Drink Along - Ilkley Mary Jane

Quite looking forward to this one to be honest. I had it from cask at Craft Beer Co on their launch night a while back, and it was fantastic. Simple and elegant, uncomplicated but just really well put together. I’m always dubious as to how well sub-four-percent beers really work from the bottle, so it’ll be interesting on that front too.

Here goes ...

Ilkley Mary Jane is a 3.8% pale ale that’s brewed with large amounts of Amarillo hops (YUM!). It won gold medals at the Northern SIBA competition in 2009/10 and a took a bronze medal at the national finals.

Colour is golden and bright. Aroma is full of toasty, biscuity malt and then very ripe fruits. I get an almost stewed fruit aroma that follows through into the taste. It’s making me think yellow and fruity: peaches, mango, apricot, maybe some tangerine; things like that, all when very ripe. There’s some of that grainy, malty character in the taste too and then it’s all wrapped up and rounded off by a gentle bitterness. Lovely.

I’m really impressed actually; this is flying down, it tastes great and it’s only 3.8 %. I know from homebrew attempts that it’s difficult to pull off beers at low ABV in a bottle; there’s nowhere to hide, mistakes shine through because everything is pared down and scaled back, but this really pulls it off.

Top stuff, no?

Find out more about the Drink Along here

Drink Along - Ossett Yorkshire Blonde

The Oval test match getting washed out, evening runs in the pouring rain, taking an umbrella to work just in case, is it really the middle of August? A golden ale like Ossett Yorkshire Blonde almost feels out of place today, maybe something like a strong stout is more suitable. Anyway, no use complaining when there’s important work to be done ...

Yorkshire Blonde is a 3.9% “Lager-Style Beer” that’s hopped with “a generous late addition of Mount Hood hops”. In the glass it’s the colour of lemon peel, pale and bright; there’s a small little head that doesn’t last long.

Here’s a question: why make a “Lager-Style Beer”? Why not just make a lager?

The aroma is very subtle to me, maybe I’ve got the beer too cold but there’s very little to smell at all. As it warms up I get some lemonade aroma and, call me crazy, but ammonia. Ammonia like the smell you get with hair dye – if you’ve ever spent a morning waiting for the other half in the hair dresser, you might know what I mean. Weird.

In the flavour there’s some initial sweetness, this is broken up nicely but the bitterness in the finish. I’m not sure what happened to that generous late addition of Mount Hood, but they don’t seem to have made it into my glass. There’s a lemony tang going on; with the sweetness and thin body it reminds me of lemonade. I said this about one of the other beers we’ve tasted, but if you told me this was a lager top, I’d probably believe you.

There's a biscuity, toasty, malty character that comes through pretty strongly in the finish.

This beer is kinda just there. The ammonia, hair dye thing is odd, but, that aside, it’s difficult to really like or dislike a beer like this. It’s just there.
I bet it’s much better from cask.

Thoughts?

Find out more about the Drink Along here

Drink Along - Hewitt's Un-Hung Hero

So the piercing-blue eyes of a fella stare me down from behind the decapitated heads of two horses. Sometimes the bottle label grabs you and pulls you right in, other times it doesn't.

Un-Hung hero is a 5% pale ale that's brewed with Cascade and Northdown hops. The bottle text warns off those that like their beer fizzy and bland; ironic really because this is one of the most carbonated bottled beers I think I've ever drunk. The head is billowy and pillowy in the White Shield mould and sticks around throughout.

The aroma is great, it screams CASCADE at the top of its lungs, lots of really fresh hop aroma, grapefruit pith and peel and freshly squeezed juice. It's one of those aromas that you don't focus on long because it makes you just want to drink the beer.

But that's where the positives kinda end for me. The taste is dominated by a fruity sweetness that moves into green apple - a sure fire sign of acetaldehyde. Usually formed through oxidation or an incomplete fermentation, acetaldehyde is a compound that's almost always unwanted in beer. Imagine biting into a really crisp, cold, fresh green apple; that's the exact flavour I'm tasting here and that's the flavour of acetaldehyde.

Right in the background there's a husky, cereally, biscuit flavour that's coming from the grain. It's nice, but not enough to turn this bottle around.

Faults like this in a beer can be limited to a bottle or a batch. Just because the bottle I got wasn't perfect, doesn't mean the others were the same. How was yours?


Find out more about the Drink Along here

Drink Along - Hawkshead Red

I've just been out for a run. London is hot tonight - the sun might be in, but it's still mighty hot out there. This beer is in danger of lasting about thirty seconds because I am THIRSTY.

Anyway, this one stands out in the case because it's Hawkshead. I've heard a lot about Hawkshead, but I'm yet to try their beer. 'Red' is 4.4% ABV and is made with "English hops, malted barley and yeast". Could mean a lot of things then.

Today's glass is a nod towards the trip to Pilsen and Prague that I'm just back from ... in case you were wondering.

The aroma here is full of sweetness, hard-boiled candy sweetness, some caramel, toffee and burnt sugar. This follows through into the taste, lots of hard-boiled sweets and caramel; it feels sticky and sweet and like a whole shed-load of crystal malt was used to make it. There's a slight spicy, grassy hop note in the background that I immediately associate with English hops. It then finishes with a slight burnt sugar dryness and a bright, short-lived, punchy bitterness. There's some metal right at the end there too.

This reminds me of the Shepherd Neame beers I used to drink back home. It reminds me of them a lot!

Decent. Not really my sort of thing, but pretty decent.

And, to end, a question. Is this a summer ale? Drinking this one I'm instantly cast into autumn: browning leaves on the ground, the fire being lit down the pub for the first time - a beer that's not quite a winter warmer, but one that's nudging you in that direction.


Find out more about the Drink Along here