Oakham Oblivion

Cask conditioned - gravity dispense - Merton Winter BF. I’m slightly concerned by the last sentence of Casey’s rating. Are we really doomed? If so I wouldn’t mind going down drinking this little beauty. An amber coloured beer with the slightest hint of haze. The aroma is wonderful. Beautiful hops, malt and alcohol and all in balance. The taste is also very lovely and full of flavours. Again all superbly balanced and this time there are hints of spice also. Very American in my book. And very very delicious.

Gravity, Merton Winter Beer festival. Copper, lasting cream froth head. Lots of green hop aroma: melon, juniper cinnamon. Resiny hop bitterness, appealingly rough and aggressive. Melon flavor in a way that seems to capture the chin-dripping stickiness of ripe musk melon, while being simultaneously a crisply dry beer. That’s impossible, but yet...there it is! This is dangerous stuff! We may have created a hole in the space-time continuum!

28 days... 6 hours... 42 minutes... 12 seconds. That... is when the world... will end.

Cask, gravity at Merton Winter Beer Festival Feb’ 08 Dark reddy/brown beer with a nice white head. The hops surge forward on first inquisitive whiff absolutely flooding the aroma with some glorious citrusness, oakiness it’s clean, fresh and stunning. The flavour gun is also set to stun as well, your mouth and tastebuds absolutely hammered with a juicy, hoppy frenzy of crisp grapefruit, bitterness hits but then in an instant a lovely sweet malty toffee underbelly rescues this and provides a stunning balance to this beer. This has the most incredible amount of flavour’s present and really is one superb beer, my beer of the festival by some considerable margin.

Cask conditioned at Merton Winter Beer Festival ’08. Brown beer with white head. Now this is the real deal for me, with Oakham you are going to get the hops and this has enough to be an IPA, leafy, fresh, peppery with an oily perfume character. Then there is bitterness and grapefruit citrus notes bouncing around over the rich caramel body. This is a great beer in my book, I loved it.

The elusive Out Of The Vaults, Leicscum, when I should have been shopping. Vanilla, wood, walnut and leafy hop aroma. Still, tawny, intensely bitter. Dark heady fruit, bitter orange hop attack, bunches of flowers, bruising quinine hop bitterness. BLACKCURRANT. Oh yes. Rich, shampoo-like, intense...and edging towards loveliness.