Beer Seven Sheds Bass Strait IPA

With suitable company on hand, we finally plucked up the courage to crack our bottle of a beer that is unlikely to ever be brewed again. If you missed the stories about its inception, the Bass Strait IPA is a singe hop British style IPA brewed with Leggett hops grown on Seven Sheds' own farm that was placed inside two oak casks from Lark Distillery, mounted in a specially designed cradle and placed onto the Spirit of Tasmania ferry. From there, it travelled between Devonport and Melbourne back and forth until it had covered the distance the original IPAs would have travelled by sea before reaching India via the Suez Canal. The result is a soft woody character accompanying the hops on the nose, a characteristic that's more prominent to taste, where some of the whisky that once inhabited the casks also comes into play. We've not tasted the original unoaked IPA to compare, but this full-bodied version is as intriguing as the tale of its making.