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Strawberries, cherries and an angels kiss in spring

When Ed from the Old Dairy Brewery noticed us getting excited about the return of Courage Imperial Stout, he dropped us a line asking if we’d be interested in trying his interpretation of the same recipe. The answer, of course, was yes.

That’s how we ended up with a bottle of Tsar Top and (as a bonus) two bottles of AK 1911, brewed to a recipe unearthed by Ron Pattinson.

The AK is an interesting beer in its own right: amber-brown, fairly bitter, and just a touch tart, with something of the rich tea biscuit snap about it. Along with Fuller’s Bengal Lancer, it is one of the most convincing impressions of a cask ale we’ve yet had from a bottle.

But, the main event? Wow. We’re devotees of Harvey’s Imperial Stout and once tried a well aged 1983 bottle of Courage. This beer stands up well to both of them. We wouldn’t hesitate to describe it as flawless — that is to say there were no ifs and buts; no hints of Marmite or margarine; or of anything to make us wrinkle our noses and say: “Good effort, but…”

How did it taste? Well, let’s have a droring first. There are a stock selection of words trotted out for strong stouts and here’s where Tsar Top sits (in our view) in relation to some of those, alongside other similar

A chart comparing flavour profiles of Imperial Stouts.

Note that it’s not as big a beer as the ’83 Courage or Harvey’s IS, but is well balanced, and makes Sam Smith’s interpretation look a bit puny. It is a beer full of berries and cherries, rather than coffee or chocolate. The alcohol (all 10% of it) seems to hover over the surface, tickling the nose without burning. The aftertaste lasts forever, as does the sturdy milky-coffee coloured head. Brettanomyces is used in a secondary fermentation, we are told, though there are no obvious (offputting) ‘barnyard’ aromas as yet. Perhaps another year’s ageing would bring those out?

In short, when Ed brews another batch, we’ll be ordering a case.

Register of members’ interests: we got four packages of free beer last year. One lot was terrible and we wrote directly to the brewery with our opinions. Two other batches were nice enough (some Brewdog Punk IPA and some St Stefanus) but didn’t provoke any thoughts that would warrant a blog post. This is the first one that’s moved us to enthuse.

3 replies on “Strawberries, cherries and an angels kiss in spring”

Yes, and yesterday we quoted the same book that Tandleman based his entire post on. I wonder what tomorrow’s coincidence will be?

Excellent, spider diagram and everything. Many thanks for your kind words.

Shame we’re out of both AK 1911 and Tsar Top at the moment! I’ll keep you posted when we’ve made some more.

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