Oakham Haka

Formerly brewed at Oakham
Style: Golden Ale/Blond Ale
Peterborough, England

Serve in English pint, Shaker

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asted this at the Paisley Beer Festival in May 2008. Cask, gravity dispense. Cloudy gold in colour with a frothy white head. Strong heady aroma of tropical fruit with passion fruit, mango, lychees and peaches all in there. Thin but creamy texture to the refreshing mouthfeel and good lacing throughout. Pale malt base gives tropical fruit notes of pineapple, mango, peaches and lychees. Strong floral hop resins give a fruity flavour to the aftertaste which really compliments the malt well. Finish is extra fruity with syrupy tropical fruit salad notes full on in the mouth. A superb Golden Ale and worth seeking out.

Gravity at the Wellington, Birmingham. Delicious, rich Golden, with a real stiff bitter feel to the finish. Really good, though as it was served gravity, the condition wasn’t quite as marvellous as when I sampled at the Criterion several years back.

Cask (gravity) - The Fat Cat Brewery Tap/The Cider Shed, Norwich. Small though lasting loose white head, clear bright golden body. Grapefruit, tangerine, resin & pine profile with some honey & demerara sugar sweetness particularly on the tongue. Biting, lingering finish. Medium body, soft palate texture, excellent quaffability even though it’s pushing sessionability in strength.

Cask, gravity, at The Pig ’n’ Falcon, St Neots, Cambridgeshire, in the Pig’s Winter Festival ’11. Gold. Notes promise marmalade and apricot. That might have been in the taste, but to me the nose was an ugly vegetal mess.Taste had fruit and sweetness. Lovely. Mid bitter finish. Everything good excepting that aroma.

UPDATED: DEC 6, 2010 Just when you thought the last beer tasted like NZ Chardonnay...here’s the Haka (is that some eggchasing NZ reference, btw, because its lost on me). Been after this for a while. Beaten gold, dissipating white foam. Ridiculous stewed Darjeeling, blackcurrant and breakfast juice aroma. And flavour for that matter, where the delicate hop pungency is cushioned (slightly) by cashew, cream and malted milk biscuit notes. Really lush green, tropical hops with a warming meatiness. Honeyed mouthfeel, mouth-drying with hops. Oakham are becoming a must-drink brewery for me and my favourite brewery in England (and thus The World) for the simple reason they brew nothing that isn’t awash with hops, and slightly balanced. I mean Struise, Mikkeller, BrewDog are good but they sometimes brew indifferent stuff...Oakham just keep ticking my boxes time after time, and pump a quantity of hop into even a modest ’golden ale’ like this that rivals some US DIPAs. Top brew.

Cask Handpump at the Smithfield, Derby 05/10/2007 Small white head. Hoppy and citrus aromas. Clear golden coloured hoppy and slightly citrus flavoured with some dryness in a crisp and bitter lime finish.

Handpulled cask at the Peierborough beer festival 2008. Gold with a white head. Every bit an Oakham beer with massive hop aroma and tropical/ciutrus fruit flavours in abundance. However, it did not live up to the hype that II’d read on Sccoopergen, though beer festivals can play all sorts of tricks on your palete.This just didn’ taste that well intergrated to me. I would be very keen to try it again.

Cask (handpump) @ Wellington, Birmingham, England B2.
Clear medium yellow orange color with a average, frothy, good lacing, mostly lasting, off-white head. Aroma is moderate malty, moderate to light heavy hoppy, citrus - lime, grapefruit. Flavor is moderate to light heavy sweet and bitter with a long duration. Refreshing. Body is medium, texture is oily, carbonation is soft. (300708)

Oakham do good beer, this included. Hoppy, refreshing, sharp, light (but in a good way) great mouth feel. Fucking belter.

Cask@Newark Beer Festival, 2008. Golden beer with a lightly hopped aroma and a bitter and floral flavour. Overall a reasonable golden ale.