Alloa, Alloa

I like Williams Bros Ceilidh. They call it a lager. Now I don’t know whether it has been lagered and if so for how long, but it certainly tastes and feels more like a Munchen Pilsner than any member of that oxymoron of British craft brewing cask-conditioned lager. It’s the colour of Welsh gold — I hold my wedding ring up to it and the colours match. The nose is sweet and fragrant, gently toasted bread with a slight scent of elderflower and lemon in the background — the beer equivalent of that old Victorian standard Come into the garden Maud; sweetish and soft on the palate, then it becomes lemony midway through the palate; it has a gorgeous rounded mouthfeel before its dry, tantalisingly grainy finish. This is a very good approximation of a Munich Pils (too forthright to be a Helles and not floral enough to be Bohemian) — how wonderful it is to see another British brewer take on lager and produce something creditable. The label says ‘brewed in Alloa’, which if I seem to remember correctly was often seen as a Scottish equivalent of Burton-on-Trent; it was also a place noted for its lagers, so hence the legend on the label.