Tuesday 20 December 2011

80 Shilling Days


I'm brewing it today, even as I write. Well, I've done the hard part, Clive & Strings are busy cleaning up after me.

Everyone drinks hoppy, pale ales these days, and who can blame them? It is a fine and refreshing beer style after all, and the breadth of different sub-styles within the genre is enough to keep anyone interested for, well, quite a long time. However, and I dare not utter this out loud, I'm bored of them, bored bored bored bored bored. So it is with enthusiastic gusto that I'm brewing the very antithesis to IPA - Scottish Export, or 80 /- (shilling) ale.

This one is all about malt, and lots of it. Crystal malt provides a nutty, sweet red background, chocolate malt brings, well, a touch of silky smooth chocolate. Oats for smooth, wholesome goodness; melanoidin for sweet aroma & some amber to dry the palate, lest the sweetness becomes cloying. Oh, and, of course, a minute twist of heavily, heavenly Bruichladdich peated malt to drag us up onto Rannoch Moor once again.

I put a few hops in too, just for balance, and nothing else.

It's cold and damp outside, warm & cosy in. These days are not IPA days, these days are 80/- days.



3 comments:

Bailey said...

I wouldn't say I'm bored of IPAs or hoppy beers, exactly, but I'm certainly developing a fondness for St Austell HSD which, six months ago, I dismissed as brown, sweet and characterless. The more I drink it, the more I enjoy sweet maltiness. Certainly seems to suit a roaring fire better than Proper Job, Tribute or anything else with American hops up front.

Gadds Beers Hop said...

Oh god, HSD, 'high speed death' or plain 'diesel'. I spent many a session in deepest Cornwall on the stuff back in the late eighties. Though to blame it for my subsequent delinquent and immature behaviour would be unfair - that was me, not the beer.

But yes, I think you get the point I was trying to make....

Anonymous said...

The ancestors are pleased.
Toronto.