Source: Courtesy of MyBreweryTap.com

The continuing adventures of one man’s journey through a case of free beer.

Quantock Sunraker
The Quantock Brewery is based in Somerset, England and has only been operating since December 2007, but has already picked up an award for this, the 4.2% Sunraker. It’s a light golden colour with a sweet fruity aroma, like fruit salad chews, and a bit of pear in the background. There’s more of that fruit in the taste, with citrusy notes of lemon, grapefruit, orange and lime all vying for attention. The bitterness edges a bit too close to the sour end of the scale at times, and the dryish finish stops the beer being as fully satisfying as I think a summer ale should be, but the interesting hoppy flavour certainly makes it worth sampling.

Empire Victory Ale
The Empire Brewery in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, (not to be confused with the Empire Brewing Company of New York), is the only one to have two offerings in the case. According to the sheet in the box one of them was meant to be Golden Warrior, but it must have sold out as instead I got Victory Ale. This must be a new release as there’s no mention of it on any of the sources I looked at, and that includes the MyBreweryTap site. It’s 4.2%, a cloudy amber/brown colour and with quite an odd aroma of peanuts, brown vinegar and tar. The taste has a nutty maltiness, but a strange, and very unpleasant, bitterness ruins everything. Maybe it’s a bad bottle, maybe it’s a failed experiment – either way, I can find nothing to recommend this, one of the worst beers I’ve ever had.

Empire Strikes Back
The second offering from the Empire gang is a much better affair. A 4.0% pale gold ale, Strikes Back has a quite light citrusy aroma of grapefruit and lime. The flavour is also light and hoppy, with more of that citrusy grapefruit and lime, and a touch of orange, but it quickly falls apart with a short –lived and slightly dry finish. The second half of the bottle shows a marked improvement, and it’s certainly a pleasant and refreshing beer, just not a must-try one.