Oakham Oblivion

Brewed by Oakham
Style: English Strong Ale
Peterborough, England

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.

The downside, not a lot. I’m guessing amarillo, Centenial and mount hood, on a nice broad caramelly body. Sounds almost sexual. Still, very good stuff. if a tad sweet for more than a couple. Draught @ the coastguard, 29/12/07

Cask Stillage from the upstairs bar at the Ship & Mitre, Liverpool 16/02/2007 Fruit and hop aromas. Dark mid brown coloured with some alcohol present. Fruity bubble gum flavour. Crisp and bitter malt finish.

Cask (gravity dispense), White Cliffs Best Festival. Attractive bronzed copper colour. Big Pacific North-West hop aroma - flowery and aromatic. Powerful grapefruit flavour with some tropical fruit notes. There’s some malt providing and almost chocolate touch in the background. Sharp, resinous hop finish, tending towards astringent. Could easily be mistaken for an American beer and there are not too many British beers you could say that about. Assured and impressive.

Bright bottled at Dover Beer Fest 2007. Well, this is a delicious beer and that’s a fact. Great mix of hops and malt. Lovely brew - smooth, clean and flawless. The hops are strong, but are in harmony with the malts. I’d love to know what malts and hops are used here, and in what proportion, because they work together so well. Fascinating aroma of damp leather and lilies, great mouthful of honeyed toffee malt with a scintillating rush of electric citric hops full of flowers and fruit. A grand, grand beer.