This newest edition is the seventh release for Nick Gislason, who also happens to be the winemaker at Screaming Eagle. This season’s beer features a barley variety called Chevallier. This Chevallier barley was sourced from Norfolk, England, from the only field in the world where this 200-year-old heirloom variety is grown today. As Nick explains, “Although it took them years to build up enough seedstock even for pilot-scale brewing, we were among the first handful of brewers in the U.S. to have a chance to work with it in 2014. That experience of brewing with Chevallier made it immediately clear to us that there was a huge world of possibility in brewing with heirloom grains, as the flavors and texture were incredible, and the idea of creating a new style of beer that we now call grain-forward lager began to form itself. We are the first and only brewer in North America to showcase it through the clean lens of cold-fermented lager.” Requiring longer maturation times in their cellar tanks than beer brewed with modern barleys, the final resulting character is worth the wait. Chevallier is intensely aromatic, balancing power with levity, and bringing notes of cedar, hazelnuts, redwood, fresh honeycomb, and dry peppermint. This edition of Hanabi Lager is best consumed by September 2023.