Dagger Falls - Amarillo Oil
Sockeye Grill & Brewery

An interesting cask option sampled at the brewery in Boise. Served in a pint nonic.

A: Semi-cloudy darker copper with a nitro-like creamy head and waves of lacing on the glass that just make it look beautiful.

S: Piney and resiny citrus, citrus rind, grapefruit. Malty sweetness as well.

T: Clean malt bill with bready undertones bordering on caramel; it fits this brew well. Bitterness is prominent, not overpowering but a nice balance between the piney citrus and bready malt.

MF: Smooth body here as the brew benefits from the cask conditioning. Creamy and light-feeling.

O: I like it; fairly old-school and familiar with a NWIPA hop profile.

they always have awesome cask options here, and this recent visit they had a couple of hop oil versions of their classic upa in this format. i had both this one and the azacca edition, and really liked them both, the hop oils keep the hops tasting fresh in a time conditioned brew, as well as keeping some of the green vegetal matter and attendant bite out of the mix, this is fresh to me, flavorful, and kind of timeless for being done with a modern process innovation. i love a hoppy beer in the cask format, and this is a good way to showcase this one, which is kind of older school with a piney hop complexion and quite a bit of crystal malt character to it. just a little less than clear in this format, bright though, and with a creamy little white head layer on top from the dispense, pretty. it smells and tastes like wet pine, fresh sliced cantaloupe, and some culinary herbal pungency as well, slight menthol intensity, and a lot of bitterness. the oil is intense, but the dose is right, like the flavor is concentrated in places but its not too much, a pretty pure expression of amarillo, but there are other hops in this too i am quite confident. eucalyptus notes as it finishes, more fresh christmas tree character, less tropical than amarillo can sometimes be, but maybe its the context. some sweetness from the grain in this, but clean overall, and the cask conditioning is expert here, as it almost always is when i have their cask offerings here. i think we collectively liked the azacca edition a little better, but this is a winner as well. cool to have the hop oils in the cask beer, nice combination of flavors, ingredients, textures, all of it!