I had a quick couple of halves in the Baum in Rochdale the other night. A pretty decent, nay rather good, half of Brighton Rocks from Edge Brewery, a brewery I'd never heard of, but despite this appearing to be a bog standard brown bitter, it was lifted by careful hopping to be above just pleasant.My second half was a different beast. Hop Bomb it was called and this hazy little number immediately gave off huge wafts of piney, resiny hops and was exactly the same to drink. Absent was that cloying crystal malt, so beloved of Yankee brewers and instead a good biscuity malt base was interwoven with hops piney, hops bitter, hops resinous and hops perfumed. This was a cornucopia of hoppy goodness. It did in fact exactly what it said on the tin. It was a hop bomb. A perfect example of Gazza Prescott's Mid Atlantic Pale Ale and strangely, from his neck of the woods it seems.
Annoyingly though, these two different beers suffered from the same "unrelated to brewing" fault. I couldn't tell anything about where they came from from the pump clip. Neither here nor there you might think, but why hide your light under a bushel? I want to know more about these breweries and importantly tell people. T'internet doesn't help much either. I can find nothing definitive on Edge but with the help of the kindly barmaid at the Baum, who went to the cellar to look at the cask, I find Hop Bomb is from Windsor Castle Brewery.* The web tells me that this is owned by Sadler's Brewery, but Sadlers does not list anything under the Windsor Castle name and Quaffale and Beermad send you round in a frustrating circle. Doh.So a plea brewers. You are in business. Don't make it hard for us to find out anything about you.
*I now understand this to be a brewpub in Stourbridge. Possibly.
Edge is what used to be White's.
ReplyDeleteWindsor Castle is the Sadler's brewery tap hence the rebadged name (Hop Bomb is a regular Sadler's beer).
Thanks Simon. The hop bomb was really good. I may of course just have been lucky!
ReplyDeleteI have noticed that a lot of brewers' websites don't give adequate information on their products. For example, a few weeks ago, I wrote a post about the new Higsons bitter, which is brewed by Liverpool Organic Brewery. I went on their website for information, but there was no mention of it at all. I quite often find this when I try to learn more about a beer from brewers' websites.
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't take long to update a website (if it does, you need a different website), and presumably brewers want to sell their products. Perhaps for some of them it's no more than a hobby, because I can't think of any other explanation why so many ignore such a cheap and effective way of marketing.
white,s are also selling beer under the Franklins name. cheers
ReplyDeleteThe Windsor Castle is in Lye. I have always found their beers a bit dull (apart from the superb Mud City Stout) so this sounds like a major step in the right direction
ReplyDeleteTrans-Atlantic Pale Ale, you mean. How strong was it?
ReplyDelete