La Sirene Dark Star Starward Barrel Aged Praline 375ml

We present our long standing collaboration with one of the pioneers of Australian Whisky. DARK STAR is our well-known Praline that has been thoughtfully aged in freshly disgorged premium STARWARD whisky barrels.

Back in early June we visited Head Blender and fellow South Australian Jarrad Huckshold & Co at the coveted Starward for a cheeky tipple and a general sharing of information across the beer & spirit categories and wondered how our Praline would age in freshly emptied whisky barrels. Having had aged our Praline in our French Oak barriques for years now we know we develop a wonderful sourness courtesy of our native airborne and barrel-tenanted souring bacteria however putting our Praline into freshly disgorged whisky barrels was a whole new level of discovery altogether.

Well we are happy to announce that the results are in and we are delighted with the balance of whisky flavour to Praline. In the past, we have noticed that outside trends have leant towards loud 'whisky punch to the nostrils' results when ageing a Stout in whisky barrels, which is great when you're looking for that. However in true La Siréne fashion, we were targeting a more elegant & subtle dance that delivered a more balanced and nuanced result that allowed for the 'sum of its parts' to equal more than just the individual components. We feel this honoured both contributions of the our Praline beer & Starward's whisky barrels and was more in the true spirit of collaboration!

Dark Star (6.3%) is an elegant and velvety Praline-hybrid, a collaboration that was all about discovery, open-mindedness & experimentation. And to further our understanding of how these two components of Praline & Whisky barrels can work together, we are only releasing one third of the beer today (after almost 4 months in barrel). The second third will be released in Feb (8 x months maturation)   after seeing a hopefully warm summer in barrel at our seasonally-influenced Wild Brewery. Finally the last third will be released in June 2022 to come full circle and show us what 12 month in barrels creates. We feel this extra time in barrel will tell a story of how time and the seasonal narrative will playout.

We will be reserving a small number of cases at the brewery of this first third release to allow for it to be released in June next year and hence give rise to a vertical tasting opportunity of time in barrel... here's to time!
- Costa / Founder and Chief-Brewer