SIX OF THE BEST

1.CROUCH VALE BREWERS GOLD (4%)
A fascinating beer that is an ale with close lager connotations as it’s brewed using lager malt and a German hop variety, Brewers Gold. It comes from the portfolio of one of Britain’s longest-running micros formed more than 20 years ago. Brewers Gold won the Best Bitter class in the Champion Beer of Britain competition in 2003 and, as noted in the text, then went on to win the overall championship twice in ‘05 and ‘06. The beer has a pungent aroma of cornflour and vanilla from the lager malt balanced by a massive punch of citrus fruit and hop resins. Grapefruit bursts on to the tongue, balanced by juicy malt and hop bitterness. The finish is intensely bitter with a further citrus fruit note and rich, sappy malt

2.DUVEL (8.5%)
The Moortgat brewery in Breendonk, Belgium, founded in 1871, has always been a specialist ale producer.

Between the two world wars, when Scotch ales were popular in Belgium, Moortgat asked the famous brewing scientist Jean De Clerck to analyse a bottle of McEwan’s Export. De Clerck was able to isolate the yeast culture, which was then used by Moorgat to brew an amber-brown beer that, according to legend, was greeted by one brewery worker with the cry: “This is a devil of a beer!” Duvel is the Flemish for devil and the name stuck.

In the 1970s, Moortgat redeveloped the beer as a strong golden ale. Only Belgian and French pale malts are used and the beer has a colour rating of seven to nine, only fractionally higher th.....

To read the rest of this article you can buy this issue or subscribe to Beers of the World to have every issue delivered direct to your door.

By Roger Protz

Section : Beer styles

Page number : 50