Fancy Pants Sunday: Urban Roots All Possible Futures
Fashion-wise, we keep things casual at Peaks & Pints: Flannel, shorts, and hiking boots are all par for the course. Still, now and then, it’s fun to get dressed up a little bit and gather all your friends to do the same and indulge in fancy craft beer.
This week’s Fancy Pants Sunday craft beer is Urban Roots Craft Brewery & BBQ Smokehouse’s All Possible Futures, a collaboration between friends Peter Hoey, formerly the brewmaster at Sacramento Brewing Company, and Rob Archie, the owner of Pangaea Bier Café. They dreamed up the taphouse and restaurant nearly 10 years before opening Urban Roots in May 2018 in downtown Sacramento. Over those 10 years, they continued to bond over their shared love of beer, particularly saisons, and even traveled to countries like Germany and Belgium to drink together. Then, in 2016, a massive 17,000-square-foot brick-and-concrete industrial space became available, and the beer buddies finally decided to dust off the blueprints.
All Possible Futures is a beer — but it’s a wine! It’s a barleywine. Despite its name, barleywine is a beer but at wine strength, ranging from 7 percent alcohol by volume in British versions to 14.5 percent in All Possible Futures. English style versions emphasize malty sweetness, while American versions are usually hoppier. Urban Roots’ take on the style with its All Possible Futures is more to the English side, and its flavor focuses on a huge malt bill, ignoring, of course, its time in bourbon barrels.
Despite its name, barleywines aren’t made with tons of specialty grains, as one might assume. Historically, barleywines were brewed with pale malt, the same malts used for pale ales. Brewers achieve the rich caramel flavor expected in barleywines by extending the length of the boil, which caramelizes the flavors and imparts that deep color.
That’s all fine and dandy, but this is the latest installment of Fancy Pants Sunday, a column that champions high ABV, complex and delicious craft beers — and Urban Roots’ 2024 All Possible Futures bourbon barrel-aged English-style barleywine (14.5%) fits the bill. Urban Roots brewed All Possible Futures using a double mash for extra concentrated malt flavor and aroma. The resulting beer is packed with intense caramel, toffee, and biscuity, bready, rich malt from 100-percent Simpsons Maris Otter and Crystal malt. The beer was put into Stagg Jr Bourbon barrels in April of 2022 and aged for two years, further intensifying the caramel notes and imparting intense bourbon, vanilla, and mild oak. Between the age and the barrels, the beer developed brown sugar-like sweetness swirling with all the fierce toffee and bourbon barrel character, with a mild chocolatey finish. It’s a truly special beer, over two years in the making.
You fancy, Urban Roots Brewery All Possible Futures Bbl Barleywine!
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