Both beers come in 22-ounce bombers that cost $7.99 apiece. The brewery’s six-head Meheen bottling machine can handle a 30-barrel batch in about nine hours—not bad, considering that Solemn Oath has just six full-time staff—but in neither instance did that much beer end up bottled. (Grain and hops take up space in the tanks too.) Brewery president John Barley says 352 cases of Ravaged by Vikings and 250 cases of Combat Marshmallow made it out into the world—that’s 4,224 and 3,000 bombers, respectively, compared to roughly 5,500 for a proper 30 barrels. About two barrels of Combat Marshmallow went into kegs, and a full-scale draft release is coming in early January.
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Combat Marshmallow smells prominently of bittersweet chocolate and burnt coffee, with something pleasantly rich like molasses bread rounding things out underneath. Columbus and Chinook hops give a bracing, lively brightness to the aroma with a combo of pine, cedar, spearmint, grilled pineapple, pink grapefruit, and tangerine peel. This is obviously a ludicrously hoppy stout—even if you don’t read the label, which somewhat disturbingly promises “a massive resinous, piney American hop girth,” your nose will tell you that much.
“No Viking metal” doesn’t mean we’re going to get out of here without any Viking-related foolishness at all, though. At Friday’s tap-room release of Ravaged by Vikings, fans brought their own silly hats—I suppose Solemn Oath isn’t like Simon’s, where there’s a Viking helmet just hanging out behind the bar in case somebody spots all five secret animals in the hunters’ mural. Tap-room manager Erin Lowder snapped this picture. Something tells me it’s not a candid shot.Philip Montoro writes about beer and metal, singly or in combination, every Monday.
