This beer review was originally written a few months ago ago - Barn Hammer's tenth anniversary beer has since come out - which I'll be checking out as soon as I see it at my local LC.
Barn Hammer Brewing's Nine Lives Farmhouse Ale is an ale celebrating 9 years of survival. I still remember the very day I first visited Barn Hammer in Winnipeg (2016) - they were renovating an old garage, and seeing all the big gaps in the floor, it was going to be a long project for them - but it turned into the first craft brewery tap room in Winnipeg since 2003ish. Thanks to Tyler for letting me check out the brewery in its very early days - I still remember when it was just a shell with some brewing tanks at the time - so for me to see what would become the first "new era" brewery/taproom to open in Manitoba was insanely special for me. I can't afford to go to Winnipeg much anymore but I used to be in Winnipeg once a month and make a quick visit to Barn Hammer to pick up beer to take back to Brandon as the furthest they distributed back then was Portage la Prairie - I wanted to make I always had some Manitoba craft beer back in Brandon.
I don't have any notes about Nine Lives Farmhouse Ale but it's to celebrate nine years of surviving the craft beer industry, which is getting to be incredibly tougher than ever. The Farmhouse Ale is 4.8% ABV and has a good Manitoban/Netherlands farm vibe on the label to it.
Appearance: Reminiscent of a Belgian witbier with it having a cloudy orangish-straw body to it, absolutely opaque/hazy. The head is massive - it's a very cloudy, fluffy white head that dominates the whole beer, but of course over the period of several minutes it goes down a bit.. leaving behind a layered lacing on the glass.. it's very thicc.
Aroma: I haven't had a Farmhouse Ale/Saison in several months.. it's just not a type of beer that's popular in Manitoba. Nine Lives has light barn kind of barn-forward dankiness to it, followed by notes of lemon, a tad tartness, a hint of clove. This is full on your typical American Farmhouse Ale (sans Brett). Lots of citrus, a bit of funk, pretty smooth but yeah.. funky, so far.
Taste: Quite a dry Farmhouse/Saison to start things off, I was expecting it to be overwhelming at first but it's pretty much a tart/lemony taste for the first moment or so. Once I get past the first sip, I get a lot of a lemon citrus presence, a lot of Citra-like hop presence to give it a grass/pine/citrus/funk kind of taste to it. There's a slight amount of creaminess coming from the oats, a tad bit of nuttiness, a tad graininess.. but for the most part I get a sharp lemony/funk taste that lingers on the palate for a long time.
Overall Thoughts: Much more pine/bitter forward for a Farmhouse Ale than I expected, definitely had those Belgian notes you expect but I felt like a Citra-like hop dominated the whole beer. It was still good and it scratched an itch I've had for several months. Deeeeecent.
I'd like to say thanks to the team at Barn Hammer for always being welcoming whenever I visited over the past 10 years, I really appreciated it and Wall Street is lucky to have such an awesome brewery right in the neighbourhood!
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