Brewery: 3Rivers
Origin: Stockport, England
ABV: 4.2%
Version: 500ml bottle
Source: Tesco

The two major chain supermarkets in our neck of the woods used to be pretty similar in terms of their range of beers. Then the local Tesco pretty much trashed their real ale section in favour of expanding its range of fizzy lagers. At roughly the same time, the local Sainsburys underwent a refit in which its real ale section roughly quadrupled in size. Guess where I do the weekly shop these days…

Having said that, though, I still have to remember to check the depleted and shell-shocked shelves in the former megamart from time to time, because very occasionally they’ll surprise me. Which is what happened a couple of weekends ago, when I found a single, lonely bottle of a new (to me) beer produced by local brewery: 3Rivers (of Stockport).

I can’t remember whether their Manchester IPA is bottle-conditioned or not – because I’ve recycled the bottle already and the 3Rivers website is in an interim rebuild phase at the moment, so I can’t double-check… oh darn, sounds like I’m going to have to sample it again – but I did make notes.

And I do distinctly remember that the overwhelming characteristic of this one was dark chocolate, both in the bottle-aroma and the flavour. I also noted that the beer was a smooth drinker with a pleasant bitterness and lingering coffee flavours. All of which sounds quite favourable to me and definitely worth a second outing.

Checking on ratebeer.com it seems that most of the reviews aren’t hugely favourable, but from what I gather 3Rivers is still a young brewery, so they have plenty of room to improve and I was impressed enough to want to keep an eye out for a draught version to sample. Maybe a trip down to Stockport might be in order, one of these weekends.