Brewery Ommegang announces new Three-Eyed Raven beer
The brewmaesters at Ommegang have announced the latest in their series of official Game of Thrones-inspired beers, “Three-Eyed Raven”. Their last brew, “Valar Morghulis” (which we quite liked), has nearly sold out after less than two months.
The “Three-Eyed Raven” beer is a saison, which is traditionally a strong pale, fruity summer beer. But this is a dark ale, going against the (admittedly vague) traditional form of a saison. According to Bill Wetmore, Ommegang’s marketing director, this is part of how this beer ties into the show and Bran’s story: “We tried to reflect some duality in the beer. A saison isn’t typically dark, but it’s a style you can do a lot with in terms of flavor, so our brewers put a new spin on it and made it a dark ale. We really wanted to reflect that duality of the show theme in the beer itself.”
He also talked about the general process used to select beer styles….
“We start off talking to HBO about what the main themes and narratives being progressed on the show, which ones do we think will continue to resonate with and be important to fans, then try to narrow down the possibilities. After we arrive at one, we’ll sit as a brewing team and talk about how we can reflect that in a beer, through ingredients and style of the beer.” It’s an interesting process–I’d have guessed they might start with the beer idea and work from there.
One thing I would love to see from Ommegang isn’t just their new ideas, but sustained releases of their Game of Thrones merchandise. Admittedly, this is partially selfish (I’d love to taste their “Iron Throne” and “Fire and Blood” since I missed out on them), but it’s hard not to feel like it’d be a good business idea given the speed of the first four selections’ sellouts.
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