We’re just a few short weeks away from the much-anticipated release of Orpheus, our first barrel offering of 2021!
Made with marigolds from the Avling rooftop and orange wine skins from Trail Estates, Orpheus is a beer that’s 16 months in the making, and we couldn’t be more excited to share it with all of you! In honour of the release, we’re going to do a bit of a deep dive into all the elements that went into creating this beer and how it represents the spirit of Avling.
A little backstory: brewing with flowers is a tradition that’s thousands of years old, which in the past few hundred years has become mainly a Belgian tradition. These days, the go-to flowers are typically only a select few: chamomile, lavender and rosehip tend to steal the spotlight. We started growing hundreds of marigolds on our roof last spring, and having incorporated rooftop ingredients into our restaurant menu and brews from Day One, this seemed like another great opportunity.
Marigolds are what’s known as a Companion Plant, and are a key component in a healthy garden ecosystem for a number of reasons. For one, they produce compounds in their roots that spread natural pesticides throughout the soil around them; they’re pollinators, so they attract bees and butterflies, but they also attract other insects that stave off insects who might damage the crops, like aphids; on top of all of that, they taste great. And that’s what sparked the idea to build a beer around these amazing flowers.
At the same time that we were growing all of these marigolds, we were making arrangements to take more than 400 litres of used orange wine skins from Trail Estate, a favourite winery of ours in Prince Edward County, with the plan being to age a barrel beer on them. Our brewers had a real ‘a ha’ moment when they realized that the flavours of an orange wine often overlap closely with the culinary adjectives used to describe marigolds. And that’s how Orpheus came to be: Orange Wine Skins + Rooftop Marigolds + French Oak Barrels.
Early one morning last September, our brewers joined our rooftop farmers and harvested 150L of fresh marigolds to go along with the hundreds of dried marigolds harvested throughout the summer. It took six of us a full day to pluck and de-stem each flower, which were then added to barrel-aged beer that had already been maturing and evolving for several months — first in puncheons (aka extra-large oak wine barrels), then onto orange wine skins (Riesling Gewurztraminer, to be exact), before the flowers were finally added. After resting for 3 weeks, the beer was bottle conditioned for six months. And now at long last, Orpheus is finally ready for release.
In appearance, Orpheus is a pale orange-peach colour, with good clarity, and high carbonation. On the nose, it has aromas of sweet citrus fruit, bergamot, white pepper, and strawberries. At first taste, it has the fruit acidity that makes your mouth water - it’s on the cusp of being sour on your palate, without ever being overt about it (this is what’s commonly referred to as “tension” for all you wine lovers out there! ) This beer is textured: soft, with some muscle to it; with a tannic presence that doesn’t blow your palate away, but is inescapable all the same. Drink it today or save it for later - it will age with beauty and intrigue.
We absolutely love this beer, and are beyond proud of it. Have you tried it yet? Let us know what you think in the comments below!