But in the meantime, to celebrate our 6th Anniversary, let us introduce Maiden 2018.
For those that aren’t aware of Maiden, it was the first ever brew at a newly awakened Siren, back in 2013. The American style Barley-Wine was a symbol of things to come, being brewed specifically to go straight into barrels.
Normally, when we barrel age a beer, it will sit in specific barrels to impart characteristics of the liquid once contained within them. For example, Bourbon Aged Primal Cut. With Maiden, we chose a variety of barrels with the idea of creating different blends further down the line.
1 year later, the inaugural Maiden was blended and the Maiden project came to life.
We use a variation of the solera system, so any time we draw Maiden from a barrel we'll top it back up, leaving 10% of aged beer in the barrel before doing so.
And so on a particularly snowy day in at the start of February 2019, we came together to work on the blend for Maiden ’18. With a few Sirens Awaken investors joining the team, around 20 of us each worked to create what we thought to be the perfect blend.
These blends were then narrowed down to a chosen 5 favourites. From those 5 favourites, 2 blends came out as equal winners. Both blends had amazing individual qualities, one packed an enormous aroma, and the other had a glorious depth of flavour.
The pressure was then on our barrel manager, Steve, to formulate a final blend that was true to the themes, flavours and barrels that were most prominent in the winning blend.
Maiden 2018 has a beautiful aroma of caramel, almond and oak with some fruit notes, giving way to flavours of vanilla, raisin, spice, sherry, nuttiness and a delicate hop bitterness. It drinks smoothly with a soft mouthfeel, warming sensation and a long, complex finish.
It looks like this:
18% Bourbon Barrels
21% Rum Barrels
14% x Red Wine Barrels
14% x Banyuls Barrels
4% x Sauternes Barrels
29% x Fresh Maiden 2019
It’s worth noting that this blend isn’t as simple as ‘Red Wine Barrels’. For example, there were several red wine barrels available, and each had different notes and flavours. The same for the bourbon, rum etc.
We've never published this before, but we're actually able to share the split of fresh vs aged beer, as well.
3% 4yrs/older
24% 3yr
24% 2yr
20% 1yr
29% 2019/Fresh
We hope you’ll love this year’s Maiden as much as we do here!
And so if you’re hoping to get some, then today (Wednesday 13th March) sees the first pour! This is at a very special “Blend your own Maiden” event at Mother Kelly’s in London. Your ticket price will include everything you need to give blending a go, from 4 single barrel versions of Maiden.
After that, starting from Thursday 14th and running over the weekend, there are events all over the country, far and wide, to celebrate our 6th Anniversary and more importantly, drink Maiden.
Check our our feature events page, or Facebook events page, for somewhere near you.
Investors can already buy Maiden on the webshop, the rest of you will be able to place orders from Sunday 17th.
Maiden was invented to represent a journey, over time. We hope that when the cacophony of flavours hits your tongue that you’ll be whisked off in the memory of years of barrel-ageing and beer history.
