What's old is new, I guess, so perhaps I shouldn't be so surprised to see something of a revival in traditional beer styles, but I can't deny that I am. Seriously, given the past few years – maybe even a full decade – have seen craft beer for the most part pushing ever further away from beer's roots, did anyone seriously think we'd be seeing English bitters, brown ales and milds from Aussie brewers on a weekly basis again? However, as someone who grew up drinking real ales, I'm not going to complain.
In Boatrocker's case, they're not so much doubling as tripling down, with a sort of beer-traffic-lights trio of releases. And, while they're keen to highlight Yorkshire Pale's use of Fuggles, East Kent Goldings and Styrian Goldings hops and the malt character of the other two, there's plenty of common ground to be found in all three.
It's like a play in three acts, in fact, with Yorkshire Pale opening proceedings with floral, earthy, woody hops bumping up against soft, almost creamy toffee / nutty / cake batter malts within the cloudy, rust-coloured liquid. Add in a broad, earthy bitterness and, really, it's only the carbonation that brings it into the new world.
I detect a hint of old world hops on the nose of Northern Red too, a beer that's been performing well on tap since mid-autumn. More amber and ruddy in colour than out-and-out red, it's a citrus-flecked toffee meets bread crusts, malt-driven beer for enjoying at your local boozer.
And from there, it's just a hop and a skip to Old Brown, in which an English ale yeast adds a little underlying dried fruitiness, but again it's more about the malts, in this case leaning into choc biscuit and cacao territory.
Taken as a whole, the triple release is almost enough to make you forget about smoothie sours, if only for a little while.
James Smith
Published June 13, 2024 2024-06-13 00:00:00
