about them in this 2022 news email that is worth revisiting:
https://mailchi.mp/23f9a85f58a1/floodland-news-8988019
The specific honey we used in this beer is referenced in that email, harvested at elevation from a site they keep at Buzzard Lake. Gert told me that the wildflowers there that time of year are mostly knapweed, spotted and diffuse. Knapweed is a type of thistle, and if you have spent much time in rural areas in Washington you know how invasive thistles can be and how much they have spread in recent decades. Like a bunch of invasive wildflowers, they have historical medicinal use, plus they have some beautiful flowers and bees love them, resulting in honey that is absolutely amazing. We used a star thistle and knapweed honey previously in DCQ, so it was fitting to use a similar honey in this batch.
One of the common misconceptions about honey in beer is that it adds sweetness. Honey, unlike malt/grain sugars, is completely fermentable. So it would be more accurate to say that it dries the beer out. There can be a trick that these kinds of flavors and aromatics play on your mind, though. You have years of built in sense memory which tells you that the smell of honey is sweet, so when you smell honey you can easily associate sweetness where none exists. This beer is bone dry, like most of ours (in Belgium and Italy and other places they call these dry beers "digestible" because they are known for being easier on your body, and these beers are also well documented to be healthier for you than even "regular" ales and lagers, which themselves are good for your digestive system).
The goal of Death Come Quickly and these honey referments that we started early on was to be able to take really high quality raw honey and then slowly referment it at ambient temperatures. Most brewers use honey by putting it in the kettle, which is easy because the high heat dissolves the honey, but it also nearly boils the honey which drives off a lot of subtle aroma and flavor compounds (and kills any health benefits) from the honey. It's hard to tell a beekeeper who puts an enormous amount of work into making nuanced and subtle single site honey that you are going to boil the result of their work. Additionally, a vigorous and fast fermentation would also scrub aromatics, so we baby these, which is extremely time consuming and labor intensive. The result, though, has in the past always been more than worth it, and this batch really showcases even more of a distinct honey character than any we've released before. It also has an intense lemon/lime powdered candy character, like melon jollyrancher mixed with sprite mixed with Smarties. It's exceptionally characterful and should age nicely.
The last iteration we released at 14 months in the bottle, these tend to condition very slowly. This one was tasting good for the July release but we decided to hold it back another few months. It is now approaching 11 months in the bottle. While most of the beers don't need that much time in the bottle before release, this beer moves more slowly than others, but it is definitively worth the wait.
Bottling date: 10/20/2022
Cellar: Should drink well for the next few years. Best before fall 2025, drink by fall 2026.
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