August 4th: Spoons Festival ale exclusive tasting session.

This Wednesday our friends the Leeds Weatherspoons management team (like I say, a great bunch a lads) came over for a little visit to try our Spoons Festival ale which I had lovingly racked into a pin and conditioned for a few days for them. My job was to prepare and hand out samples before talking through my take on the beer, and what ingredients were used, and so forth. Although slightly nervous I found the free half hour of sampling and talking about beer refreshing, and strategically I had got into work early so my morning duties were out the way before the party was underway. And as it goes our management friends enjoyed the beer and found it a worthy offering. So did I, and as a bonus I got a free pork pie out of it. The beer itself went down well, but I only have a few minor criticisms.

First to mention is that although I can envision many people liking this beer, I can also see a lot of hop heads that love US style IPA's finding it mediocre. Conversely this means this unchallenging character could attract those intrigued by the style but not ready to take on the more aggressively hopped offerings yet. It doesn't drink like a 5.8% beer and the aroma isn't as upfront as I wanted. However what I do like about this beer is it's composure. It seems to open with pithy orange, tangerine like Centennial hop derived notes before juicy malt balances in the finish of fading hop resins. The Daleside house character (never dry)seems to hold everything just about in balance. For those intrigued, I advise to head over to the Spoons Festival in Leeds, August 21-29th and try it out.