One of our absolute favorite beers of last year was a Knitting Circle release that paired the botanical character of gin casks from Copperworks with highly expressive foraged larch tips. The citrusy aspect of these ingredients coalesced and turned out to be a beautiful match to our house culture. No deliberation needed, it was a unanimous decision to scale the recipe up and reprise the beer as a public release.

Montgomery started as a base of an open fermented farmhouse stock ale, allowing more ester expression to emerge during fermentation. This base, featuring grains from Skagit Valley Malting, was then transferred to gin casks for two months and dosed with fresh larch tips we foraged in the Wenatchee Mountains of Washington. The terpenes present in these tips impart a fantastic bouquet of flavors — tart lemon, sweet basil and tangy sorrel all seamlessly mesh with the gin notes from the Copperworks casks.

Montgomery captures what we love most about saison and farmhouse ales: bright, yet soft flavors that are balanced enough to be extremely drinkable. Sometimes an ingredient or a specific type of spirit cask is a natural complement to our mixed culture, and this is a near pitch perfect example of that.