Brewery: Outstanding
Location: Bury, England
ABV: 7.4%
Version: Bottled

Outstanding are one of my very favourite local breweries – they produce the house brew for The Trackside in Bury and their Outstanding Stout is one of the best I’ve ever tasted on draught. This bottle of Pushing Out – their Belgian-esque strong pale ale – was the second-to-last of a batch that I was lucky enough to pick up late last year. I sent a bottle of Pushing Out down to Mark Dredge for #beerswap #1 last year and he described it in his write-up as “like pick n mix, fruity and sweet, but then beneath this it’s earthy and peppery, minty with the slightest hint of Orval”.

I drank one myself at the time and reckoned he’d pretty much hit the nail on the head. But this one had sat in the beer cupboard for another five months and the other week my curiosity overcame my patience and I decided I’d waited long enough to find out how it might have altered in the interim.

The answer: it seemed to have become even sweeter. The hop flavours had smoothed out and mellowed, but the sugars hadn’t settled down in the same way, resulting in a beer that was malty and quite syrupy, with a distinctly chewy mouth-feel. There was still a herbal tang in there to give it a bit of bitterness and stopped the sweetness raging out of control, but it was a hard-won fight. I didn’t have any trouble finishing it, but then I’ve always had quite a sweet tooth. Someone with a stronger hop-preference might have struggled.

I’ve got one more bottle of Pushing Out in the beer cupboard, which I’m going to keep for as long as I dare, just to see what it does next. And I know from e-chatting to Alex at Outstanding that they’ve been re-designing their bottle labels (which is obviously why I haven’t seen any of they up at Bury Met recently) so I look forward to seeing the new designs when they’re ready.