My latest article for The Bulletin out this week revisits The Ale Apothecary, and the creative beers on offer from the wild ale brewery. I recently sampled the flight that was available, and brought home a bottle of The Demon King of Friday, a blended wild ale.

The bottle I bought was The Demon King of Friday, a beer with an interesting backstory. The description on the bottle menu says, “The Demon King of Friday is our genie that we managed to get back into the bottle. Initially, we had quite a bit of Minotaur (blackberry sour stout aged in bourbon and wine casks) that didn’t take to bottle conditioning, so we brewed a complimentary beer and blended the beer from the bottles with the new brew in second-use spirit barrels. This beer is phenomenal.”

“We brewed a beer intended to mellow the acidity from the bottled beer, while retaining the dark roast and biscuity characters (and) enhancing the fruit (marionberries) from the Minotaur,” he said via email. This was blended with the original beer in rum, bourbon, and brandy barrels that had previously held various beers.

It’s a good reminder of why The Ale Apothecary is such a unique brewery, with interesting and unusual beers unlike anything else. If you haven’t checked it out yet, or it’s been awhile, check out my article for an overview and find some time to get over there to check out the beers for yourself.