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28-08-2014, 19:12
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http://goodfoodgoodbeer.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/photo-2.jpg?w=427&h=320 (https://goodfoodgoodbeer.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/photo-2.jpg)Atom (http://www.atombeers.com/) have gone from strength to strength since they began brewing*last year. Their sci-fi pumpclips are a regular sight on the bartops of Yorkshire and – like a 50’s invasion movie - seem to be multiplying. Couple that with striking looks, *a small-but-perfectly-formed bottle range for*the home drinker to get stuck in to, collaborations with Northern Monk (http://www.northernmonkbrewco.com/), and*The Blending Room (http://www.theblendingroom.co.uk/about/)*under their belt already, and you’ve got a sure-fire winner with plenty of craft credentials, right?
Right. But there’s something about Atom that stood out for me when I first tried their beer – the simply named Blonde – at Tapped Leeds a while ago. The golden beer tasted, well, malty. Sure, there was enough bitterness at the back end of the sip to lift the sweetness a little and refresh the palate, but there was distinct, clearly defined, firm maltiness that actually set the beer apart from the other session-strength beers I tasted that night. The words “Atom, malty” stayed with me since. I don’t care that ‘malty’ may not be a useful word in beer; it worked for me that night.
Allan Rice and Sarah Thackray’s beers have interested me since; not simply because they’ve all been excellently brewed and tasted really good, but because they’ve been different. Atom aren’t anti-hop (how could you be these days?) but it’s almost refreshing to see a brewery pushing other flavours of beer, other aspects of flavour, other than boasting about how many hops they’ve included in the recipe.*Chris Hall wrote about a malt-driven ‘hard reset’ a little while ago (http://thebeerdiary.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/four-nations-of-beer-epilogue/); this is mine, I guess.
Dark Alchemy (4.9%) – a graceful, mysterious porter – doesn’t even have any hops in it; instead, coriander and cardamom supply the interest, bobbing along on top of roasted grain and giving the beer a spiky, herbal, complex*finish. Adding spices to beer isn’t new, but the beer*works; it gets you thinking , talking and tasting, challenging your palate to find the flavour.*
I sampled Bunsen (5%)*in an almost perfect setting. The wind had risen, the sun had been banished behind cloud and the snap of Autumn was firmly in the air.**Pouring a brilliant, *polished copper, this US-inspired brown ale came through on it’s promise of maple, nut and complex toasted malt…and chestnut. Yes, the label told me it had been sat on chestnuts prior to being bottled, and you could certainly taste it; chewy, sweet nut. Wonderful – and a shoo-in for the end of year best of list.
Chamomile (4.2%) promised a lot but didn’t really hit the mark for me; although it tasted perfectly good – that clean, creamy malt providing a backbone for a strangely herbal finish (root ginger? tannins?), the nose didn’t give me the chamomile I was hoping for, so it lost points for that. But still, beers like this provide great tasting workouts, swirl-worthy, sniff-worthy, long sippers.
No doubt you’ll see some of Atom’s beers on a bar near you if you’re northern; give ‘em a go. And Allan and Sarah – you keep doing what you’re doing, yeah?
… Incidentally, I picked these beers up from The Mill Kitchen (http://www.millkitchen.co.uk/) in Farsley, which opened a few weeks ago and is a lovely little place with an excellent menu and – extra points coming – a nifty little range of local beers from the likes of Atom, Ilkley, Rooster’s, Hop Studio, Bad Seed and more. Check them out.*

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