Drink Along - Moorhouse's Blond Witch

"Moorhouse’s first ever ‘Blond’ ale, this beer is as light as you can get with a lager colour (minus the bubbles). Drinks to the strength of any good White Witch."

So ... looks like Moorhouse’s could do with a bit of advice on the marketing front. Far too often I find myself reading a beer description on a brewery website and screaming internally: WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!

I managed to glean from the bottle that this one is 4.5%, is hopped using fuggles and has a sweet-malty and citrus-hoppy flavour. Seriously though, some basic information about the flavour of your beer and how it was made, surely it’s just obvious that that needs to be on your website? Maybe it’s there and I didn’t look hard enough.

To me the aroma is quite muted. I don’t get much citrus at all – but then I wouldn’t expect to from fuggles – instead I get a slight spicy hoppiness and lots of sweet, biscuity malt. First taste is good, some real sweetness up front, a gentle spicy hop character and then a firm bitterness that lingers around nicely after you swallow.

Halfway down the glass, beer is warming up and things are changing a bit. That bitterness is getting big, maybe too big, it’s overtaken the sweetness and I’m left with an almost saltiness immediately after every sip. There’s some buttery flavour lurking in the background too, I don’t know if it’s just me or if there is some diacetyl there, but it’s not very pleasant.

I’m being a bit harsh here because this is pretty drinkable if not mind-blowing, I can imagine this working really well from a cask and the grassy, spicy notes from those fuggles hops are actually quite nice.

In seven words: sweet, malty, bitter, grassy, spicy, buttery, decent.

Is that buttery, margarine flavour just me or is that something that’s definitely in there?

You can find out more about the Drink Along here.