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Last night at Sheffield Hatters Inn
As well as working through a minikeg of Black Sheep Bitter, I'm dipping into the bottles and cans I picked up at the Dram Shop last week. Last night I went for the Abbeydale Lost Souls 10.5% imperial Russian honeycake stout. I usually swerve beers that identify honey in the ingredients (or the illustrations on the can or pump clip, for that matter), as they can be a bit on the sweet side for my taste. However, there should be a bit of sweetness about an imperial stout, so I went for it.
The beer poured with a big fluffy head which didn't last long, leaving just a black, treacly liquid. Unlike the Thornbridge imperial stout last week, this one is not over-carbonated and it would have been very easy to drink if I hadn't been aware that this 440ml can packs 4.6 units of alcohol. This is a beer that promises a lot on the can, and I've read a couple of enthusiastic reviews, but it came over as fairly understated to my senses of taste and smell - and I'm pretty sure they're working ok, as the Black Sheep was hitting the usual notes for me prior to tackling this can from Abbeydale. This is the blurb on the can:
"A deep and luxurious beer, complex and carefully crafted. Chocolate and biscuit malts, oats and rich molasses and sticky sumptuous honey, all layered up just like the Medovik cake which inspires it, with just enough hop character to provide a balanced bitterness in the backbone."
As always, most of this is tosh, and apparently Medovik is supposed to have either soured cream or condensed milk, but in fact only the honey prevents this beer being vegan. The honey and the hops were subtle to the point of being almost entirely absent, so I was left with a nice malty imperial stout. (On the can it says this beer will age well, which implies that there's some yeast lingering there.) Not a bad drink at all, but to me it was rather one dimensional. Not bad value at £5.40 for about the same alcohol as two mid-range bitters, but as it seems to have sold out I won't be going back for more! Abbeydale do just one brew of this each year in August, varying the recipe a little each time, so when it's gone, it's gone. Maybe they should brew it a little earlier in the year, to give those flavours a chance to develop some more.
Tonight at Sheffield Hatters Inn
Another 440ml can from the Dram Shop expedition of last week: Abbeydale Funk Dungeon Hop Bretta Tradition 4.9%, a bretted pale ale with a single hop, Hallertau Tradition. This is a product of Abbeydale's "burgeoning Funk Dungeon project". The nature of Abbeydale's Funk Dungeon is that all the beers are experimental - I had one during the first lockdown which was called Heavy Nettle.
This one is an unusual brew with quite a strong herbal flavour and a bitter finish. It is pale yellow and slightly hazy, whether because of the way the hops are used or the inclusion of wheat in the malt bill is not clear to me. It is moderately carbonated and pours with a wispy, soon to disappear head. I quite enjoyed this as a one-off experience, but in the unlikely event of the same beer being produced I'm not sure I would buy it again.
Last night at Sheffield Hatter's Inn
Here's another one that John wouldn't have picked off the shelf. To be honest I wouldn't normally pick this one off the shelf either, and I can't quite remember why I did. The beers in Abbeydale's Doctor Morton's series are uniformly very pale and hoppy, with pump clips (in that time before this) or cans decorated to look like Edwardian pseudo-medicinal tinctures. This one is called Suspiciously Seasonal Rude Elf 4.1%, made with Chinook and Columbus hops.
It pours with a big frothy head - at least, it did the way I poured it. It is lightly carbonated and easy to drink, with the hops not too in-your-face. Despite being slightly prejudiced against this beer - again, why did I buy it? - I found myself enjoying it. Not in a "this is good, where can I get another" kind of way; it was more like, in my mind, comparing this experience to the times I've tried a Doctor Morton's in the pub and wondering why it's ok now when it wasn't then. I think the answer is that this sort of beer, both looking and tasting a lot like lemonade, is better with a bit of gas in it. The smooth mouth feel of a cask beer just doesn't suit this very pale, lagerish beer that doesn't taste very much like beer at all. Even getting towards the bottom of the glass, with the beer approaching quite a high room temperature, there was still a bit of fizz in the drink, and it was still quite pleasant.