Brewery: Greene King
Location: Bury St Edmunds
Style: Strong Ale
ABV: 6.5%
Version: Bottled
Source: Sainsbury’s

Red berries and black cherries explode out of the bottle as the cap pops off and carry on through to the flavour. A big, malty, nutty sweetness dominates, with just a faintly hoppy after-taste waving to get your attention, but generally it’s jam and marzipan and fruitcake and more jam all the way.

If only I had a few oatcakes and a nutty, crumbly cheshire cheese in the fridge, this would be a slow-sipping marriage made in… well, Sainsbury’s, as it happens. The stuff was in a £3 for 4 deal, so I thought I’d give it a go. Thing is, there aren’t many Greene King beers that I’ve been impressed with to-date – they’ve generally been a bit too factory-bland to be remarkable – but Old Speckled Hen‘s bigger sibling makes the grade.

Not bad. Not bad at all.

Xmas / New Year 2008. A week and a half off work and a chance to hit the beer cupboard and see what falls out. I kicked off at lunchtime on Xmas Day with a bottle of Wychwood Plum Duff (5.0% abv), a seasonal number from the brewers of one of my all-time favourites, Hobgoblin. Quite spicy, with a sweet & sour character, I thought Plum Duff had perhaps just a little too much fruitiness for my palate, but the mellow, warming after-taste made it drinkable. Not a bad start…

Xmas dinner was accompanied by a drop of Innis & Gunn Triple Matured which Ed sampled back in November and I pretty much concur with his conclusions on this one: toffee, vanilla, a little oak, generally smooth with a pleasantly bitter-sweet finish. I also cracked open a bottle of Meantime Winter Time, which I wrote up during my Meantime series last year. Unfortunately, I was too busy tucking into my grub to pay much more attention than last time, so I’ll have to come back to that one for a third attempt at some point.

Next up was a bottle of Greene King Abbott Reserve (6.5% abv) which turned out to be incredibly tasty; much more so that I’d expected, I have to admit. Another smooth, strong beer with a pleasant citrusy tang (I detected orange zest and nutmeg without any help from accompanying a mince pie). Quite sweet but with a bitter under-current that stopped it tasting too sugary. Definitely one I’d go back to again.

Boxing Day was spent driving to and from family in Leeds, so I only had time for a couple of beers when I got back home: first up was William Worthington’s White Shield (5.6% abv, bottle conditioned). At 5.6% it’s not as strong as you might expect an IPA to be and it poured with more fizz and a lot more sweetness than I thought you should expect from the style. Not horrible, per se, but far from the best I tasted last year.

After that one I went for a bottle of Williams Bros Midnight Sun (5.6% abv). This porter seemed to be a fairly classic example of the style: a slightly sour whiff in the bottle, a very dark ebony with a tan head, a spicy, faintly smoky, sweet coffee flavour that was smooth and very drinkable. Another good contender for a regular slot in the beer cupboard.

The weekend brought another driving stint up and down the country to the in-laws’ and by the time Jo and I had spent at least half of the (unusually long at four hours) journey to Bridgnorth stuck in a standing-wave tailback on the M6, I definitely needed a couple of beers and I was hoping that another strong ale from Greene King – this time Old Crafty Hen (6.5% abv) – would hit the spot quite nicely. It turned out to have a hoppy nose, citrusy flavours and a surprisingly deft touch for such a strong beer. Alas, that deft touch meant that whilst it was decidedly drinkable, it lacked much in the way of character and was rather un-memorable as a result. A symptom of larger brewery mass-production, perhaps? Or maybe it’s just one of those beers that’s much better on draught. I preferred the Abbot Reserve, definitely.

I opened a bottle of Hall and Woodhouse Badger Pickled Partridge (4.5% abv) next and alas it was another fairly indistinct one, albeit quite pleasant and quite drinkable again. Very malty, with light spice notes and a lingering bitterness to the after-taste. Not much else to write home about. I’ve had a much better Badger beer recently, which I’ll be writing up before too long (all being well).

The next day produced much better results. Jo’s folks live not too far at all from The Bull’s Head at Chelmarsh, which – following a change of management a couple of years back – is a great food and ale pub, well worth checking out if you’re down that way. I nipped down after Sunday lunch for a pint with brother-in-law Richard and opted for a drop of Dorothy Goodebody’s Christmas Stocking (4.2% abv? -ish?), a seasonal ale from Wye Valley. Extremely nice it was, too, with distinct cinnamon and nutmeg spices; very easy-drinking indeed and neither too heavy nor too sweet. More enjoyable than the Plum Duff, certainly.

I was back down the pub in the evening, with Jo and her folks, for an Irish folk session laid on by landlord John and some of his mates. This time I decided to try another draught Wye Valley brew, their Hereford Pale Ale. At 4% abv it was a light, highly quaffable, golden pale ale that made for a great session beer – I stayed with that one for the next couple of pints as well – with a fresh, faintly citrus flavour and a very dry, hoppy finish. Good stuff!

But the scooper in me was sorely tempted by a third draught ale from Wye Valley: Dorothy Goodbody’s Golden Ale and so I switched to that one for my final pint of the evening. I’m glad to say that I wasn’t at all disappointed. Very similar to the HPA, but with less strident hop notes and a maltier finish. Altogether a very pleasant end to a very good evening (the music was more than half-decent, too). If only they’d had Dorothy Goodbody’s Wholesome Stout on as well… but that’s one to keep an eye out for another time.

I finished the seasonal Bridgnorth run with a visit to the town’s specialist wine merchant, Tanner’s, and picked up a selection of local brews that are now awaiting their turn in the beer cupboard. More on those in due course.

And there you have it. Not the entire Holiday beer session, I have to admit. There are a few others that I will be writing up separately, but that’s the bulk of my last ten days’ beer sampling. Mostly good, one or two indifferent, none bad enough to pour down the sink. Not a bad result at all.

Just when I thought I’d managed to make a few in-roads into the beer cupboard, I nipped into my local Sainsbury’s for the weekly shop to find that, whilst they’ve called time on their summer real ale promotion (incidentally, they were selling off remaining overstocks for £1 a bottle – although they still didn’t have any Copper Dragon 1816…), they’ve also gone and re-vamped their regular range, adding at least ten new beers to the shelves.

I grabbed nine of them (my missus, Jo, was heard to mutter “kid in a sweet shop”, but I mollified her by chucking a few bottles of Guinness original into the trolley as well), leaving a couple of them behind on the grounds that I suspected I’d already tried them.

The new (to me) discoveries were (in no particular order):

• Meantime London Stout
• Wood’s Shropshire Lad Spring Bitter
• Abbot Reserve
• Morland Old Crafty Hen
• Thwaite’s Liberation
• Worthington’s White Shield
• Purity Pure Ubu
• Butcombe Gold
• Shepherd Neame Late Red

And the beer cupboard now (once again) looks a something like this:

The worrying thing is, a new branch of Morrison’s opened up in the area last week, which means there’s going to be a whole new selection for me to browse. I think I’m going to need a bigger cupboard. Or I should just start drinking (and typing) faster…