Tag: thornbridge

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beer reviews

(A version of) Kelham Island Pale Rider lives

The pump clip for Pale Rider with MADE IN SHEFFIELD.

Sheffield’s Kelham Island brewery is important. Last year, it looked as if it was going to disappear, until it was saved, and the Pale Rider is riding again.

For two weekends in a row, we’ve been able to find Pale Rider on cask at The Llandoger Trow in central Bristol. And drinking it has made us think about it.

The press release about the saving of the brewery was light on practical detail. A few months on, the story seems to be that it’s being brewed by Thornbridge, at Thornbridge, in Derbyshire.

The pump-clip doesn’t say that, though. In fact, it states very clearly MADE IN SHEFFIELD. There’s a little local consternation about this fact, if our social media replies are anything to go by.

But Thornbridge is a Sheffield brewery at heart, despite its location, and Kelham Island and Thornbridge were always tangled up with each other.

Digging through the notes of our interview with Thornbridge’s Simon Webster back in 2013, for Brew Britannia, we find this:

In August 2004, Kelham Island Pale Rider won the Champion Beer of Britain. We started brewing in October 2004 and, at first, we were helping Dave with the sudden demand for his beer. We were brewing once a week for Kelham Island, which was more often than we were brewing our own!

So this version of Pale Rider is perfectly authentic in its own way.

Here are some tasting notes on Pale Rider 2023: crisp, clean, classic 1990s citrus hop flavours; plus a certain round peachiness that comes with being 5.2% rather than 4 point something.

Everything we remember, in short, from drinking it frequently in and around Sheffield more than a decade ago, and on rare occasions since.

You can see how a beer like this won Champion Beer of Britain. You can see why Michael Jackson listed in his 500 Great Beers. You can certainly see how it played a part in spawning an entire sub-style – pale’n’hoppy, if you like, or the ‘juicy banger’.

But perhaps there’s a bit of Thornbridge there too, now? Maybe it’s even a bit better than when we last tasted it, in 2018, or at least more to our taste.

Clean and peachy. Those are two words we associate with Thornbridge beers.

But perhaps all we have to do is think of Thornbridge, or see the name in the small print, and those qualities pop into our heads.

If so, good for Thornbridge. That’s a good, powerful brand, that.

Now, let’s hope that either production moves back to Sheffield, maintaining the current high quality, or that ‘Brewed by Thornbridge in Derbyshire’ pops up on the pump-clip.

We don’t want a localised version of The Soul of Madrid, do we?

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beer reviews

Thornbridge Jaipur has still got it

A pint of Thornbridge of Jaipur

For a beer with a national profile Thornbridge Jaipur can be surprisingly hard to find on draught. That’s a shame because it’s still wonderful.

We came across it at The Old Fish Market in Bristol last night, a Fuller’s pub which often has one or two guest beers from larger independents.

It’s a funny pub, the OFM. On the one hand, it’s the closest in feel we’ve got to something you’d find in the City of London or Westminster. That is, a bit soulless, and a bit shiny. It also has London-style pricing – five a pint territory.

On the other hand, being fond of Fuller’s ale, it’s great to be able to get a pint of ESB whenever we want one. It’s also in reliably good condition and nicely presented.

Accordingly, Jaipur was about as good as we’ve ever had it. Pale gold with a firm white head, it had all the contained vibrancy you want in a great pint of cask ale. That is, steady on the surface, but electric on the palate.

The particular noughties C-hop character feels almost nostalgic now. Traditional. It’s hard to believe how startling it seemed more than a decade ago. But, still, peach and orange and pine – what’s not to like?

We couldn’t even object to paying £5.15 a pint, especially as, at 5.9%, it’s not a beer that encourages a long session.

There should be a pub in every town that always has it on.

Or a way to find out where it’s on, when it’s on.

Or maybe we should move to Sheffield and be done.

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beer reviews

Safe as houses: good old Thornbridge

Jaipur and cheese.

There’s nothing like a prolonged, enforced stay at home to make you reflect on which beers you really like.

In the past month and a half, since we stopped going to the pub, we’ve been buying beer from various places and have certainly found our favourites.

Even before the crisis kicked in, as we researched the offerings from various supermarkets, we’d reached the conclusion that canned Thornbridge Jaipur is a hard beer to beat for drinking at home.

Having polished off 36 tins between us, bought direct from Thornbridge’s online store at about £1.80 each, that opinion hasn’t changed.

Jaipur has been a star for 15 years now despite a period when “it wasn’t what it used to be” – anecdotally, the result of ill-advised recipe tinkering a decade or so ago; the misstep was swiftly fixed but that kind of dent in a beer’s reputation tends to linger.

For our part, we come across it on cask three or four times a year and haven’t been able to fault it, except to say that the combination of 5.9% ABV and moreishness isn’t helpful as middle age sets in.

For a while, though, we’d have told you that the kegged and packaged versions weren’t a patch on the cask. Good, still, but less complex and less… well, alive.

The cans, though, are extraordinarily good.

In fact, a glass filled to the brim with the contents of most of two cans is about as close to a pint of cask ale as we’ve been able to get at home.

The softness, the depth, the green-fingered freshness, the mysterious electricity – they’re all there.

Sure, we’d rather be in the Drapers Arms, but Jaipur and chunks of cheese on Sunday night is holding the madness at bay.

The other thing we crave is, of course, lager, and the same brewery’s Lukas Helles (4.2% ABV, c.£1.70 per 330ml) has also impressed us. It was always good but now seems to have ascended to the next tier – convincingly German-tasting, sparking-fresh, as wholesome as a hike in the Fränkische Schweiz.

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Beer styles

Gold or Pale or Mancunian?

Thornbridge Made North.

We’ve been thinking again about how different three pints of ostensible similar yellow beer at c.3.7% can taste depending on which sub-species they belong to.

First, there’s what we think of as ‘honeyish’ golden ales. Exmoor Gold, reckoned by some to be the first golden ale of the modern era, is one example; Timothy Taylor Golden Best might be considered another. Ah-hah, but, you say, that’s really a light mild. And you’re on to something there, because mild is a much better word than bland, which we used to dismiss this group a few years ago. These beers might look light but they have a fair bit of body and some residual sweetness, ending up almost syrupy. ‘Gold’ really works, suggesting as it does richness and a certain weight.

Then there’s the pale-n-hoppies. These descend from Hopback Summer Lightning, of which more in a moment, and are defined by their extreme pallor and high perfume. They’re usually light-bodied, too — spritzy. Oakham Citra is a good example, or Hawkshead Windermere. A decade ago we used to find this kind of beer hard work, all quinine and air freshener, but tastes change.

Finally, there’s an extinct sub-style which has been revived in recent years: the austerely bitter Manchester pale ale which has Boddington’s as its sole ancestor. Ray came back from his trip to Sheffield last weekend all abuzz about Thornbridge Made North; Northern Monk’s (defunct?) True North was another excellent example. English or other restrained European hops, used primarily to create bitterness, are a defining feature, as is a certain dryness, and evident wholemeal maltiness.

So where does Summer Lightning sit? We reckon these days it’s got more in common with the Manchester sub-style (German hops, not hugely aromatic, but by no means honeyish) than the pale-n-hoppy revolution it inspired, via Rooster’s Yankee. Young’s Bitter AKA Ordinary, depending on which month you catch it, might almost belong in that group too. Certainly when those northern lads who founded CAMRA ended up in London, it was Young’s to which they turned in the absence of their beloved Boddies.

The problem is for the consumer is that these beers all look more or less alike, and as we know people less obsessed with beer than us lot often buy based on some combination of colour and ABV. If you like Golden Best and end up with Oakham Citra  because it’s the right strength and shade, or vice versa, you might feel disappointed. And without knowing the context it would be easy to taste one of the Manchester/North ales and think, huh, this pale-n-hoppy from a noted producer of aromatic beers is a bit dull.

Perhaps what we’re hoping for is some sort of convention in naming and labelling. It’s already half there, to be fair: honeyish beers are often called Something Gold or Golden Something, and Boddington’s clones seem invariably to have ‘Manchester’ or ‘North’ in their names. And that middle lot… They always specify which hops are used on the pump-clip, don’t they?

If a lesson in hops, malt and yeast is Module One in learning about beer, then perhaps tasting these three sub-styles could be one branch to follow for Module Two.

Categories
Beer styles

IPA, IPA, or Would You Prefer an IPA?

Illustration: five IPA bottles.

Derbyshire brewery Thornbridge seems to have gone on an India pale ale (IPA) brewing spree of late. We asked head brewer Rob Lovatt… Why?

Thornbridge has a strong claim to being the original British craft brewery (def. 2) that begat BrewDog, and thus The Kernel, and all the others. Its flagship beer is Jaipur, one of the earliest British takes on the highly-aromatic American approach to IPA that has dominated the last decade, and Halcyon, its 7.4% imperial IPA, has also become something of a classic. Surely that’s enough top-rated IPAs for one brewery, right?

Well, apparently not, because last night we enjoyed Huck, their new (to us) double IPA, and in the last year they’ve also produced Bear State (West Coast IPA), AM:PM (session IPA), Wild Raven (a black IPA that was among the first to appear in the UK), and Valravn, an Imperial Black IPA. Some of those are clearly quite distinctively different but there are at four beers fighting for more or less the same turf — light in colour, between 5.9-7.4% ABV, and aiming to deliver big hop aroma.

Thornbridge isn’t alone in this — BrewDog seem to be turning out endless new IPAs, for example, each of which leaves us wondering what was wrong with the last one.

So, we asked Rob to help us understand the motivations. Here’s what he had to say stitched together from several emails and slightly tweaked for style and clarity.

B&B: Jaipur has a strong claim to being the original ‘new wave’ British IPA and Halcyon isn’t far behind in terms of reputation, so why has Thornbridge felt the need to produce so many other IPAs in the last year or two?

There are various reasons. First, IPA sells! As much as I love Germanic styles, nothing sells better than an IPA. It’s somewhat depressing as there are so many beautiful beer styles out there other than IPA, but that’s what the customer seems to demand.

Secondly, we are at a size where we can secure the best quality hops in large volumes and the hops we’ve secured this year are the best I’ve used to date, so myself and the team are keen to explore different hop combinations. there is a lot of skill to using hops well and I think Huck is a great example of hop blend which creates a real flavour hook.

And then there’s the fact that the craft market has changed: customers are always demanding something new. Here’s a good piece I read on the subject recently. It is challenging as we always want to brew the best beer for our customers [rather than constantly experimenting] but once we get a really winner like Huck it will stay part of the range.

You mentioned that Jaipur is a classic beer. One thing we haven’t done here is dumb down our most successful beers in order to appeal to a broader audience. It’s still at 5.9% and around 60 European Bitterness Units. I don’t think every brewery can say that.

B&B: But can you imagine a situation where either Jaipur or Halcyon get retired? Do they still sell as well as they used to?

They are both big sellers and they’re still showing growth in sales year-on-year. Of course there’s always the risk a new IPA will steal sales from an existing one but offering a broader range results in much better overall sales.

B&B: How do the new IPAs you’re brewing map onto sub-categories of the style? What specific kind of IPA is Huck, for example? Was there a particular beer from another brewery you were inspired by? Or is it just what it is?

In terms of colour, with Huck, I didn’t want to go blonde as we already have Bear State and Halcyon which are very pale.

Sierra Nevada Torpedo is a beer I really enjoyed and I suppose you could say it was loosely based on that. The hop blend is completely independent of any beer I’ve ever drunk, though — I just had a feel for what would work.

The ABV of 7.4% obviously helps in terms of duty but I do also believe the most drinkable Double IPAs are in the 7-8% range. Once we start getting towards 9% the drinkability is compromised and it’s difficult to brew them so they’re not too chewy in the mouth.

* * *

That clears it up a bit for us but also makes us realise how much we rely on broad style distinctions when it comes to understanding a brewery’s range — this is their IPA, this is their porter, and so on. The problem is that the sub-categories, such as West Coast IPA, don’t instantly convey anything to us. So how do we choose? There are worse problems to have than trying lots of IPAs until you find the one you like but there is a communication challenge here.

We enjoyed Huck, by the way, which we bought from Beer Ritz at £3.18 for 330ml. It’s very bitter, rather dry, without the caramel stickiness that some IPAs have at this strength, though we didn’t get much fruitiness from it. We’d probably choose it over Halcyon just as, these days, we tend to choose BrewDog’s cleaner, lighter-bodied Jackhammer over the jar of jam that is Hardcore IPA.

Disclosure: we’ve had various dealings with Thornbridge over the years but no gifts/samples/freebies since 2014.