Wednesday 12 May 2010

Sometimes a good pint of beer is the simplest thing in the world

Would you like to come and try our new beer said the email. Yes I would I said, but could we meet nearer to where I live, I continued. So off I went to the neighbouring village of Bampton for an ale with Mark Shackleton, Marketing Director at Dartmoor Brewery, whose new beer is called Legend. Dartmoor are based at Princetown, where the old lags live, a bit of a trek from Exmoor. 
Let’s meet at Blackberries he’d said, I’ll make sure they’ve got our beer on. I didn’t even know this place had a bar I thought, reckoned it was just an eating place. But no, ale was on, except it wasn’t for us. Blackberries was closed so we went to the Quarryman’s Rest up the road and enjoyed some other beers (Mark tried a drop of another local beer, I like to try something new he said, I mumbled something about the brewery’s so-so rep, after a taste he went for a Doom Bar instead, so what was it like I asked, TCP came the reply). 
After lunch, back to our cars, a good time had but still no Legend. I’ve got some beer for you says Mark, hauling a 20-litre pin of Dartmoor’s new beer to my car. I think I’d be a legend if I drunk all that in one sitting. So after a couple of days in the cellar (it wasn’t bright) I turned the tap. Malt-driven I was told. Challenger and Goldings, but malt is the master here. Not for brewer and Dartmoor founder Simon Loveless, onetime brewer at Hop Back (where he invented Summer Lightning), the razzamatazz of hop bombs and the siren call of Simcoe. English hops are what he likes, and why not?  
So what is it like? Golden amber in the glass, crisp and biscuity on the nose, light sprightly notes suggestive of apricot and peach skin on the palate, a spicy almost rye cracker like character in the background and a bittersweet dry dusty finish. A well-constructed bitter that will quench many a West Country thirst. Sometimes a good pint of beer is the simplest thing in the world. 

8 comments:

  1. I would love a bottle of Young's Bitter many a night, but alas I can't find any over here, yet.

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  2. Oh, they've raised the bar for review beers now. A couple of bottles in bubble wrap in the post won't do anymore. It's got to be a draught container delivered personally by senior management!

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  3. Free beer always tastes better.

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  4. Velky — there are many beers I desire over a night but unless I organise myself I’m stumped, so I share your predicament
    Barm — I have to emphasise that this direct delivery scheme is very rare…
    Ed — no it doesn’t, I’ve been sent some stinkers over the years (eg a rhubarb beer that only my Carlsberg swigging mate Herbie would take a delight in) and also been in on a tasting, expectant eyes on glass as I sip and frantically think of words that would soften the blow; another memorable one was a tasting of Shropshire Beers when the writer leading the tasting nosed a beer, recoiled, laughed, said words to the effect ‘cor that’s more of a Burton grab than snatch’. Said writer was mortified later in reacting the way he did, but the moral is: not all free beer is good.

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  5. I can see that not all free beer is good, but if you'd paid for any of those horrors you mention I'm sure they would have been even worse.

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  6. Ed — can’t deny that, especially the rhubarb one, that is my number one of horror beers, I don’t like rhubarb either, got a couple of free pints on Sunday from my local when I took what felt like several kilos of the stuff down to the kitchen. It’s fresh horse radish this weekend for them.

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  7. It seems that broke the law of beer samples which goes the greater the volumn of sample the more average the beer. Macro swill always comes by the case where as a really smart craft beer sample will come in the form of one bottle.

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  8. sounds to me like KHM is jealous!! The proof is in the drinking not the quantity.

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