Nøgne Ø Bitter is a light ale with a slightly cloudy appearance and a rich yellow colour. It has a very herbal/floral hop aroma with some orange peel, grass and light citrusy. Nutty flavour which probably comes from Maris Otter with the East Kent Golding hops giving it the quintessentially English taste and a tea like bitterness in the finish.
Nøgne Ø Cascara Bitter, Cascara means skin, peal, rind or husk in Spanish. A coffee bush bears beautiful, sweet fruits (typically called a cherry or sometimes a berry) that ripen in the tropical sun to a deep ruby red. It is the seeds of these fruits that we know as coffee beans. Innovative world-renowned coffee farmer Aida Battle has carefully selected and sun-dried only the best coffee fruits from her three farms in Santa Ana, El Salvador to produce Cascara, which is called Hashara or Qishr In Ethiopia and Yemen, where it has been prepared this way and steeped like tea for centuries by coffee farmers.
Nøgne Ø is proud to have created this beer in cooperation with Nordic Barista Cup that was hosted in Oslo September 2010. We wanted to make a coffee beer that was different and decided to use cascara, the dried husk from coffee bean, instead of roasted beans or actual coffee. A strong cascara tea was blended with the beer and, in addition, cascara was steeped directly in the finished beer. We hope you enjoy the result! The cascara used is from Aida Batlles farm, Los Alpes, in El Salvador and was donated by Solberg & Hansen.
A clear golden color with a small white head. Aroma at first has a fruity sourness lambic character followed by some unripe red apple and cold tea notes. I did not get coffee in either the aroma or the taste, berrylike with some fruits and woody notes with a bitterness in the end. Cascara is said to have as much caffeine as the roasted bean, but it doesn't give that coffee flavour at all. Strange beer but nice to have tried it.
