Results tagged “Goldings” from An English Epicure

Tribute is a light, amber coloured ale brewed by the St. Austell brewery. It is 4.2% ABV.

It has a delicate taste and aroma. It smells of fruit, maybe fruit blossoms. The taste is interesting - at first it seems quite watery and bland but then it develops into a citrusy, hoppy blend on the tongue. It would make an excellent summer beer, so perhaps I should have drunk it outside in the afternoon, when the sun was shining, rather than waiting for the chill evening. I usually do my beer tasting inside, after dark, with a pipe and a good book or film. I think Tribute would have done better in a beer garden during the day.

I did like the label on the bottle, which lists the hops and malts used. I wish more beers listed their ingredients. In this case, the hops were English Fuggle, Oregon Willamette and Slovenian Golding. The malts were Maris Otter and Cornish Gold.

This is a lovely, dark beer brewed by the Wychwood Brewery in Oxfordshire. It is 5.2% ABV.

It is made with roasted malts which give it a deep, strong flavour, set off nicely by a hint of bitter hops. This is a powerfully flavoured beer for sipping. Well, for drinking relatively slowly anyway. I know what I mean.

I suppose the flavour isn’t really very interesting. It’s just one, strong flavour on its own. But it is a good flavour and I like the depth and strength. As you might have guessed from my other tasting notes, I am not a big fan of very bitter beers. I do like some very hoppy beers (for instance, the new generation of American IPAs are really rather good) but more often than not I find astringently bitter beers boring and not that pleasant. I like my hops to balance or accentuate the real flavour of the beer, which (in most cases) comes from the malt, rather than to stand out on their own, which I find tends to result in an unpleasant aftertaste. So I like the fact that the hops in this beer are noticeable but only as a sort of defining edge to the thick, roasted malt flavour.

I don’t know if I’m pretentious or just very bad at expressing flavours in words. Probably both.

The variety of hops is not mentioned on the bottle but rumour has it that Styrian Goldings and Fuggles hops are used. Styrian Golding is a seedless clone of Fuggles, apparently.

This beer is brewed by Greene King under the “Morland” brand. It is deep red in colour and has a strong hoppy smell. It is brewed using Goldings hops, which I am beginning to associate with a particular sort of bitter hoppiness. It is 4.5% ABV.

The label claims that this beer is malty and it does have a stronger malt flavour than a light ale, but that flavour is cut through by the astringent bitterness of the hops. Unlike Spitfire, in which the rich malt blends with and complements the hops, in this beer the hops dominate the other flavours. I don’t know if this is caused by the Goldings hops or not. Osprey, which also uses Goldings, had a similarly problematic taste. But I don’t know which hops they use for Spitfire, they just say “Kentish” and I think Goldings hops do come from Kent.

However, after smoking a bowl of tobacco, the harshness of the hops was lessened and the other flavours were clearer. I could taste the fruity esters and the malt was more apparent. Perhaps I am overly sensitive to very bitter hops, or perhaps this beer was intended to be drunk while smoking, either way it was much nicer after a smoke.

It is a good beer, around the upper echelons of the middling beers, but definitely not a great beer.

Having re-read my previous notes, it looks like Master Brew had a similar bitterness that cut through the malt flavour. I wish Shepherd Neame would say which “Kentish” hops they used. Are they the same in Spitfire and Master Brew?

Osprey is a dark ale brewed by the Wychwood brewery from Northdown and Goldings hops. It is 6.5% ABV.

Apparently it is “Brewed exclusively for Sainsbury’s” so you will have to brave the hideous shiny supermarket if you want a bottle of this stuff. If I were you, I wouldn’t bother. It claims to be “strong and rich” but I was disappointed. It is pleasant but I was expecting more. I was expecting something dark and rich but it’s actually fairly bland and uninteresting. It’s not bad, it’s just not very good either. It also has quite a bitter aftertaste, so I wouldn’t want more than one pint in a row.