Clean vs dirty

Some beers squeeze their way into the house, they’re from Sharp’s and they do more than make me think about how they taste. First of all, there’s Equinox, a 3.8% session beer with orange peel in the mix. I’m not thinking breakfast beer here though, it’s something that takes me into another space as the nose carries the delicate breeze of orange notes that occur when you dig your nail into the pith; it’s not a big orange blast, but something fine, something just there, something shimmering on the far horizon. Alongside this subtlety, there’s a corporeal sweetness from the barley, both notes combining to suggest a mythical beast along the lines of orange flavoured toffee. I would call it a clean nose, in which the constituent parts all harmonise together, Bloch’s Piano Quintet no 1 perhaps? On the palate the beer is more forthright with the ghostly oranginess and a honeyed sweetness and a cracker-like dryness in the finish that is accompanied by a zestful orange note. A complete beer, a refreshing beer and above a clean beer — where clean doesn’t mean lacking in flavour, but more that the flavours have a wholeness, a unity to them. And when the word clean appears on the scene is when I start to think about the idea of clean vs dirty beers.

Continuing on the theme here is Land Shrimp Pale Ale, famously made with woodlice, creatures I would squash without thinking about it when I was younger. This has a good carbonation, a zip and a zap of fizz when the top is popped. Hazy orange in the glass, fruit gum, orange flavoured, on the nose — not a big bazooka of aroma, but there it is, to be joined by pineapple. Mouthfeel is initially creamy, followed by a sprightly dance of carbonation, a good two-step action. Pineapple, orange and no woodlice — I don’t really know what to expect; further gulps bring forth an earthiness or is that the mind playing tricks on me? There is a good appetising dry finish with bitterness and subtle pepperiness in the background; plus a hint of chalk. There is still the cleanness of what I come to feel is the signature of Sharp’s beers.

This then brings me to think about the idea of clean vs dirty beers. I remember writing once about how Kernel’s beers were dirty and the better for it and I would say the same with Sharp’s from the clean perspective. It reminds me of something Alastair Hook said to me years ago about lager — about how he was trying to have his beers show off the flavours and aromas of the raw materials he was using. That’s the definition of a great lager. With the cleanness of the beers of Sharp’s, you also get to smell and taste the raw materials, but with the ale yeast adding that extra dimension. Clean vs dirty — it doesn’t have to be divisive.

30 beers

Sharp’s: big boys, the men that sold out, the multinational, the unmentionables; but hold on there’s also Stuart Howe, the head brewer, the man who writes a great blog, who writes about how he will put meat and offal in beer and then does it; the man who brews Doom Bar and keeps it consistent, whatever you think about it, and the man who took me to Orval several years ago (that makes me biased I presume but I wouldn’t seek the hospitality of any one brewer unless I rate the beers that he or she makes).

Come and taste 30 beers goes the invitation and how can I resist and so there I am at Sharp’s in the company of fellow beer writer Tim Hampson, both of us in return in the company of Stuart and his sidekick Carl Heron. Out in the yard there is a container full with a beer that I helped to brew back in January, Panzerfaust, a beer part of which was pumped into this container and has been left to spontaneously ferment since then. There’s an aluminium bucket on the top to keep fruit flies out but all manner of other bugs have wheedled their way in and at the moment there’s a vinous, dark malt, alcoholic nose on the beer and I hope to try it one of these days.

Our 30 beers odyssey begins with Doom Bar, forest fruits on the palate, rounded, dry and bittersweet and great with cured meats. Worthington’s Red Shield is fudge and vanilla and doomed to be forgotten. Sharp’s Own is roast and chocolate and old school, as is the plummy Special, with its brisk brush of deep fruitiness. Here comes Single Brew Reserve 2012, a brunch beer with an appetising aroma of tropical fruits that have been sunning themselves on the kitchen counter. Carl’s first WIGIG is Hecheweizen, a Belgian blond witbier with a bunch of herbs in the mix — spice and bubblegum, which suggests the beer also undertook a visit to Bavaria.

We also try some of the beers from Molson-Coors’ craft range, including Franciscan Well’s Friar Weisse, IPA, a Coffee Porter whose nose suggests ground coffee grits and a stout aged in Jameson barrels (smoked bacon/mackerel and a blood-like metallic character) — there is the feeling of by-the-numbers craft brewing; then there is Blue Moon and its associates Agave Nectar, Blackberry Tart, Rounder and Short Straw and oddly enough it’s the orangey Blue Moon, which comes out best.

Yes please. Cornish Pilsner, one of my favourite beers of the last 12 months, juicy, lubricious and luscious, or how about Chalky’s Bite, which is fluffy and Riesling (German) like (we also have a 2006 vintage that time has given a sherry/oloroso note). Now emerge some of Stuart’s 52 creations including Citrus Tripel 2010 (a big sexy aromatic beast), Chilli IPA 2010 and Heston’s Offal Ale, which has developed a Marianas Trench depth of port-like flavour in the three years it was brewed. 

Dubbel Coffee Stout is a toffee apple taking a bath in treacle with a shower of mocha; Spiced Red is jammy and strawberry like held together with a spine of bitterness, Honey Spice Tripel rings and chimes with Riesling like notes, Quadrupel is soulful and lush  and we rise a glass to the much missed Dave Wickett with DW.

We keep going. A couple of surprises gents, says Stuart, and two big bottles of Bass Celebration beers are brought to the table. 1982 is meaty, vinous and slightly smoky, but not that lovely; though 1977’s Jubilee’s Strong Ale is cognac fiery, Stilton cheesy (in a good way) and has a bitter finish that lingers like the curl of smoke from a detective’s cigarette in a 1950s pulp novel. It is rather gorgeous and demonstrates the importance of time in beer. That’s it apart from 3000, a limited edition Blue Moon strong beer that leaves no trace and Turbo Yeast Ten Zuiden van de Hemel — a distilled beery thing of 22% with dustings of doughnut sugar on the nose and a ferociously spirited sense of its own malice towards those who would drink too much of it — 12 hours on I could still taste it.

30 beers in a day, it can be done. 

The outdoor life

What’s this then? It’s a container with 600 litres of unfermented hopped wort that has been moved out into the yard. It’s going to have a bucket on the top and some gauze over the opening but crucially the lid is not going to be there. It’s dark in colour, as you might be able to see — Munich malt, caramalt, some roast barley, some wheat and some acid malt went into the mash tun earlier in the morning, plus some lactic acid. Hops included Simcoe, whose aroma as they waited in the hopback filled the air with their perfume. Unfermented? Yep. It’s going to be out in the yard for several months, a yard that is surrounded by farmland, so who knows who’ll pop by for a chat  (back in the brewery the rest of the brew that helped with is settling into the fermenting vessel, getting itself comfy with the three buckets of yeast that have just turned up at the front door and invited themselves in — we’re calling it a black gose, the wort tasted rather interesting, anyway back outside). That man is the foreground is Stuart Howe, head brewer at Sharp’s, and yes he’s playing with sour beer. Hurray! 

Sour

Sour. I have known sour-faced men and women (not that many though for who wants to spend that much time with them) for whom the world is one big frustration; the sort of person I would desperately talk to when I was younger and in a new part of town and attempting to become part of the crowd in a pub I laughingly called my local.

I have had a sour look from a stranger when I suggested that she might like to dance and maybe afterwards could I buy a drink for her (not surprising if you had ever seen me attempt to dance during my — not that enthusiastic — clubbing days).

Sour beer I have had, enough of it to flood an ark on with assorted fauna clambering aboard, a kind of Life of Pi in reverse. I was in a pub just over the border in Devon where the landlord was sitting drinking with his cronies. When I asked for a pint I heard him say to the barmaid ‘pull it through a bit, it’s not been used for a couple of days’. I couldn’t finish it as my face was making strange shapes while my Jack Russell was picking a fight with the pub dog. Meanwhile another pub on Exmoor had warm Exmoor Beast on tap — in the middle of July, in a village whose largely ancient inhabitants seemingly went to bed at 8pm (ever had lambic porter?).

On the other hand one of my favourite post pub meals was sweet and sour pork (especially when fried in batter), while my wife and son chew on gummy, sugary sweets called sours when we go on a long car journey — when I chew on these I always feel that my face makes the sort of shapes that if translated into physical exertion would be called jazz dancing. They’re quite refreshing though and take your mind off the price of petrol.

And then there’s lambic and gueuze — along with sweet and sour pork the acceptable face of sour. Though it did take me about 10 years to really get Cantillon — back in the 1990s I used to put a sugar cube in my Christmas morning bottle of gueuze. 

I’ve been thinking about the word sour throughout the weekend, partly due to the fact I’m off to Sharps this week to brew a Black Gose (possibly) with Stuart Howe and due to a conversation I had with WildBeer’s co-founder Andrew Cooper on Thursday. I was writing a feature on them (and I will be honest, I regard them as one of the most exciting breweries in the country at the moment) and I’d called up to get some quotes, as you do. We got to talking about a sour beer that the brewery might be doing and then onto the semantics of the word sour.

‘Brett and I had a meeting today,’ Andrew told me, ‘and we were discussing what to brew and how to talk about it. We want to do sour beers in the spring, but there is the case of what language to use and how do we get it across to the public and try and keep a positive connotation. We haven’t made up our mind yet whether we should call them sour beers. There are lots of positive things that are sour, beautiful sour lemonade for instance, but it is something different to the audience.’

I like this thoughtful approach to beer. I’m interested in how some beers can be explained to drinkers beyond geeks (who might wet themselves at the thought of sour). Mention sour to people in my two local pubs and they might pull a face, but then you can ask them if they have enjoyed beef stroganoff (sour cream) or sauerkraut or just plain sweet and sour pork. It’s a bit like bitter. On it’s own, bitter is incredibly negative, but allied to espresso or Angostura bitters then it makes sense.

For me sour is similar to difficult music, literature and inclines in the mountains. It would be easy to walk away and think life is easier if I continue in the other direction, but on the other hand.

As I write I’m listening to some Benjamin Britten songs — sung in German, just piano and singer, slightly angular in their construction, not easy listening, possibly the musical equivalent of lambic or gueuze. I love them, I get something from listening to them, I don’t know what I get but there is something that stirs my soul about them. I struggled with these at first but I kept coming back and now they make some sort of emotional sense.

Sour beers are like that. Sure you can dismiss them and walk away, that’s fine. But on the other hand, they have a history and a provenance, a heritage, a small home base but by using the right words you can get them across to a wider audience — and by getting them across to a wider audience I believe it’s another way to help raise the profile of good beer.

DW

Stuart Howe at Sharps sent me a bottle of DW, which he had brewed in collaboration with the late Dave Wickett. I thought I’d drink it. I’ve had it when it was younger but this was older and had had time to settle. On the nose, a filmic contrast between a scowling, tough, dockyard dweller, neckerchief wearing, shoulder bulging, granite-like hardness Belgian and a Jean Genet type, implacably bald, beret-wearing, muscle-bound with a sailor hat atop: there is a  yeastiness, fruitiness, peachiness; a peach dessert sweetness on the nose; a dessert wine Muscat swipe on the nose, a dirty troll like dig into the hop sack on the nose; it is vinous, vine-like, Vinland-like, Varus vs the barley hordes, my big fat barley beer, the idea of the Rhine as a boundary between wine and beer;  sweetness, dessert wine London clubland, the femininity of Muscat. 

And so I drank it. Fatness, sweetness, dryness, sweetness I was only joking, smokiness, peachiness, round ripe peaches, the dryness of the mouth’s assault on the ripe skin of a peach, the release of juice, an RSM of hop bitterness bawling from across the parade ground to keep all things in order; the marmalade sweetness glides across the brioche like breadiness and big fat uncle Charlie — just about keeping himself in order — bawls along, saying all the wrong things, but we all know we love him. And it all ends as it should end: with a big alcoholic wave of papaya, pineapple, Billy Smart big top ring sawdust dryness and then a wonderful world tucks you into your bed. 

Hail Hayle Bay Honey IPA

Here’s the delivery man with a large package, it’s beer mate he says without too much surprise, as he’s a regular. Yes it’s beer, a mini cask of Sharps’ Hayle Bay Honey IPA, which I cannot wait to try but given that it’s 10am I think I’ll wait a few hours. And I did wait and then spent Friday and Saturday in contemplation. I liked it, I liked it a lot, I liked the glorious contrast between the pungent sexy aroma of the hop and a more delicate lycee note that brought to mind the sort of sketches Picasso used to knock out on the back of a napkin (I once met someone who had one but then he’d lost it in the war). It’s a rough and refined nose at once, one you could argue represents the character of its maker. It’s a bittersweet, robust, chunky beer, sometimes rough and ready and then gentle and persuasive. It’s a tropical fruit celebration such as ripe mango and lycee and a delightful breakfast platter of brioche sweetness. It’s got a swagger and strut that reminds me of those films of Jagger onstage at the end of the 60s, or maybe go back further in time to sweet Gene Vincent. This is a beer with attitude, an altitude, a big rocker of a beer that mashes up sweetness and suaveness and the sexiness of ripe fruit skin all in one glorious go. 

Beers I have been recently sent

Beer, I get sent to me, for consideration, or sometimes if I can’t get to try the beer for a feature, I ask the brewery if they could send me a sample. I trust the brewery; the beer, 90% of the time, is delightful — I’m certainly not a guy who likes every beer. But the result of this is that I have a swathe of tasting notes that I feel I should share, they’re not all in features or books and sometimes they’re so good or intriguing that I would like to share them, hence this post. So bear with me on this.

Sharp’s Honey Spiced IPA, 7.5%

Dark gold in colour; on the nose a ripe peach skin that has been sitting in the sun for too long; it reminds me of some of the erotic charge that the hop sack brings; there’s also a hint of the snappiness of green apple plus the soft sensual felt-like texture of honey. On the palate there’s honeyed peach skin, a softness of fruitiness (papaya, some lychee and orange skin where the thumb has made the spray come out) and a floral honeyed note that makes me think of honey slathered on fresh white bread — a breakfast beer then. It’s a ripe and voluptuous beer, expressive, yearning, a minor key in a chorus, but then the finish adds a sense of bitter betrayal, crisp, dry, chewy before the fruit and honey returns to take a more mellow bow.

BrewDog Avery Brown Dredge, 7.5%

Scrounged a couple of bottles of this from Zak Avery. The nose was sherbet–like (it reminds me of a fascination I have always had with the Arabian sherbet, a soft drink I suspect I would enjoy) with a spray of grapefruit pith; sweet lemon without sweetness. It’s a big beer when taken from the glass — dry lemon, dusty grapefruit, a lack in sweetness, almost medicinal, an expression of the Saaz — it also made me wonder about imperial Pilsner, whether they are experiments or gimmicks or an organic expansion of the genre (see a comment from Doug Odell about his sour Pilsner here). There’s a big lemon sourness that is different from the flinty lemon sourness you would get in a saison. I was not entirely sure about the beer — I don’t know that the use of shedloads of Saaz works. Maybe an imperial Pilsner is an angel with a dirty face.

Fordham Copperhead. 5.2%

Don’t know much about these guys, they’re trying to establish themselves in the UK, and in my limited knowledge of where they are — Delaware — I assume that the Alt style of this beer is quite a common thing (vague memories of 1001 Beers’ beers from this part of the world intrude). Unlike Cyrano the nose is not big but there is a spicy pepperiness on the palate, plus a hint of green apple, some crisp ryebread, and the feel of an oily texture. For me this is a typical American interpretation of an Altbier though I think Otter Creek’s is one of the best (that is called Copper Ale, who got there first I wonder?). There is a dry, crisp, cereal-like chewy finish. It’s both chewy and refreshing, sweetish but also with a hint of white pepper; fruit pastilles perhaps in the background; digestive biscuit with a dusting of chocolate. There is also a traditional American hop — which delivers some grapefruit notes. I like this one a lot. Toffee notes came along cap in hand as it warmed up.

Windsor & Eton Republika, 4.8%

First thoughts: this beer owes more to Bavaria than Bohemia, with its snappy bitterness and lacking that voluptuousness that I would expect from a 12˚ Svetly Lezak — a crisp bitter lemon-tinged carbonation but again that high bitter note. It tingles away on the palate, rings away, like a tram clanging its way through some central European city. The carbonation offers a delightful bite of refreshment, a gorgeously crisp and appetizingly bitter mouthfeel that I want to experience more of — I had mine with freshly made spring rolls where the carbonation briefly swabbed the decks of the palate clean allowing the refreshment of the beer to emerge, five spice powder and chilli and all, before the spring rolls asserted their spiciness. It cut through the grease, faced up to the spice, but allowed the spice to have its own moment in the spotlight (I don’t want the chilli to vanish, I wanted chilli to have its own identity, but I didn’t want my mouth to become a gastronomic battle of Stalingrad). On its own, a superb riff on a Bavarian but also a cool fit with a vegetable spring and chilli.

Cornish saison

When I was writing a piece on Wallonian saisons last year I asked Garrett Oliver what his interpretation of a saison was, given that in his magnificent Brewmaster’s Table (in my eyes one of the best beer books ever written) he had note-checked the beer as the one style he could drink every day. 

He came back with the words: ‘In my mind, there are really only a few things truly required of a saison. It must be dry – residual sugar would have a considerable effect on the beer’s ability to keep through the summer. They should also be fairly hoppy. Moderate alcohol, 5- 7%, would make them strong enough to last for a while, but not so strong that they’d stun the farm workers who drank it. So perhaps it is not a style that lends itself to orthodoxy, but rather one that originally existed to answer a question – “what can I brew that’s nutritious, refreshing, tasty, and will last for at least a year in the cellar?”’ 

So in other words, every man his own brewery makes his own saison. Which is a roundabout way of leading me to Sharps’ colossus of a head brewer Stuart Howe, who is currently ploughing his way through a series of 52 beers. When he asked for suggestions of what to do I said why not do a dark saison, given that most variations of the style I have seen were blonde or even a dirty yellow (with his penchant of thinking outside the box Blumenthal-style I almost suggested a bacon and egg rauchbier but sadly thought I would sound too frivolous). A dark saison I had not seen, but referring back to Oliver’s quote there is nowhere that it says that a saison cannot be dark (I bet Dany at Fantome has done one) and so Howe took the challenge and last week he sent me a couple of bottles. He has succeeded admirably. 

‘I really like the beer that has come out,’ he told me, ‘if I was marking it according to closeness to style I wouldn’t be able to rate it very highly as it is a big beer and not particularly dry but it really is lovely and quite unusual. As for strength, it has galloped up to 7.8% in the bottle.’

I tried one the other night and found myself loving it. It was the colour of an ancient oak sideboard some great aunt has seen fit to leave to you on her demise, even though you only met her twice. Juicy fruit gums and a sweet stewed potage of fruit dominate the nose. It’s a big mouthful and there is the flinty, chalky character of saison, joined by an oddball fruitiness that veers towards booze soaked currants; it has that historic edge of a saison, a peppery peripatetic edge that makes me think of Wallonia, yet look at the colour. On the other hand is there anything that says a saison has to be a certain colour? From where I stand saison a moveable feast; sure the Howe’s is a cleaned-up version, lacking the funk and junk of something like Saison d’Epeautre from Blaugies (pictured), but it’s still a delectable beer that I would love to see out in the wider world. I’ve one bottle left and fancy pouring it out alongside a massive pasty from the baker’s up the road. Now would be heaven.

This brewing thing is a right lark innit?

Last December I went down to Sharps to help brew (or rather watch it being brewed) Winter Berry. When Stuart Howe first asked me to come up with a receipt for a winter beer, I suggested at least 7% abv, but it was not to be (4.5% was its strength). However, the other day a couple of bottles of a 9.3% version arrived in the post. Hooray! Here’s what I thought: a dark ancient sideboard handed down the centuries sort of colour, the nose reminiscent of those juicy fruit chews we had as kids (black currant flavour perhaps?). Drinks deceptively easy, a voluptuous, rich and secretive body and the sort of beer that will  improve with age I reckon; at the moment it’s sweet shop fruit gums on the palate with a sugary depth but nothing too sweet, there’s a big bitter finish; there are berries in the background on both the palate and finish. For it’s strength it’s remarkably viscous and rich without being too sweet, and it’s incredibly well balanced. This brewing thing is a right lark innit?

Berry interesting

I brewed Winter Berry at Sharp’s a few days ago and a small mini keg of what Stuart Howe and I devised was sent to me the other day. He tells me to see it as a work in progress — the berries have not been added but here goes: on the nose an earthy version of cherry brandy, minus the sweetness. On the palate this earthy cherry brandy character continues, but it is also almost woody. It’s a paradox: sweet but not sweet; woody but not woody; berries appear (the Bramling Cross perhaps) and there is the dryness of grain on the finish; on the palate it also has blackberry without the sourness, a rusticity and a whisper of caramel in the background. The palate is bright and friendly — it’s not meant to be hoppy, with the hops meant to be something in the background, the bass player rather than the lead guitarist. I like it. A stronger version would be even more interesting.
When we tried the wort it was not as sweet as the usual wort you get — my teeth are canaries in the mine for sweetness. Next update will include what it tastes like with the berries added (they’re cosying up to the beer in the maturation tanks as I write).

Sparrow’s fart

Crack of dawn, sparrow’s fart, daylight start — none of these phrases applied on turning up at Sharp’s last week to spend a day brewing with head brewer Stuart Howe. 10am is eminently sensible, ‘unless you want to see the grain being milled,’ Howe had told me a couple of days before. Having seen this noisy process several times at various breweries before I decline, there are limits to beer geekism. The invitation to brew included a chance to develop a recipe for the brewery’s seasonal winter ale— I suggested 7% abv (we ended up with 4.5%, which is another story), hops that were there for spiciness and fruitiness rather than big blasts of resin and citrus (Fuggles, Bramling Cross, Bobek and Galena, which ironically enough gave off great big blowsy pineapple notes in the rub); alongside pale malt, crystal rye came aboard for spice and body, while some chocolate malt and Munich malt (slightly sweet said Stuart, saying that it added sour and raisiny notes) also went into the mash — all to be finished with a yeast that was called Old English Ale (somewhat cheekily I had suggested a saison one). As the name of the beer is Winter Berry, there will also be rosehips, hawthorns and sloe berries added during the maturation, gathered by the green folk at the Eden Project. I’ve brewed before, first at Moor about 10 years ago and more recently on the micro plant at St Austell. On both these occasions I spent the afternoon digging out the mash tun and so expected the same here (isn’t that why writers are asked to brew, so that their lily-white hands of soft living are firmly grasped around a malt shovel). I was wrong (thankfully) as we were working on the main plant and there are men and motors to do that job, which made the whole experience very pleasurable. I added some hops and pitched some yeast but that was the extent of my back-breaking labour.

With Doom Bar, Sharp’s has one of the biggest brands going, though it doesn’t feature on many beerwriters’ desert island lists (I’ll be honest and say I prefer Cornish Coastliner, but then I’m also unmoved by White Shield). None of this bothers Howe, ‘It’s a good beer,’ he asserts. In the last couple of years however he has flexed his brewing muscles with a series of specials that have brought his capabilities to the fore. At lunchtime, I tasted some of them. Honey spice Triple with Brett (9%) was sweet and sour, in possession of grapefruit notes and sharp and refreshing. If I didn’t know, I wouldn’t have guessed this as a British beer. Massive (10%) was four years old and rich and liqueur-like, chocolaty and smooth. Kazakhstan Grand Imperial Porter was at 11% a big blast of flavour with an alcoholic cola-like nose, while the palate was fiery, saddle leather, soot, chocolate and more cola — a battle-cry of flavour. It was magnificent and apparently was sold out by lunchtime at the recent St Austell beer festival. 4 followed, a barley wine that possibly was too light after the Porter, while Stuart saved the 13.4% XV for the finale — a Cornish riff on Belgian strong ale. The nose was pear drops, cloves, hop and bubblegum, while these flavours resonated in the mouth like a big bell after it has tolled in the confines of Notre Dame; the finish was dry, grainy and alcoholic. So what does this all mean? Along with the likes of John Keeling and Roger Ryman, who also produce best selling brands, Howe is not content with going through the mash tun motions — he is restless, exploratory and challenging. In the past I recall brewers of successful brands seemingly almost Robinson Crusoe-like in their avoidance of what was going on in the wider world of brewing — not so these guys and I look forward to trying my Winter Berry and thank Stuart most fervently that he didn’t want me at that sparrow’s fart.

Take a trip to Sharp’s

Take a trip to the brewery at Sharp’s, a febrile and fast-growing business comfortably at home in the village of Rock, a place that takes its place in the pages of tabloid shame as the place where the well-bred go to ill behave. Across the mouth of the River Camel from Padstow I and others go, a short ferry’s ride, shorter still when the tide is out. Vast expanse of golden sand stretches aside the ever widening waters; to the northwest where the open sea waits to embrace the Camel, waves break and foam over the Doom Bar — a place of wreck and toil; but also a name for the bar-friendly Doom Bar, Sharp’s signature beer (see it: amber in colour; taste it: dry biscuity chewiness embracing sweetish citrus marmalade on the palate, quick finish, easy to drink).
Read more on Sharps? Go to www.beeralewhatever.com/breweries.html for further enlightenment.