Head Brewer at Left Hand Brewing Company, Ro Guenzel, has created a new Weizenbock with our Lapsang Souchong tea. He first launched it at the Big Beers, Belgians, and Barley Wine festival in Vail earlier this month and it was a hit! They’ll be pouring a keg of this beer for the first time in their tasting room this Thursday, January 28th. They’ll be tapping the keg at 3pm and pouring it until it’s gone. We’ll also be there, sampling our lapsang souchong tea alongside so you can experience this unique pinewood smoked black tea in full form. Please stop by and introduce yourself.
Brewmaster’s Tasting Notes:
The beer is a strong wheat beer or Weizenbock. It is fermented with a special Bavarian yeast strain that produces strong ester and phenolic aromas. The beer pours dark hazy brown with a rocky white head. Aroma is of banana and faint clove with a interesting spicy smokiness. The beer tastes of banana, soft wheat and chocolate. It starts sweet and then is dried out by the tannic smokiness of the tea. The 6.2% ABV is well hidden amongst the interplay of malts, tea and yeast.
Thursday, January 28th, 2010, 3pm-8pm
Left Hand’s Brewery & Tasting Room
1265 Boston Ave., Longmont CO 80501
Lapsang Souchong Tasting Notes & Origins:
This unique black tea is smoke dried over pinewood, giving it a heavily smokey aroma and a deep, rich liquor. The tea leaves are first withered over pine root fires, then panfried, rolled and oxidized. The leaves are finally placed in bamboo baskets and hung on wooden racks over smoking pinewood fires to dry and absorb the smoke. This results in a powerfully smoky aroma coupled with a smooth taste.
Legend has it that the process for smoked tea came about during tribal times when a village burned all their possessions and inadvertently smoked the tea. Another story states that during the Qing Dynasty, an army unit passing through a village occupied a tea factory filled with fresh leaf awaiting manufacture. When workers could get back into the factory, they realized that for their tea to arrive at market in time, it was too late to dry the leaves the usual way and open fires of pinewood were lit to hasten the drying. When the tea reached the market, the smoke flavor created a sensation and a new product was born.