Looking forward to 'baron rating' Hardknott ales very soon!

I got a tweet from @HardknottDave on Sunday morning saying they were thinking of coming down to Ormskirk to visit @SourceDeli to see if they would like to stock any Hardknott bottled ales. He asked if I'd like to meet them there so on Sunday afternoon I popped down to Source Deli for a coffee & a join a chat with Dave & Ann and Paul from Source Deli.

I was lucky enough to be involved in trying some of Hardknott's newest arrivals - the 27 year and 28 year whisky aged stouts called Aether Blaec 2010.

We tried the 27 year version which Ann said was more punchy than the 28 version, it was lovely - such a fine blend of strong spirity aromas, delicious smooth stout followed by a nice oaky finish. I can't stand spirits in any form and most cask-aged beers are wasted on me but Aether Blaec 2010 was superb!

As I left Dave offered a few bottles for baron ratings so here are the details:


Hardknott Brewery
  • Aether Blaec 2010 (27 year) - 7.2% stout aged in a 27 year old Speyside whisky cask
  • Aether Blaec 2010 (28 year) - 7.7% stout aged in a 28 year old Speyside whisky cask
  • Granite 2010 - 10.1% barley wine style beer
  • Infra Red - 6.5% deep ruby red IPA hopped with American hops
We baron rated the 2009 versions of these beers here and found them all to be of a consistantly high quality, Dave certainly knows what he's doing when it comes to bottling strong beers:
 Look out for a 'baron rating' for these Hardknott beers soon, and a big thank you to Dave and Ann from Hardknott for kindly handing thems over to me!

Buy Hardknott ales here and here
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3 comments:

  1. Yvan Seth22 March 2011 at 22:24

    Loved the previous Granite and Ӕther Blӕc renditions & still have an '09 Ӕther Blӕc waiting to be compared to the '10 (alas, couldn't hold back from drinking my last '09 Granite!) ... So fingers crossed I manage to get hold of some before they're all gone!

    Look forward to listening to your reviews.

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  2. Baron Orm23 March 2011 at 08:29

    Yvan, cheers for the comment. Where do you live? I know that myBrewerytap have some Hardknott stock as does AlesByMail - both excellent ale mail order companies, I've bought from both in the past and had excellent service.

    The small tastes that I tried on Sunday were amazing, really looking forward to getting stuck into these with Chris.

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  3. Yvan Seth23 March 2011 at 12:57

    I'm down in Hertfordshire - Hitchin.

    I'd order some from myBrewerytap, I've made a few pick-n-mix orders before - excellent service. However... next weekend I'm in Cumbria! :)

    I have two empty HardKnott firkins at home which need to return to the brewery.

    Love using beer as an excuse for a bit of hillwalking... or is that using hillwalking as an excuse for beer? ;)

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