Another British classic ale
By Rocky | May 8, 2008
The taste for British beers continues- but I promise tomorrow we will try move away from England and try something else. Today’s treat is Abbot Ale also made by the Greene King group who also made yesterday’s beer the Speckled Hen, Abbot is The Green King group’s flagship brand. This one is one of England’s more popular drops and can be found just about anywhere around the world. The Abbot Ale is fairly strong tasting ale, in England and some other places you can get it from the cask but the bottle but outside Brittan you usually only see it in bottle form. Keep your eyes out for the Abbot Reserve, it has a 6.5 alcohol volume instead of the 5.0 found in the standard and both use the Challenger and Fuggles hops which give them a very bitter sting with some distinct floral and fruity tones- the Reserve like the standard its quiet tasty. The Abbot Ale dates back to 1799, but the heritage goes back even further with the brewery drawing water from a well which has been supplying which the Great Abbey of St Edmundsbury brewed beer from nearly 950 years.
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The Old Speckled Hen
By Rocky | May 7, 2008
Well yesterday’s Boddingtons’s Pub Ale got us in the mood for tasty English Beers and the Old Speckled Hen looked pretty good down at the bottleshop today and it tasted absolutely delicious- should have bought a couple more…not to worry there is always tomorrow. The Old Speckled Hen is English bitter style beer, and is fairly new, it was first brewed in 1979 by the Moreland Brewery in Abingdon which is in Oxfordshire to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the MG car company of all reasons, which was also in Adingdon. Story has it that the brewery had a MG which was splattered with paint and the beer was named after it. The beer is available in pasteurized bottles or as a cask ale. The Morand brand has a few other interesting named products including He’s Tooth, Tanners Jack and Morland Original the brewery is operated by the Greene King Brand which also produces Ruddles, Abbot, Ridley’s and Hardy’s & Hanson products.
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The Cream of Manchester- well not really
By Rocky | May 5, 2008
Back in 1778 two grain merchants Thomas Caister and Thomas Fry founded the Strangeways Brewery in Manchester, England, then in 1853 a traveler called Henry Boddington joined the brewery and later bought the two partners out to be the sole owner of the brewery. Their most popular product was Boddington’s Pub Ale which is now sold in over 30 countries around the world. The brewery stayed in the Boddington family until 1989 when it was sold to Whitebread which was later taken over by the huge Interbrew company who closed the brewery in 2004 and moved Boddington’s brewing operations to Magor in South Wales and their cask cale brewing to Moss Side in Manchester. Boddington’s is known as the ‘Cream of Manchester” and sadly the only remaining reminder of the Strangeway’s Brewery will be the chimmney stack which will be kept as a memorial amongst the new redevelopment being built on the site. But Manchester hasn’t lost the beer, it might not come from the city but the taste and the spirit continues- it just gets imported into town.- arr progress. Read the rest of this entry »
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