Clash Of The Titans Reserva is one of our greatest collaborations of all time.
An initially hoppy blonde quadruple of 12% Alc./Vol., 26 ° plato, which was aged for 1 year in French Bordeaux oak barrels in which Swiss wine has matured. Complex wine with fruity notes, full-bodied and beautiful aftertaste, both in aroma and flavors. The hop keys have almost completely disappeared after 1 year on the barrel. This Reserva leans slightly towards the barley wine style beers.
In 2016, around the same time, we were in Valais Switzerland. We managed to escape from the Struise Brewery for a week and enjoy the sun, nature and some of the most beautiful scenery ever seen in our lives.
During that stay we accidentally passed a new start-up brewery. The young owners were kind enough to let us in and sample some of their freshly brewed 4-7% abv beers. We were struck by the high drinkability of their beers, the nice balance and the above-average amount of hop flavors and bitterness.
In less than a year, through very hard labor and creativity, they managed to receive multiple gold awards for their artisanal beers, and even received Ratebeer's famous new brewer's award:
Anyone who came to the first edition of VCBF in 2017 already had the opportunity to taste their beautiful beers in Oostvleteren Belgium and have a chat with Olivier & David. Where the idea of a collaboration between De Struise Brouwers and Hoppy People had already been born, we were able to realize its fine-tuning at this beer festival.
After analyzing both breweries, our partnership should be able to be very flavorful, high in ABV (alcohol by volume), and oak barrel aged. We decided to brew a + - 26 ° plato beer (+ -1.110 SG for home brewers), Quadrupel - barley wine style, bitterness up to 80 IBU (about the maximum a human palette of taste can perceive), and ferment to the beer 12 to 13 % abv reached.
Part two of the collaboration is a bit more daring. We found a beautiful mountain gallery in Switzerland at an altitude of 2,260 meters near the Grande Dixence dam. Our beer was brewed together with Olivier and David in Sierre Switzerland. About 4 to 5 weeks later this batch of young beer was transferred into the famous Swiss white wine barrels “Petite Arvine” and placed in the mountain gallery. The barrels will remain there until April 2020.
The temperature remains constant at 5 ° C, a kilometer deep in that mountain. The humidity maintains a constant 65%, and the atmospheric pressure, also called barometer pressure, a + - constant 730 to 750 mb (millibars).
Part three is less complicated. The same volume was brewed at De Struise Brouwers in Belgium around sea level, aged in the same oak barrels bought in Switzerland, but in a constantly changing climate (4 seasons), temperature (-10 ° C to + 30 ° C), humidity (50 % to 90%) and barometer pressure (980mb to 1,030mb).
Part four is probably the most interesting, where we will be able to taste the beers from both regions side by side as well as analyze the aroma and taste differences. We are informed from Switzerland that the pass to the gallery will remain closed until June 2020. The Swiss version will most likely be filled in August this year. The Belgian version will therefore be released a few months earlier.