This is a strong ruby beer brewed to celebrate forty years, next year, of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide.
Whatever my feelings about CAMRA these days, or my thoughts on calling their book the Good Beer Guide when it misses out a whole host of brilliant English brewers because of how they make their product, Chiltern Brewery have come up with a very good drink with which to celebrate.
It’s big and bold and brusque and packed with “traditional” ale flavours, all with the volume up full.
The smell is rum, red fruits and liquorice, warming and inviting, and from the first mouthful you know you’re onto something good.
The heart of this beer is carved from an enormous digestive biscuit and it’s coated in a fine layer of dark chocolate and swimming, almost drowning, in rum and brandy soaked plums, rich and red but crumbling away to allow the raisins and spice to say hello.
No sooner have you seen them than you’re presented with liquorice and hazel leaves doused in orange juice and served with bramble jam.
This is a beer to chew your way through, a satisfying beer, a proud to be big and meaty beer, and it’s my first taste of this brewery.
I want to try some more.