This post is about a ghost. No, not an actual ghost. Those don't really exist. Instead, this post is about a ghost beer. It's a bit of a mental leap to get to that claim, so I'll walk you through it.
Around the time I was really started my craft beer journey, MadTree released barrel-aged variants of its The Great PumpCAN. Pumpkin beers and I didn't really see eye to eye at that time and the BA PumpCAN releases weren't even on my radar. It wasn't until I visited MadTree a few months after the release that I saw a poster for the beers and knew what I'd missed out on.
Now, let's pivot to talk about whales. I promise, this loops back around. A whale is a limited, rare, and highly sought-after beer. I've been lucky enough to enjoy a whale or two in my life. But, what's more important to me are my personal whales. These are beers that I'm after--still usually pretty rare--that might not necessarily be on someone else's whale list.
Beyond that, you have your white whales, your Moby Dicks, the ones that get away and, no matter how close you think you are to finally tracking them down, vanish. For five years that's what Bourbon Barrel Aged PumpCAN was to me (and it's what the rum barrel variant of it still is). Then, out of thin air, MadTree broke some beers out of their cellar last fall, BBA Pumpcan among them. My white whale had returned from the dead. A ghost, one that I managed to trap, one that's been haunting my cellar since.
Today, on All Hallow's Eve, I'm tearing into this ghost whale. Let's see if it lives up to the hype I've built around it.