Profiled by Ken Carman
What a great name!
What an erratic beer!
Brewed by Ellicottville Brewing at Ellicottville Brewing in… hope your pacemaker is ready for a shock… Ellicottville, NY and, marginally, at Fredonia. The latter; formerly Barker Brewing, is mostly just a store front for the Ellicottville facility. I have been to all three and even as mostly just a front for Ellicottville, the Fredonia location is better: has better beer and food than Barker did..
Pantius is, unfortunately, not one of them: despite the great name. That’s a long haul conclusion: comparing an aged sample, what I tasted of this year’s Pantius. I had it for the first time last year and it was excellent… at first. Nice Cascade hop punch. 11.5%. Enough body to support this deep copper-ish wonder: I bought a bottle. On the way back though New York this year from Ohio I eagerly stopped to buy more. They changed the hopping, it seems. Not pleasant: kind of grassy in a “I really don’t want to eat off the bottom of a clogged lawnmower, please.” Then at Big Bob’s Barleywine Bash last weekend I opened the 09 bottle. The pleasant hop punch had turned slightly sour citrus. Also a bit unpleasant; though not as bad as the fresh sample this year.
At 11.5%, that just ain’t right. The high alc should have kept the beer “pleasant,” and the hops just fade a bit.
I have had plenty of Ellicottville beer going back to sometime in the 90s. They can do better than this: and they do. The name alone is worth keeping. Work on it folks.
