[vc_row][vc_column][rev_slider_vc alias=”apricity”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Apricity is light-brown coloured wheat and oat doppelbock with a creamy fine head. Notes of fruitiness, Christmas cake, Speculaas spices, raisins and plums meet biscuits and roasty aromas. Full-bodied and warming, with a well-balanced and smooth finish. Despite being 8%, this beer is one of our most versatile creations. It can be sipped by itself like a brandy, or taken with numerous food combinations.
Here some of our food pairing recommendations:
Mark: I’ve had Apricity with creamy deserts such as creme brûlée as well as apple pie, and I would recommend with those deserts. Let the bottle settle at room temperature, by having too chilled you’ll miss out on lovely Christmas spices and aromas.
Alvin: Here’s a short list of foods that can be paired with Apricity: Thyme/Rosemary Roast Chicken with Root Vegetables (and gravy of course), Braised Lamb Shoulder, Soy/Citrus Steak – we then add the Jus into Mayo (1:4 ratio) to make an awesome dressing. And then we thought this would break it but it went with our Caesar Salad as well!
Carlos: it’s a light-brown colored wheat and oat doppelbock with a creamy fine head. But since it has wheat and oats, that actually means it’s not a Doppelbock – maybe more like a HaferWeizendoppelbock. But since it was fermented with French Ale yeast, it’s not that either. But it’s super tasty and who cares anyway! With about 21 IBU’s, it shows notes of fruitiness, christmas cake, speculaas spices, raisins and plums meet biscuits and roasty aromas. Full-bodied and warming, with a well-balanced and smooth finish.
Please note, this is a seasonal beer made for winter months, so there is limited availability.
Story of Apricity:
Quite a few years ago, I picked a copy of a book called Reading the OED (Old English Dictionary) and I discovered a word there that I really loved, Apricity: The warmth of sun in winter. In my youth, there were days when the Sun was reprieve from the wintry greyness. As a child, I could bask next to window for hours until dusk came or clouds concealed the sun again. During April this year, I was in Nova Scotia and we were hit with a late spring snow storm. It was freezing cold compared to the moderate weather I was accustomed to in Auckland. Then the next morning, the sun was streaming through the windows, I knew it was freezing outside but I felt the Apricity calling me. I got out my sketch pad and I drew a primitive concept I had in mind for Apricity.
I had routine skype calls with Carlos from Halifax, and I was very excited for this concept. Carlos had actually thought of ‘Spekulatius’ beer back in 2015 but we had trouble with the concept. Later, Alvin (who soon be the 3rd partner of Outlier Cartel) mentioned that the Spekulatius beer would make a superb Doppelbock. We gave it a working name of the ‘The Speculator’, but we wanted a name to reflect Christmas and the all the good things about winter, so we put this on the back burner.
In an instant over that skype call, we knew we had an awesome beer in the works. However, I was in Canada and Carlos was in New Zealand, so we weren’t sure about our production timetable.
As fate would have it, I had an extremely urgent matter to take care of in New Zealand. Flying to Auckland from Halifax is no small journey, but during that space of time we met with Sam HaeHae who did our Honey Chestnut design. Before I flew back to Canada a couple of weeks later, Carlos had arranged for a spice mixing at Hallertau amongst friends and family. We had a great evening of food and drink, and we passed around bowls of fresh cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cardamon to put into mixing pot. From that mix, we came up with the prototype of Apricity!
Here is the design that Sam did that is now on every Apricity bottle:
On the bottle:
A warm coat, a woolly scarf and a walk in the winter sun to find this Christmas biscuit spiced ale. Speculaas + Apricity.
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