Conjured by Harpoon, 8-4-1 is an Imperial Brown made in Spring of 10'. A flattening head of 9.5%abv dissipation on a pint of deep medium brown mahogany. EtOH is noticeable on both the nose and palate. It's past it's overall impressionable prime, but still a good beer. It's amazing what you find when cleaning out the beer fridge and organizing the garage. Cereal comes forward in this one, mainly due to the Pale, Wheat, Munich, Caramel, Chocolate, and Smoked Malts used. Hops used include Alchemy, Cascade, Willamette, Crystal, and Sterling. You'll notice "Alchemy" hops which is not a registered hop that I can find but found in many past Widmer Brothers beers, (which I think has been bought out), if I'm not mistaken part of the brew triangle I sipped from was Widmer-RedHook-Kona Brewing, in which they all shared parts of a proprietary strain of yeast and sometimes hop blends. Of course since then they have been also bought out, but the explanation for the "Alchemy hops" from Widmer at the time is:
""Alchemy hops are not a single variety, but rather several different varieties custom blended and packaged specifically for Widmer.* Currently the blend is combination of Warrior and Millennium, though in past years it's also included a small percentage of Horizon hops as well (the acreage for Horizon has been declining the last several years, and with it the quality of selection)* **All three varieties are high alpha, low cohumulone cultivars. **Unfortunately, I can’t give you more details about the current mix because the actual percentages of Alchemy is proprietary.* To ensure against crop failure situations there is a good chance we will look to add another hop to the blend if the Horizon crop doesn't rebound, but at this point it’s hard to say what that variety it will be or at what inclusion percentage.*"
"We call it Alchemy because on an annual basis we look at the quality of the crop and try to mix those elements together to make the golden hop.** In addition, we hand select our hops each year at harvest time to ensure we get the very best that's available.* Alchemy is used as the bittering hop in all Widmer products and it’s been a very successful hop (s) for us."
The beer itself is pretty complex, with all of the brown and candi sugars floating around with the honey and all aged in oak barrels. It's almost taste overload.
