I remember drinking this beer in pubs around Lancashire in the past (and I mean the dim distant past) but I've never tried them bottled before.
Interestingly for us here at CAMRGB, this well established "olde worlde" brewer filters its beers.
No sediment here.
They've decided that filtered bottles are best.
No waste and no mess you see.
I hear your shocked cries of, "But that means this brewer of one hundred and fifty years' beer is not REAL!"
Perhaps in the bottle its a simulacrum of the cask?
Anyway, the beer.
Pendle Witches Brew is a lightish golden ale with delightful honey malts, some good dark woody notes with a hint of spice and a hit of black pepper.
Did I get traces of chocolate orange?
It's certainly in my notes.
This is a fantastic, easy drinking ale. Perfect for a slow drink on a warm evening.
Class.
Visit Moorhouse's Brewery.
Why express such surprise that Moorhouses filter their beers? Filtering -- and quite likely pasteurisation -- has been the default for bottled beer in the UK for many years. Only five bottle conditioned beers were still being produced here when CAMRA was founded in 1971. The growth in bottle conditioning has only happened since the 1990s and has largely been down to micros rather than old-established independents, though a few more of the latter are now experimenting.
ReplyDeleteBottle conditioning if done well can produce excellent results -- the Belgian beer scene provides many outstanding examples. Filtering, artificial carbonation and particularly pasteurisation do often have a negative impact on the beer in my opinion -- too many commonly available pasteurised British ales have that lifeless boiled sweet flavour that comes with unsympathetic heat treatment. The problem is that a significant proportion of small UK brewers now bottle conditioning don't seem to have mastered the art, usually I think down to poor hygiene and sloppy bottling practices, with the result that far too high a proportion of so-called "Real Ale in a Bottle" either is either under- or over-conditioned, or infected and off.
Couldn't agree more.
ReplyDeleteFiltering or not / pasteurising or not / spitting in the bottle or not should all be coices of the brewer. After all it's their beer.
I only mentioned the filtering of this beer as under the rules of our "rival" (said with a hugely arched eyebrow) camp this beer isn't "real".