After enjoying Allendale’s APA so much I’ve been really looking forward to this.
And I’ll tell you something, I’m not disappointed.
This is a lovely bitter packed full of flavour.
The beer pours a warming conker brown but with little to no head.
Never fear, there’s just enough fizz to give your tongue a satisfying tingle.
This beer tastes to me of autumn walks through the dense woodlands around the Wrekin where I spent most of my later childhood.
Climbing trees, making dens, having adventures.
I get a big bunch of flavours that take me right back there – Chestnuts, hazelnuts, crunchy leaf litter and a big dollop of sticky toffee.
In fact a lot of those flavours remind me of some of the US craft beers (Sierra Nevada’s Tumbler springs to mind).
You also get a big blast of hoppy floweriness, but this too is autumnal.
A crisp clear first-thing-in-the-morning hedgerow flavour to begin with, and a sloe tartness right at the end that is simply delightful.
Yum.