Look for a toasty black ale called Carolina Dreamin’, and The Headliner, a nine-percent-alcohol filtered wheatwine described as dry, hoppy…and “ruby red.”
Blue Ridge Now has more:
The Headliner, which the Cubbins’ group produced, is a 9 percent alcohol wheatwine — a cousin of the better-known barleywine style made using a 50/50 ratio of wheat and barley malt. It is described as a “big, rich ale” with a mild caramel flavor and bready character from the wheat, with notes of grapefruit and peach from a blend of some “pretty cool hops” that Sierra Nevada has access to.
“(The beer) has a brilliant, really gorgeous red color to it,” Jennings said. “Typically, you wouldn’t bother filtering a wheat wine, but the group wanted to because they wanted the color to really burst, so we actually filtered it and it’s just a beautiful, ruby red color. And we made it finish dry, so it’s really drinkable and very hoppy, which you wouldn’t think of for a wheatwine.”
Jennings was equally ecstatic about Carolina Dreamin’, a black-colored ale whose significantly lower alcohol content (5.3 percent) makes it more of a sessionable beer that one can comfortably enjoy a couple glasses of.
It is described as a well-balanced, medium-bodied beer with a toasted malt character and creamy mouthfeel, accentuated with an experimental hop varietal for a post-boiling “dry-hopping” process, which gives it a “bold, almost berry-like aroma.”
Read more here from Blue Ridge Now: Specialty brews to debut in WNC