Oakham Oblivion

Brewed by Oakham
Style: English Strong Ale
Peterborough, England

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.

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.

Cask gravity at White Cliffs BF 2007. As it seems to be always with me, I have an Oakham beer as the first beer of a festival and almost always ends up being beer of the festival for me. Does this one? Not sure yet. Deep chestnut colour with lasting bubbly beige head. Trademark grapefruit. Unbelievably hoppy for a British beer. Good toffeeish malt. Nice mixed finish. Grapefruit leafyness is lovely. Great resiny pine throughout.

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 - 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.

A Mes rate: cask at the New Crown JDW.
A mid copper colour with a thin white film and excellent condition. Excellent Oakham hoppage in the aroma with a slight sweaty note that I can only describe as the smell of a good woman after a sexual extravaganza. Backed up by some awesome bready malt in the background and a faint whiff of booze makes it a glorious olfactory experience. The flavour is pretty much identical. Yes I can taste lady bits... And all the rest of it too. Damn. This is just excellent. Good developing bitterness in the finish, giving it excellent length. Wonderfully drinkable considering the reasonable happy making factor. Awesome stuff. Hats off to Tom for getting this to the glass in such fine form.

Cask, The Criterion, Leicester. Mahogony in colour with a small head. Aromas are toffee malts, berries and lots of floral and spicy hops. Very flowery. Flavours are toffee base malts beneath lots of addictive hops. Also has some fruit. Very dry and bitter towards the finish with more bitterness on the aftertaste. Quite full in the mouth. Very nice.