(Actually) brewed in Brighton

 Basing your brewery in Brighton is a great idea, from a marketing perspective. It’s a popular summer destination, so you have that association going for you; it’s well known for its bohemian character, so there’s that, too. There are recognisable landmarks like the Laines, or the skeleton of the burned out pier that now eerily shadows the slick, pointless i360 tower. You could draw on these in your branding.

Not such a great proposition financially though. Rents are high, second only to London. So you can see how one might form a dastardly plan to claim, or at least heavily imply, to have a brewery based in Brighton, whilst taking care of the inconvenient of business of brewing beer somewhere cheap in the Sussex countryside. 

To be clear, there are a number of excellent local breweries who don't actually brew in Brighton and have never suggested that they do. They have made the city their primary market and have become associated with it. I have no problem with that whatsoever. Gun, Franklins and Downlands are amongst my favourites. 

But the strategy I describe is increasingly familiar, and brings about various questions about contract brewing and transparency. It might be worth making a distinction between contact brewing – where beers are made to your specifications at a third party brewery, such as Missing Link in East Grinstead – and cuckoo brewing, where brewers don’t have their own site but do the hands-on work on other breweries’ kit. The former isn’t ideal, but can be an important step towards breweries establishing themselves in their own permanent home. The latter is preferable in terms of transparency; the ownership of the stainless steel is less important than the understanding that the group of brewers representing the brand name on the can, or bottle, or pump clip, rolled their sleeves up and made the beer you’re drinking.

But there is also the question of authenticity and a sense of place. If I’m told a beer is from a certain place – be that Brighton, Brussels, Berlin – then I expect it to have been brewed there. It is an important factor, one of the intangible things adjacent to whatever’s in the glass, that means something.

Assuming it means something to others, too, I thought I should pull together a small directory of the breweries who actually brew in Brighton. I can't guarantee it’s complete - these things move fast. Still, if you’re in Brighton and want to legitimately drink local, here’s some options.

Brighton Bier

Brewing since 2011, Brighton Bier is the city’s original craft brewery. For a good while they were the only full scale commercial brewery in the city, and have been known to speak their minds about those breweries claiming Brighton heritage whilst brewing elsewhere. Before setting up at their current Kemptown brewery, they began life at Hand in Hand brewpub just down the road.

Their flagship pale ale, simply named Bier, typifies what they do so well. Endlessly drinkable, it crams a lot into its 4% ABV, with lots of fresh lemon and pine and a moreish bitterness. Their cask beers are also excellent – find South Coast IPA in good condition and you won’t want to drink anything else. Their output can feel a little samey at times – a lot of pale ales at around the 5% mark - but regular beers like Grand Havana, a beautifully smooth cask porter, and No Name Stout balance things out.

The beers used to be available in cans, but that seems to have stopped, and whilst they do make it outside of the city, they’re at their best in one of the brewery’s excellent pubs. Brighton Bierhaus, the most central of the three, is designated as the official taproom, but the equally excellent Haus on the Hill and Freehaus in the Hanover area of town are also highly recommended.

Hand Brew Co.

I wrote a profile on the Hand in Hand brewpub back in 2018, and much has changed in the time that’s passed. The ‘idiosyncratic’ brewing set up, which necessitated a kind of ‘make do and mend’ approach, has been expanded and modernised and, most significantly, Hand Brew Co. has outgrown the premises. A new brewery and tap room in Worthing is set to open soon, which is exciting news. The beers have always been impressive, but have grown increasingly accomplished over time. Most recently, I was seriously impressed by the Hans Pilsner, a dead ringer for a herbal, bitter Bavarian pils.

The new operation in Worthing doesn’t, however, replace in-house brewing at the pub. Head brewer Jack assures me “we’re still brewing at the Hand and always will.” As is blindly obvious, the best place to find these is the pub itself, happily also one of Brighton’s most characterful boozers.

BRZN

BRZN has apparently existed in some capacity for over a year now, but completely passed me by until a couple of weeks ago when I stumbled across their new venture on my way home from the shops. Initially operating as a cuckoo brewer, they moved into a shipping container in what’s known as the ‘Cobbler’s Thumb’, just up the road from Preston Circus, in May. Their model of selling beer directly to pubs was challenged by lockdown, so now they open their doors every Saturday for takeaways.

The beers are pretty inventive, ranging from fruited sours to imperial milk stouts, and they seem to make liberal use of the magnificent Voss Kviek yeast. I was hugely impressed with Modern Solutions, a Voss-powered pale ale with cold brew coffee from the superb Pharmacie roastery in Hove. Combining both foam bananas and the little pink shrimps that shared their pick ‘n’ mix bag, sweet orange, zesty and floral coffee notes and a gentle, refreshing acidity in the finish, this is an incredibly flavoursome beer for a relatively low ABV of 4.5%. On the strength of Modern Solutions, I’ll be back at the shipping container pretty soon.

Unbarred

Unbarred began life as a homebrew operation, before setting up commercially through the aforementioned Missing Link. They now have a permanent home in Brighton, having taken over a great purpose-built brewery and taproom space from the now defunct Holler Brewery last year. For me, the beers are far more consistent these days.

It would be reductive to say that Unbarred specialise in wacky adjuncts, but they’re certainly not averse to them - it's part of the 'anything goes' approach to brewing implied by their name. These range for the tasteful - pale stout with Nicaraguan coffee cherry tea - to the... decadent. Take Bueno Shake, a hazelnut milk stout inspired by a certain European chocolate treat, or Dip Le Donut, a coffee and doughnut white stout which uncannily reproduces both the sweet bready quality and the gooey glaze of a Krispy Kreme.

If the thought of all that makes your teeth hurt, then look to something like their Casual Pale, an aptly named easy-going pale ale, full of refreshing lemon and pine notes on a faintly biscuity pale malt based that’s made for multiple laid-back pints.

Larrikin

I've been slow to investigate Larrikin because of shellfish. The brewery operates out of the basement of The Urchin, a Hove pub specialising in shellfish, a cuisine to which I am extremely averse. However much I want to support what is by all accounts a lovely pub and a small Brighton-based brewery, the thought of sitting sipping beer in a room that hums of mussels is not my idea of a good time.

I was excited, then, to see that Larrikin had started selling cans to take away and drink in a neutrally-scented environment. This seemed perfect until I opened them. I have to assume that something is going wrong in the canning process, because all three beers (IPAs of various iterations and ABV) were the same unappetising brown colour, like fruit left out to go oxidised. They also all tasted remarkably similar, with a sweet fruity note recalling boiled sweets, and some fresher melon notes that were reasonably pleasant. 

It's hard to believe these beers were as the brewer intended, but then ideally, I think the brewer intended for them to be drunk in the pub and I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. I'm exaggerating about the shellfish thing for comic effect, but according to those whose opinions matter (i.e. people who can stand to be in the same room as a prawn), the place is excellent. And yes, they do brew an oyster stout - it would be mad if they didn't.

Loud Shirt

Loud Shirt is probably the Brighton brewery I'm least familiar with. Hence the lack of relevant photo; hopefully this snap of kids TV icon and loud shirt trailblazer Dave Benson Phillips will suffice. They have been brewing since 2016, but I’m not sure how long they’ve occupied their brewery in Whitehawk.

I may as well acknowledge that, even if unconsciously, the name and general ‘embarrassing dad’ vibe of the branding has probably been a barrier to investigating their stuff. I did once encounter their Ecstasy Stout at a local CAMRA festival; rich and chocolatey but with an unusual clementine note (is it Sorachi Ace?), I liked it enough to forfeit the ticking potential of such a setting and went back for more.

They do bottle and can, but I was unable to find anything for my important research, so Loud Shirt remains a bit of an enigma for me. Some of the beers sound very appealing; Hallucination Brune in particular - I'll be keeping an eye out for more.

The free state of Kemptown

The following is my contribution to The Session #133, hosted by Gareth at Barrel Aged Leeds. This month's theme is 'Hometown Glories'.

The year is 1989, and the Hand in Hand has no roof. Already 120-something years old, the pub is about to enter a new chapter; fermentation tanks are edging their way down into the cellar. The arrival of this kit marks the birth of the Hand in Hand as a brewpub.

Fast forward to 2017, and a fresh delivery of shiny stainless steel has arrived at the pub. Two new fermentation tanks are being lowered through a hole in the floor by the front door; leaving the roof intact, this time only floorboards are lifted. They’ll be returned and carpeted over again before the pub opens. Temperature controlled and able to contain the pressure demanded of beer destined for a keg, these tanks reflect the ambitions of Jack Tavaré, brewer at Hand Brew Co., the brand now operating out of the Hand.

Modern tanks aside, the basic brew kit is the same one that was installed those 28 years ago by then-landlord Bev Robbins, though the brews that comes out of it are very different. “The beers were awful apparently,” says Jack. “It was always the same base recipe and then when they were filling casks, the landlord just used to put different stuff in it to make it a different beer. I think there was one with… it wasn’t gravy brownings but it was something like that. Some kind of brown, food-based thing.” Another, dyed with red food colouring, was given the name Dragon’s Blood – an advertisement for it is still painted on the side of the building, but something tells me Jack won’t be reviving the recipe.

Crammed into a cramped, higgledy-piggledy space behind the scenes, the kit works on the principle of a traditional tower brewery. Rather than pumps, the flow process is propelled by gravity. The hot liquor tank and mash tun are on the second floor, and the wort flows down into the kettle on the level below. Once it’s boiled for an hour and hops are added, it’s transferred through a pipe, passing a heat exchanger on its way through the bar and into the fermenters in the cellar.

“We do actually use a couple of pumps now,” Jack laughs, “we’ve modernised”. He’s made small improvements here and there, like installing a manway on the kettle; previously, the only way to add hops was to drop them through a tiny hole which also released steam. “So far we don’t have a chimney,” he explains, “so when it’s boiling, steam just billows into this room. But that was the only hole I had, so when I was adding hops I had this steam blowing, hops going everywhere…”

Many of the old kit’s quirks remain, however, requiring some creative thinking. For example, Jack sets his hot liquor tank to around 92 degrees. “Normally you’d want your liquor around 77 degrees, depending on what you want your mash to be,” he tells me. “But below the element I get this pocket of cold liquor." Because the contents of the hot liquor tank can't be mixed, "I have to overheat the top part so that when that’s mixed with the bottom part and transferred into the mash tun, it will equal 77. You have to work around it.”

Bev and Brenda Robbins

Hand Brew Co. has been the house brand since August 2016. Since the initial installation, the brewery has been almost constantly used, with only short spells of inactivity. Bev ran the pub with his wife Brenda until he passed away in 2006. He brewed under the brand Kemptown Brewery, reviving the name of a historic brewery that operated in this part of Brighton until the mid-1960s. “I think the way he got round it was by making ‘Kemptown Brewery Co. Est. 1989’ the full legal name,” Jack says. The kit was then used sporadically until it was taken over by Gary Sillence. He maintained the Kemptown name whilst using any spare capacity for his own brand, Brighton Bier, now a much larger operation based in a unit just down the road.

Around the time Gary left, the pub was taken on by its current owners, Jen and Clark, leaving the brewery temporarily empty with the intention of starting brewing again once they’d found their feet. Jack was then operating a small brewery, Beercraft, from a pilot kit at the Watchmaker’s Arms micropub in Hove, whilst working bar shifts at the Hand. “I was working behind the bar here and we got chatting about the brewery. I said “I think I should do it!””, Jack tells me. As Hand Brew Co. grew, he had less and less time to dedicate to Beercraft, and took the decision to merge the two companies. He hopes to move the small pilot kit up to Kemptown for trial recipes.

And the beers? Well, they’re excellent, reflecting an obviously meticulous attention to detail despite the equipment’s vagaries. I loved Hans, a clean and bitter pilsner. This gets the full lagering treatment, spending a generous eight weeks in the tanks, currently tying up a large percentage of the brewery’s capacity but absolutely worth it. Ayyyy, a US breakfast stout is just as impressive; brewed with lots of oats for a decadent creamy texture, its richness is rounded out by cocoa nibs and beans from Hove’s wonderful coffee roasters, Pharmacie. Aside from these, the current focus is on dry-hopped pale ales, though Jack has ambitions to move into Belgian styles.

Initially, the beer brewed on the premises was exclusively sold here. Around 75% of the Hand beers are sold on the premises, but the remaining casks and kegs are sent to various bars around Brighton and the surrounding area. So whilst you don’t have to visit the Hand in Hand to try them, you really should. It’s small and well worn-in in the best way, walls covered with breweriana and ceiling beams decorated with a collection of ties snipped from the necks of punters by former landlady Brenda as a reminder that they were no longer at work. On my afternoon visit, there’s a warm community spirit to the place; regulars pop in for tea served in dimpled half-pint mugs as well as stemmed glasses of beer. It’s one of Brighton’s most characterful pubs.

Above the door hangs a sign that reads ‘you are now entering the free state of Kemptown’. I like the sentiment, but wondered if it had any further significance. “I really don’t know,” says Jen, landlady and director. “I think it just meant “anything goes” as its Kemptown and bonkers!?” And as such, it sums up why the Hand in Hand is such a wonderful place.

My sincere thanks to Jack and Jen for their hospitality. In the interests of disclosure, I'll point out that they refused to let me pay for my beers.

Sussex CAMRA beer festival 2016

Last weekend saw the 26^th Sussex CAMRA branches beer festival at Brighton’s Corn Exchange. Here are some thoughts on my experience of the festival and the beers I drank.

The beer

With over 170 beers at this year’s festival, the 13 mild ales on offer might not seem much. But I’d all but declared mild extinct in this part of the country - admittedly, many of the examples here are from further afield (further North), but there’s a certain type of beer geek that’s inexplicably drawn to such unfashionable styles, and I’d proudly count myself among them – so 13 milds in one room is pretty exciting to me.

That said, I drank only a few as there were so many other beers I wanted to try, but they were all very tasty and extremely moreish (mild isn't best suited to third-of-a-pint servings) and helped clarify my idea on what mild means. First was Leeds’ Midnight Bell, an elegant beer with a lightly roasty malt backbone and some earthy, vegetal hops adding depth. The hoppy bitterness is bigger than I expected from the style, possibly due to the unusual addition of Willamette hops. Kissingate’s Black Cherry Mild is, obviously, also atypical, though it does have a similar light roasty foundation. It’s too sweet for my tastes, although it does taste like real cherries rather than a sticky, syrupy synthetic flavouring. Arundel’s Black Stallion , a mild that actually does hail from Sussex (though they seem reluctant to refer to it this way), was another solid offering, and I really hope I get to become properly equated with a few pints of it some time. Finally, Summer Wine’s Resistance was the best of the bunch - beautifully balanced between sweet toffee-like malt and bitter hops, with a hint of vanilla adding depth. I've unjustly ignored this brewery for no good reason for too long, and I’ve clearly been a fool.

Stewart’s 80/, a Scotch ale, isn't so different to some of these milds – a little sweeter with next to no discernible hop bitterness, it’s a big, soft, fluffy, malty comfort blanket of a beer. Brighton Bier’s Freshman, an IPA in the Vermont style, is at the other end of the spectrum – super pale malts imparting as little character as possible, accentuating the big, juicy hop hit I’ve come to expect from this brewery. It’s all about hop aroma and flavour, and bitterness is consequently low – it’s exactly the kind of IPA I love, and Brighton Bier’s most accomplished beer yet.

There was also plenty to appeal to fans of smoked beer like myself. Gun Brewery, from Heathfield in East Sussex, have often impressed me, and the new Smoked Rye they've brought with them is excellent – an authentic swirl of Bamberg-style smoke, with a wonderful herb-like finish recalling oregano and rosemary. Langham’s Aegir porter also brings a hefty dose of smoke, alongside a smooth, slightly sweet malt character. Brigid Fire from Celt Experience is a smoked rye IPA that slightly disappoints in the smoke department, and doesn't present itself as particularly hoppy either. Its interesting feature for me is the bierre de garde yeast, which imparts the kind of honeyed sweetness you find in a beer like 3 Monts, or the marzipan character of Jenlain Ambrée. It’s a complex beer that I pondered carefully with every sip.

And finally, some big hitters. Hammerpot’s Baltic porter was smooth and full bodied, with a rich tang suggesting port wine. Kissingate’s Murder of Crows was my undisputed highlight of the festival -  a huge, double-mashed imperial stout, reportedly aged for a year before release. It’s rich and sweet with muscovado sugar and clementine flavours, but also slightly tart and tangy, resulting in a balsamic sweet and sour character reminiscent of a Flanders Red. It’s a very special beer, and one you absolutely must order if you’re lucky enough to see it out in the wild.

Alongside some great beers, the event was well organised – all beers in tip-top condition, very few not ready in time for the opening session – and the volunteers were great, everyone enthusiastic and friendly.

Room for improvement

There’s definitely room for improvement, though. I’d love to see the introduction of key kegs (as per the recent CAMRA festival in Manchester), especially as increasing numbers of local breweries are beginning to experiment more with kegged beers. Although I was happy to stand throughout the session and saw plenty of free seats, it’s a shame the seating has to be tucked away around the edges of the room, isolated from the atmosphere of the festival, and seats with tables would be especially practical. I accept that this is a necessary compromise given the space available at the Corn Exchange, and the choice of venue may well explain my other complaint – the food.

The food is, I think, provided by the venue’s in-house catering, and it’s possible that they won’t let the festival bring in outside food vendors, although that wouldn't make much sense considering they’re bring in hundreds of casks of beer from outside. Most of it looked fine, but the festival website and programme both promised vegetarian and vegan options. When I asked about the vegetarian option, I was given a choice of a cheese and onion pasty or chips. The pasty offering was a bit crap, but consigning any vegans to nothing but a plate of chips is just an insult, and especially annoying since it would have taken very little effort to knock up a vegan alternative to the food that was already there – a vegetable chilli alongside the meaty equivalent, vegan sausages (which are available in pretty much any supermarket) for hot dogs. Don’t claim to cater to dietary requirements if you can’t be bothered to do it properly, or even better, ask one of the innumerable vegan-friendly food businesses in Brighton to do it for you.

Whilst it’s not the CAMRA festival’s fault, it’s a shame that so many beer events in the city coincided in such a short space of time. Tiny Rebel’s ‘town takeover’ at various pubs across the city overlapped, and the Thursday night session that I attended clashed with a Siren tap takeover/meet the brewer event at Craft Beer Co. BrewDog Brighton also organised a Sussex keg beer event which I’d have been keen to check out if it wasn't for their continual childish CAMRA baiting in promoting it – there are plenty of us who like cask and keg beer and don’t drink the BrewDog Kool-Aid any more than we pay regard to the conservative faction of CAMRA, so why alienate these drinkers?

Several of these events stretched across the whole weekend if not longer, so in theory interested parties could have attended all of them. But if, as in my case, time and money are limited resources, this isn’t realistic. A little forward planning would benefit everyone.

Brown ale: some final observations

Since starting this blog, I've rattled on about brown ale a fair amount. I feel I've done the subject to death, but I've also spent so much time obsessing over it that I still have things to say. Despite the stylistic diversity of brown ale, there are noticeable trends within the style. As the final word on brown ale for this blog, I propose a series of sub-categories. Bear in mind I'm not taking myself totally seriously in this – brown ale is obscure enough as it is without being chopped up into micro-styles. It’s just a way of presenting the continuities across the various examples of the style I've tasted in the past year or so.

I still try any new brown ale I see. If a local pub tweets that they’re serving one, or a brewery announces they’re making one, I’ll be making mental calculations as to how I can get to try it. It’s a uniquely fascinating style precisely because nobody seems to agree on exactly what it is. 

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Your average beginners guide to beer styles tends to split brown ale into two categories – the sweet, low-gravity ales of the South of England, and the stronger, dry brown ales of the North. The truth is more complex; from the re-emergence of the style in the 1920s onwards, the beers were diverse and did not observe this imaginary north/south divide.

As brown ale stands today, archetypal examples of both the sweet/mild and strong-ish/dry versions remain. Mann’s Brown Ale, despite originating as one of the strongest examples of the style, now sits at 2.8% ABV and tastes largely of cola, treacle and toffee. Harvey’s Bloomsbury Brown, also at 2.8% has a strong caramel flavour, and may well be a relic of the days in which brown ale got its colour from caramel. I've never encountered any further examples of the low-gravity version of brown ale, and it’s easy to see why they fell out of favour – they’re interesting as a curiosity, but are bland and not very beery.

Newcastle Brown Ale remains the most commonly cited example of the stronger version. These beers are often dry and often described as ‘nutty’, although I've always thought this this is the power of suggestion at play – the phrase ‘nut brown ale’ is sometimes used to refer to the colour, but I've rarely detected a nutty taste. Newky Brown isn't a good beer, and it’s a shame it’s the only example of the style you’re likely to find in mainstream outlets. Far better is Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, which has a very dry quality that even veers towards red wine, and a deep, savoury malty body. (Edit; see here for some further interesting background on Newcastle Brown Ale from Martyn Cornell - "not, in any meaningful sense, a brown ale.")

Modern craft breweries have reinterpreted brown ale in several ways. The first sub-group pays homage to the traditional English brown ale, whilst not belonging to either the Mann’s or Newcastle camps. These beers are defined by a soft, comforting malt profile, which might include hints of caramel or toffee, milk chocolate, blackcurrants or blackberries or cola. A little roasted malt may creep in, but this will be more restrained than a porter or stout, and the beers are of a medium body. New-world hops might add a bitter, citrus finish but this will be subtle. Good examples I've tasted recently include Dirty Kitty by Denmark’s Beer Here and Maduro from Cigar City. Port Brewing’s Board Meeting deserves a mention for using these qualities as a foundation for a massive hit of coffee and rich chocolate – it’s terrific.

The ‘American brown ale’ style will take these characteristics and significantly amp up the hops, but not in a way that overpowers the malt backbone. Dark Star’s Rockhead is the best example of this I've tasted, and Fourpure's Beartooth is excellent, too.

Some beers call themselves ‘India brown ale’. What you’re getting here is obvious – a big hit of hops. This is generally my least favourite incarnation, though some are better than others, mainly because the brown ale base is wiped out and you end up with something closer to a black IPA. I would place BrewDog's recent “hopped-up brown ale” prototype in this category – I thought this was a poor beer all round, and tasted of little except overly bitter hops that left a citrus washing-up liquid taste that lasted for ages. Others whose tastes I trust found a lot more to it, so maybe I had an off bottle or my taste buds had an off day - either way, I stand by the assessment that the hop profile dominates everything else. Weird Beard’s No More Bright Ideas, whilst it tastes great, offers little to the brown ale enthusiast – it’s a very dry beer, bursting with vibrant and zesty hop character, but this renders the malt base irrelevant.

There is also a small breed of what appear to be brown ales, but aren't. When I wrote about Brighton Bier’s Free State, billed as “21st century brown” here, I remarked that the nevertheless delicious beer had very little ‘brown’ quality. Brewer Gary Sillence got in touch with me to clarify his intentions - “My main ambition was the break down the mainstream perception that brown beer means dull or old fashioned”, he said, and the beer was never intended to be received as a brown ale as such – his alternative tagline was “brown beer for a new generation”.  Magic Rock’s The Stooge, though billed as an American Brown Ale, seems to be doing much the same thing. It’s a far lighter shade of brown than most examples of the style. You might call its shade 'chestnut' – closer to a bitter (that's it in the photo at the very top of the first, if you'd like to see for yourself). And it drinks like a bitter, too, albeit one hopped with assertive US varieties alongside earthy British staples – the luscious malt character has an easy-drinking crispness to it that doesn't belong to brown ale. Are we at a point when the agonisingly unglamorous name ‘brown ale’ is more fashionable than ‘bitter’?

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I don’t know it just seems this way because I've been actively looking for them, but I'm sure I'm seeing more brown ales than ever recently. With talk of a hop shortage, are breweries falling back on malt-driven styles such as this? In any event, I promise not to drone on about it any longer.

Two brown ales; Brighton Bier and Fourpure

Usually, I wait until I've tried five or six new brown ales and post a bulletin on my latest finds, as I did here and here. On this occasion, I thought I’d better get in quick with my thoughts on two (I think) limited edition beers whilst they’re still around.

Brighton Bier Free State 21st Century Brown

Brighton Bier are having a great 2015. Having installed a brand new brewery, they’re going from strength to strength, and at this point have gotten extremely good at packing juicy hop flavour into their beers. Tasting Free State in cask conditioned form, I felt like the beer in front of me just could not possibly taste any fresher – the hops are so upfront, but at the same time, don’t smack you around the chops with bitterness. My guess, at the time, was the hop bill was a mixture of US and Southern Hemisphere hops – “something like orange and lime pith which seems like a Southern Hemisphere thing”, I wrote in a note on my phone, whilst also picking out a lychee tang that suggested Citra. I was wrong on both counts – this is a single hop beer made with Equinox, a new US variety from the same breeders that brought us Mosaic, Simcoe and the aforementioned Citra. The citrus pith thing is a kind of lingering fizzy sensation on the tongue, slightly dry and always encouraging another sip. A complex malt base brings a full, mealy body that’s pitched perfectly for my liking – not heavy going, but never feels like it’s slipping away too easily.

I do have one slight issue, though. Had I been accosted in the pub, blindfolded and asked to taste this beer without knowing what it was, I would have confidently told you it was a pale ale. It’s brown in appearance, sure, but it’s a strange experience whereby the image of the glass you’re drinking from and the taste of the beer in your mouth don’t seem to match. Maybe, once the glass has warmed a little and once I go specifically in search of it, I can detect a hint of caramel, a little chocolate. Don’t get me wrong – this is a great beer, probably the best I've tasted from this excellent brewery and one I could drink endlessly. I just like a suggestion of something dark in my brown ale.

Fourpure Beartooth American Brown Ale

In one of my first posts on the subject of brown ale, I featured a seasonal from Fourpure called, simply, American Brown Ale. This beer served as a prototype for Beartooth, an improved version under a new name and in a new can. I enjoyed it a lot first time round, though my review seems to dwell on a dryness that isn't really there in the new version. It’s still bitter, but well balanced, and full of juicy hop flavour as well.

It’s a very handsome pour – dark brown, bordering on black, with a thick and creamy beige head, and an enticing aroma of fresh citrus fruits hits you immediately. The flavour is a delicate balancing act between malt and hops – there are husky, cereal-like flavours in the background, with a little roasted bitterness that brings coffee and the faintest hint of smoke. The hops, which recall grapefruit and small, sweet oranges – satsumas or tangerines - are harmonious with this malt backbone, neither element threatening to overpower the other. It’s wonderful, and you should drink it whilst you can.