Portland’s Breakside Brewery is replacing Salted Caramel Stout in its seasonal beer lineup this year, and the new LIFE Barleywine is taking its place. Not content with simply releasing LIFE, over the next four months the brewery will be releasing five additional variants, showcasing different malts from renowned maltsters.

All the details from the press release:

Breakside Brewery, one of Oregon’s most award-winning breweries, announces that over the next four months it will release LIFE Barleywine in six variations. The first releases on November 20 and replaces Salted Caramel Stout, Breakside’s collaboration with Salt & Straw, as a core seasonal release in 22oz bottles.

Every batch of LIFE Barleywine clocks in at 9.5% ABV and will feature specialty grains from a different maltster. Breakside’s brewmaster, Ben Edmunds, selected some of the most renowned British maltsters, as well as up and coming producers from the Northwest. Each recipe is built around the nuances of the malt from the following producers, respectively:

• Simpsons Malt — 5th generation maltster from Northumberland, England
• Thomas Fawcett — 7th generation family maltster in West Yorkshire England, operating for more than 200 years
• Crisp Malt — the 10th largest malting company in the world, established in 1870, with two facilities in England
• Minch Malt — Ireland’s oldest maltster, producing malted barley that is 100% Irish origin
• Bairds Malt — Malting for 199 years with facilities in Scotland and England
• Skagit Valley Malt — Malting sustainably grown grain from the Pacific Northwest, based in Washington

LIFE’s color, flavor, and malt profile will vary batch to batch, matching the change of seasons. The initial release on November 20 will feature a barleywine that is autumnal in inspiration, copper in color, and toffee-forward. Closer to the Winter solstice, the next version will be darker with notes of roasted nuts and macerated raisins. As Spring approaches each subsequent brew will become progressively lighter in color with the nuances of the paler malts showing through.

The packaging for each batch of LIFE will also change colors with each release so that drinkers can easily differentiate releases. Labels feature a QR code that will send drinkers to a webpage detailing the differences between every variant’s malts and flavor profiles.

LIFE Barleywine can be found throughout Breakside’s distribution footprint on draft and in 22oz bottles.

Based on the list above, it sounds like Simpsons Malt is the first release, though it’s not immediately clear to me. But this is such a neat idea, similar to something Block 15 Brewing was doing as well, highlighting maltsters in specialty releases. I imagine these barleywines will be good to drink now as well as lay down to age.