an afterthought on BigH's lager....
realised today that I still had half the bottle left....so had it as a first beer of the afternoon....
I could happily session on it. I don't know lagers from a bar of soap, but I enjoyed it. Put me in mind of the kind of drop you would have in mid afternoon in an outside cafe....
Dr Smurtos Publican...
Well, I've been looking forward to this one. I must confess the heresy of not having tried the original.
I had half the bottle last night, and half the bottle thisafternoon....and had vastly different experiences between the two, that I thought I would share as an interesting distraction, because I think it highlights the duality of Yorkshire beers quite well.....
Last night.....
Bright as a new sixpence. Clean and crisp. Bitter (more so than my personal preference), but not aggressively so.
Today....
1469 gives a solid, compact, sediment in the bottle....be careful that it doesn't stir up, because if it does, it will come out in one big chunk. I had a massive floaty make it's way into the glass.
.......
as a result, I poured it out of that glass into another, through a fine mesh tea strainer. It got the yeast out (as I said, it was solid), but it also did something interesting......Going through the strainer basically did the same as a sparkler. It knocked all the remaining CO2 out of suspension, and more imprtantly, aerated the beer.....first taste, and the bitteness was much milder than last nights. That bit of air in there smoothed it out, and mellowed the flavour. It let me pick up the malt more, when compared to last nights tasting. It was still bitter, but it seemed to knock the corners off it. Just goes to show why they use sparklers up north.
Very enjoyable and well made beer.....would cut my left one off to taste this out of a handpump. :lol:
Choppadoo bitter.
It's been said that this isn't bitter enough for a bitter.....I disagree with that entirely. To me, the bitterness level is just right, exactly where a bitter should be imo. Beyond that, I'm having a bit of a hard time trying to get my head around it...the foreign hops are confusing me slightly....but I like it. I am getting that slight tartness others have mentioned, but I would have to agree that I don't think it detracts, but rather enhances. For some strange reason I can't put my finger on, kinda makes me think of Devon in summer.... :huh: